Heroes Con Day 2: They Wrestle Bulls to the Ground by their Horns

If you haven't read it yet, begin here, the first post about my trip to Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina. This Day 2 entry is going to be shorter, because it's 3am, I'm low on stamina, and I really only did two things yesterday:

First, I hung out with my family. My wife Kathy and son Nate drove down from Boone, NC--our hometown--to spend the day at the con with me. Our daughter Mercer, who at age 7 is considerably less interested in sequential art than Nate, stayed back in Boone for a sleepover, but Nate did bring his friend Beckham Jacquot to the con. Kathy and I devoted our morning, then, to letting Nate and Beckham rip through Heroes con's massive Dealers Room. Nate bought a pile of Archie floppies and at least two Dark Horse Astro Boy volumes, while Beckham got some Dragon Ball Z books and a big Iron Man Essentials collection. (I recommended the latter, since Beckham enjoyed the Iron Man movie.) The kids had fun, though they were intimidated by the sheer amount of booths and sellers and stuff on sale. They also turned out to be scared by the prospect of meeting their favorite cartoonists. One of Nate's favorite comics is Alec Longstreth's Dvorak Zine, a primer for switching the layout of your computer keyboard from the traditional arrangement of letters to a more ergonomic system--yeah, I know, not the typical "favorite comic" of most 11-year-olds--but Nate couldn't get it together to say two coherent words to Longstreth. Likewise, he froze up around Darwyn Cooke. Ah, adolescence.

Second, I did my EC panels with co-conspirator Ben Towle. I'm not going to review my own panels, though I'd be grateful for any feedback (positive or negative) folks who were at the event might have to offer. (Take your best shots in the Comments section, punks!) The biggest problem with the first panel, "Kurtzman for Beginners," was time: poor Ben was understandably hard-pressed to briefly summarize Kurtzman's achievements, and I moderated a close reading of the Kurtzman/Wally Wood story "3-Dimensions!" that got through maybe half the material I wanted to cover. And then Al Feldstein showed up early for the second panel--a showcase for his remarkable career--and the rest of us couldn't keep up. At 82, Feldstein has more energy than any three men; he wrestles bulls to the ground by their horns and throws lightning bolts from his hands. Seriously. While I'm grateful to Roger Langridge and Richard Thompson for participating in the Feldstein panel, all of us--Ben, Roger, Richard, me--became superfluous as Al held court and told us stories about Jerry Iger, Will Eisner, Kurtzman, Wood, Nick Meglin, Jack Davis and, of course, Bill Gaines, who Al very touchingly referred to as "the Old Man." (It was clear that despite their many disagreements, his friendship with Bill Gaines had been very important to Al.) There were perhaps 50 people in the audience, and Al fielded smart questions from attendees, particularly Roy Thomas (who knows a thing or two about Golden Age comics, I understand) and my buddy Mike Rhode, who taped the Feldstein session and is putting pressure on me to transcribe it for a future issue of The International Journal of Comic Art. I'm also grateful to art collector Stephen Turner, who displayed several pages of original EC art drawn by Feldstein alongside our events. Stephen also brought an original Jack Davis piece--a splash for the "wrestling story" in the very first magazine-sized Mad (#24)--that made everyone who looked at it (especially Athens, Georgia cartoonist Patrick Dean) drool and swoon.

We'll improve what needs improving, and we'll do panels again next year.

The only ominous note struck during my second day at Heroes Con had to do with the sales of independent comics. While chatting individually with Kevin Huizenga, Frank Santoro and Dan Nadel, I asked how sales were going, and got three variations on "Not great." Dustin Harbin, one of Heroes Con's central organizers and the man responsible for the significant independent comics presence (the "Indie Island") at the show, is a dynamo himself--he too wrestles bulls to the ground by their horns--but I imagine it's a formidable challenge to convince the same demographic excited about Secret Invasion to sample Ganges or Injury. On Saturday morning, while riding my hotel elevator to the lobby to get breakfast, I struck up a conversation with a middle-aged fan who was excited about meeting Silver Age creators like Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich and Herb Trimpe at Heroes Con. He mentioned that all these Silver Agers were located near each other on the con floor, and then added, "So I'm gonna spend all my time in that Silver Age area, and avoid flashes-in-the-pan like Darwyn Cooke and Guy Davis." A guy like that wouldn't come within three miles of the PictureBox tables. Is it viable to have an "Indie Island" at a con where many of the attendees are superhero fans, and Balkanized superhero fans at that? Stay tuned.

