do your job, people

[davemerrill]

So 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.

Comments

[warpig1979.livejournal.com]

Fellow at the local anime club once asked me what I do for a living, I say I'm a writer, I do anime and game reviews and features and stuff for X, Y, and Z. He says to me, wow, that's awesome, you could go to all these conventions and do panels and get in for free.

I say, what in the hell would I want to do that for? He gets this blank, perplexed look on his face.

I dunno. The appeal of being a fixture on the con circuit just escapes me.

[efathefinger.livejournal.com]

Don't think joeysnackpants still reads his LJ, so I'll answer for JACON. JACON after say the 5th one, we were getting a bit jaded, so the guest list turned into A) George Lowe. We like George, for all his faults, maybe because of them. B) 2-3 guests in the anime industry for the kids C) People who the staff wanted to see.
So, hell, we had Rob Paulsen (Booya!), Phil LaMarr, Billy West, Ellen Muth. Some had voice credits on stuff, some didn't. Oh, and Brett Weaver anytime we could get him to do yet another convention.
Seriously, we didn't get paid, at this point in our lives we don't generally like the anime the kids are watching. You do something you want at the convention.
So, Rob Granito was there because we wanted to see him at our convention. No cheating, weaseling, or whatever.

[kikaiju.livejournal.com]

Never understood why people go to such great efforts to get a free con badge. Not just this guy I never heard of, but anyone. It's not like it's a freaking golden ticket. It's a con badge that might cost anywhere from 10 to 50 bucks, versus going to a fair amount of effort to get in free. meh. Skip that value meal and buy a ticket. Problem solved.

Hell, most cons are pretty terrible about keeping out the freeloaders and gate-crashers. Wandering around for free AND breaking the rules is probably even more of a thrill than just getting a free pass.

Anyway, the problem with guests like this is really when the con heads or whatever fall for it OR don't care and go along with it. Like a padded bra, everybody running a con thinks a padded guest list looks better.

Then the guests of questionable value gets foisted on the attendees, some of whom won't see it for what it is, and they might even take it at face value, and thus a BS artist starts to get cred. Misdirecting attendees like that is the part I feel bad about. A little. I mean, it's only called a "con" by coincidence but shady stuff still goes on.

Actually I don't give a crap any more. :)