do your job, people
Mar. 27th, 2011 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davemerrillSo I've been following the whole Rob Granito story - for those who don't know, he's this guy who made a lot of claims concerning his work for Marvel, DC, and, uh, Calvin & Hobbes. He used those claims to get invited to a bunch of conventions like Dragoncon, the Toronto Wizard Comic Con, and Megacon, where he'd sell original fantasy and superhero paintings that in some cases weren't so original. You can get started with the story here or maybe here or perhaps here. It's pretty amusing, particularly the poor grammar on display from anonymous commenters pretending to be DC editors defending Granito.
It's an old story - everybody went to school with somebody who had a desperate psychological need to impress everyody around him with amazing stories that never quite panned out. Additionally, the super hero comic book world is up in arms because Granito's work for super hero comics is, shall we say, swiped like crazy from other artists, and his other claims of employment haven't quite lived up to his big talk. (I say, superhero artists swipe from each other all the time. Every time you're drawing a corporate-owned character you're swiping. Some of these characters have been being drawn regularly for SEVENTY YEARS. Originality is not even on the table here.)
But there's a larger story here, and that story is this: why was he a guest at conventions AT ALL? This is somebody who has inspired fandom to ask "who is Rob Granito?" Obviously he's not going to be a draw. Nobody is going to look at your flyer and say "Hey, it's Rob Granito, I wasn't going to go to the con before but now, SIGN ME UP!!" Why was he a guest at Dragoncon? Why was he a guest at Wizard World Toronto and Wizard World Anaheim? Why was he at Megacon? Why was he at JACON?
And even that question isn't the real question - we know why he was at those shows; he was at those shows to make money by selling "art" to convention attendees. I ask, why did the conventions not charge him for a dealer's table? Why let this big-talking fake talk his way onto your guest list? Are you that stupid?
He needs conventions WAY MORE than conventions need him. Let him shell out for a dealers room table and do his own promotional work. His name on your guest list only makes your convention look desperate, confused (JACON?) and now, clueless.
There are quite a few people who pad their resumes out in an attempt to work their way into the green rooms of conventions - it happens at anime cons all the time. For some I think it's an addiction; as long as they can find their name in a con guide or on a con website, as long as they get a panel room to talk at four or five people for an hour, as long as they can talk the con into taking them out to dinner three or four times over the weekend, all's well with the world. And there are plenty of conventions that are too polite to refuse, too ignorant of the true cost of padding their guest list out with nobodies, of taking one more room out of their room block and adding two or three mouths to their catering bills. At least Rob Granito is walking away from these shows with a pocket full of cash and business cards of potential business contacts, in addition to a belly full of free convention food.
AWA's taken some heat under Stan's administration for a pretty strict guest policy - there's always somebody desperate to see their favorite internet celebrity recieve a guest badge, or something, who takes offense at Stan's bias towards working industry figures - but it's avoided a lot of Rob Granito nonsense over the years, and I continue to support it fully.
I don't see this Rob Granito story as anything other than a slightly more extreme version of The Way Things Are; liars lie, hacks hack, suckers bite. Don't be a sucker.
It's an old story - everybody went to school with somebody who had a desperate psychological need to impress everyody around him with amazing stories that never quite panned out. Additionally, the super hero comic book world is up in arms because Granito's work for super hero comics is, shall we say, swiped like crazy from other artists, and his other claims of employment haven't quite lived up to his big talk. (I say, superhero artists swipe from each other all the time. Every time you're drawing a corporate-owned character you're swiping. Some of these characters have been being drawn regularly for SEVENTY YEARS. Originality is not even on the table here.)
But there's a larger story here, and that story is this: why was he a guest at conventions AT ALL? This is somebody who has inspired fandom to ask "who is Rob Granito?" Obviously he's not going to be a draw. Nobody is going to look at your flyer and say "Hey, it's Rob Granito, I wasn't going to go to the con before but now, SIGN ME UP!!" Why was he a guest at Dragoncon? Why was he a guest at Wizard World Toronto and Wizard World Anaheim? Why was he at Megacon? Why was he at JACON?
And even that question isn't the real question - we know why he was at those shows; he was at those shows to make money by selling "art" to convention attendees. I ask, why did the conventions not charge him for a dealer's table? Why let this big-talking fake talk his way onto your guest list? Are you that stupid?
He needs conventions WAY MORE than conventions need him. Let him shell out for a dealers room table and do his own promotional work. His name on your guest list only makes your convention look desperate, confused (JACON?) and now, clueless.
There are quite a few people who pad their resumes out in an attempt to work their way into the green rooms of conventions - it happens at anime cons all the time. For some I think it's an addiction; as long as they can find their name in a con guide or on a con website, as long as they get a panel room to talk at four or five people for an hour, as long as they can talk the con into taking them out to dinner three or four times over the weekend, all's well with the world. And there are plenty of conventions that are too polite to refuse, too ignorant of the true cost of padding their guest list out with nobodies, of taking one more room out of their room block and adding two or three mouths to their catering bills. At least Rob Granito is walking away from these shows with a pocket full of cash and business cards of potential business contacts, in addition to a belly full of free convention food.
AWA's taken some heat under Stan's administration for a pretty strict guest policy - there's always somebody desperate to see their favorite internet celebrity recieve a guest badge, or something, who takes offense at Stan's bias towards working industry figures - but it's avoided a lot of Rob Granito nonsense over the years, and I continue to support it fully.
I don't see this Rob Granito story as anything other than a slightly more extreme version of The Way Things Are; liars lie, hacks hack, suckers bite. Don't be a sucker.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-28 03:38 pm (UTC)Right? Just watching him utter pure bullshit, seeing him get redfaced when he's questioned, poke the monkey and watch him dance.
OTOH...you know, it could be the 'big lie' thing at work. He's bullshitted so long and so hard there's BOUND to be those that believe him. Pick ANY topic, any person in the 'real world' that you know is utter, 100% poop puck yet there are folk out there that buy into it tooth and claw.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-28 04:47 pm (UTC)You spend any time at conventions and you see these fakes all over; they all have some amazing project that's just about to happen, or they worked on some successful property but their name wasn't on the credits because they were called in at the last minute, etc., etc. It is one step removed from the panhandler who has the story about how his car broke down on the way to taking his kids to the hospital so they can see their mom, can I have $7.59?
Play their game, everybody loses.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-29 04:12 am (UTC)