Comments

[Ben Towle]

In the independent comics department, it's probably worth mentioning, for the sake of not casting things solely in a "doom and gloom" light sales-wise, that Top Shelf and Adhouse were (according to word-of-mouth on the floor) doing really well sales-wise.

A few more anecdotal reports:

Students from The Center for Cartoon Studies weren't moving much of anything sales-wise I hear, but were having a great time nonetheless (although probably not looking forward to the 17-hour drive home).

The Josh Latta/Brad McGinty/Pat Lewis wing of Indie Island likewise wasn't doing a ton of business either I think.

As for me, I believe I sold something in the area of 35 or so "real" books, and maybe the same number of minicomics. I'd say dollar-wise that this is a bit lower than I'd hoped for given the truly spectacular guest list and the crowd I imagined it would draw. On the other hand, I sold a small handful of original art pieces and picked up one fairly lucrative commission, which makes this year's bottom line for me the best of any year I've been to Heroes... and better than any SPX I've ever done. (Not the "bottom line" is really my main concern at these things anyway...)

Besides the challenges of doing what amounts to a small press show inside a mainstream superhero-oriented show, it should probably be noted that the economy is in really poor shape, and I think people just didn't have a whole lot of money to spend.

Also, I wasn't alone in noting the number of people who came to the show with indie folks' books in-hand, having already bought them somewhere else. A sign perhaps that with the rise in popularity of GNs, one no longer needs to seek out these books directly from their creators at conventions?

[Dustin Harbin]

Haw! I TOLD you guys you'd need longer! Let's see if I can find the e-mail... ah yes: "Two hours is plenty of time I think, even with the short break in-between. We wanna keep things moving along at a decent clip for the Kurtzman portion and then pretty much the entire second half is the Feldstein panel." This from Ben. I believe there was talk of a cake as well?

RE: Indie Sales. This is a question I'll be answering a lot, as so far it's the only real downside to the convention. Which normally would be GREAT, except that Indie Island is all me, so obviously I want it to really perform well. Ben is right that that AdHouse and Top Shelf did pretty well, but they've been here every year for years and years and years. Top Shelf was exhibiting here years before there was ever an Indie Island at all, so fans around here recognize Chris and Rob and Andy and are always coming back to see what's new. I think that if I can trick some of these newer faces back, they'll see a rise in sales with each trip. Not to mention that as Indie Island itself matures and has more of a national reputation, more and more people will come to HeroesCon purely for that, and the mix on the floor will be more even.

The biggest thing I can say is that I suspect that 75% of indie comics readers started out as superhero comics readers. I certainly did. It's not like one day a light goes off and you're into Huizenga all of a sudden. I'm taking a long view here, which is tricky since we don't have any money, but anyone who's been coming to Indie Island since the first one in 2005 can tell you how much it's grown in that time, which is hugely encouraging to me.

I hate that I missed the EC panels, but I heard from a lot of people that they were HUGELY entertaining. Thanks so much for being a part of them, Craig--let me know if you want to do anything for next year's show: you guys have got great ideas, and apparently know a ton of stuff about comics!

[Ben Towle]

I'd agree with Dustin's assessment of the indie sales issue... and the idea that in the long-term, getting indie folks to come every year is the key to sales. Certainly the fact that _I_ was selling more stuff than, say, the far more well-known Kevin Huizenga can really ONLY be explained by the fact that I've been a presence at the show for several years and that I've built a bit of a "usual crowd" of interested folks who come to see me every year.

[Patrick Dean]

The Kurtzman panel was great. While I had read some Mad stories from the comic-sized era earlier, I didn't read the 3-D story until college.

My God, what did Darwyn Cooke and Guy Davis say to that guy's mother?

And was I the only one there giddy to see both Brian Lee O'Malley and Herb Trimpe?

[Craig Fischer]

Thanks to Ben and Dustin for the frank talk about Indie Island sales. I agree that building the audience for alt-comix is a slow, almost generational process, and I also agree with Dustin that superhero readers can sometimes mutate (like a caterpillar into a butterfly?) into indie comix fans. That was my path too: I saw a superheroine holding a baby (?) on the cover of LOVE AND ROCKETS #3 (1982) and there was no going back.

To indie creators: come back for Heroes Con 2009! We love you here in North Carolina! Please?

Patrick: Jesus, how did I miss Herb Trimpe? I would've had him sign those nutty issues of HULK that tell a "Moby-Dick-in-outer-space" story...