Heroes Con Day 1: Carrots and Sticks, Threats and Spankings

Following is a brief report on my first day (Friday, 6/20) at Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina. I can't include pictures that I took at the event, because any technology I touch crumbles to dust in my hands.

I attended two panels on Friday. First was "Covering Comics: Criticism, Reportage and Gossip," moderated by Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter. Matt Brady of Newsarama and Heidi MacDonald of The Beat and Publishers Weekly talked about the challenges of presenting comics industry news on the Internet, while Tim Hodler of the Comics Comics blog, Johanna Draper Carlson of Comics Worth Reading and Carlton Hargro of the alternative weekly Creative Loafing represented comics criticism rather than journalism.

For some reason--maybe through the sheer force of their personalities rather than anything else--Brady and MacDonald dominated the discussion. They complained about the mountain of information they have to sift through every day as part of their jobs, and about how they need to strike a balance between rigorous journalism and what Brady called "the long-term picture": the need to stay on good terms with DC and Marvel so as to continue to receive timely news and information from these companies. Brady referred to Newsarama's relationship with big comics publishers as "carrots and sticks, threats and spankings," and indicated that the companies' threats and spankings influenced the information posted on Newsarama.

Which, of course, sucks. I'm much more sympathetic to the work that Hodler, Draper Carlson and Hargro do: careful, reasoned analysis of individual comics and graphic novels is more important to me than chasing after the six-hour "news cycles" of the comics industry. These critics responded to Brady's description of the "threats and spankings" situation with admirable independence-- Draper Carlson said that because she has a day job, she doesn't care "if someone is pissed" at her, while Hodler and Hargro pointed out that newspapers traditionally build strong firewalls between their editorial and advertising divisions to avoid the dangers inherent in allowing threats to chill journalistic speech.

The other panel I attended was a "Spotlight on Richard Thompson," also chaired by Tom Spurgeon. I agree with Spurgeon that Thompson is one of the best daily comic strip artists working today, and Thompson himself is soft-spoken and unassuming...until he says something loopy that sneaks up on you and makes you laugh. My favorite moment of the panel was Thompson's evocation of the childhood sensibility at the core of his strip Cul de Sac, the notion that kids see the world in a ground-level way. As Thompson described it, kids know "which water faucets are safe to drink out of" in their neighborhood, and details like this that make both Thompson and Cul de Sac charming. Incidentally, since I've blabbed on about journalistic ethics in this post, I should note that Richard is participating in a Heroes Con panel on EC Comics I'm co-chairing on Saturday--Conflict of Interest! Conflict of Interest!--and I'm looking forward to the collision of his dry humor with the Mad aesthetic.

The books I bought at Heroes Con look like fun. Fred the Clown 5 1/2 is a Xeroxed, convention-only "ashcan" by the great Roger Langridge (Conflict of Interest #2! Roger's also on that EC panel!), and it's good to have the big-footed doofus back again. Fred, I mean, not Roger. Interestingly, in a text page in #5 1/2, Langridge is disarmingly frank about his inability to craft a long-form graphic novel: 

When I think of committing myself to 150-odd pages of a single story which may completely fall apart along the way--and I'd have to say from the evidence of the false starts I've made that there's not much "maybe" about it--I break out in a sweat. I attended the wonderful Small Press Expo in Bethesda in 2007, hoping for a burst of energy of the kind I've had from the show when I've attended it in previous years, and instead I came away from it feeling physically ill and like I was about to break down and cry. Everybody else at SPX was doing such great, ambitious and beautiful work, and I felt like I'd been left behind.

Luckily, cobbling together the Fred ashcan cured Langridge of his feelings of inadequacy: "Maybe this is what I should be doing after all. Maybe not everybody has the comic-strip equivalent of a full-blown opera inside them. Maybe some people are put here on Earth to write sublime three-minute pop songs, and maybe the world is a better place for it." After dinner last night, Roger and I chatted a bit about silent film comedy, and I told him that my favorite movie is Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. (1924), a movie that is childishly simple, endlessly profound, and perfect at its length of 45 minutes. Small is beautiful.

Other books I bought that I haven't really looked at yet: Rob Ullman's naughty new Atom Bomb Bikini, which really ought to come in an unmarked brown paper bag; Light Children, an ambitious comic by Andrew Horner and my friend Kyle Webster (Conflict of Interest #3!); Lauren Weinstein's large-format, lavish The Goddess of War; and three Dark Horse collections of Makoto Kobayashi's What's Michael?, one of my favorite mangas, for a buck each. (I already own these What's Michael? books, but I'll include the extras in Operation Ramona.) Saturday, I hunt for original art--are you reading, Jaime H.?--and I'll try to post another Heroes Con update by Sunday morning.

Comments

[CharlesWHatfield]

Craig, I envy you this gig (he said, sitting in his apartment in Los Angeles County). Bring us back anecdotes!

I agree that "Sherlock, Jr." is wonderful. I remember watching that in my undergrad Intro to Film course (taught by Ed Brannigan at UCSB), in which we would watch the same film twice each week, and the Keaton brought the house down, twice. It didn't seem to have aged a day. So ingenious, so light on its feet, and so damn funny.

I liked almost every film I watched in that class (though "Hiroshima Mon Amour" drove me nuts with frustration), but the Keaton was a real favorite of mine. I've worshiped at the Keaton shrine since. :)

Looking forward to hearing about the EC panels!

[CharlesWHatfield]

PS. "Light Children" looks very interesting indeed. I dig high fantasy, which there aren't too many good examples of in comics, so I'm looking forward to this.

[Kyle]

Craig,
Thanks again for stopping by and for picking up a copy of our first LIGHT CHILDREN book. We were blown away by the response and the support at the con - over 160 books sold! Dustin told us that is quite a feat for a self-published, non-hyped single title, especially at a 10 dollar price point. We are thrilled.

Good seeing you, and hope it is not too long before we see you again,
Kyle

[Ben Towle]

FYI: The "Covering Comics" panel mentioned in this post is now online at the Dollar Bin podcast site:

http://www.thedollarbin.net/heroes-con-08-covering-comics/