davemerrill

There was a "comic con" happening last weekend in our area; guests were a TV cartoon voice actor, an actress from an 80s fantasy movie, a wrestler, a "Gru" cosplayer, Pokemon cosplayers, six other cosplayer guests, and five authors- like, prose book authors. The comic book people involved were one guy with his own comic book publishing vanity press and another guy who writes comics somebody else draws.

They need to come up for a name for these conventions that doesn't involve the word "comics". On FB we workshopped proper names and "Nerd Milking Facility/Nerd Dairy" and "Media Tumor" came up. That last one strikes me as apt, but the media involved is very specific. Big properties only - Disney films, Marvel/DC heroes, Harry Potter, Power Rangers, Transformers. It is corporate cheerleading.

This "comic-con" culture is extremely specific, corporate-driven media fandom that is mostly concerned with cosplay photo ops. I don't know why people attend these things, I don't know why people run these things, I don't know why they exist at all. I mean, I get it, I'm not the target audience, but it seems to me the target audience would be just as happy meeting at the local mall in their outfits, that they don't need "the convention" part at all.

I don't want to sound anti-cosplayer. At least they're having fun. Otherwise, seems like everyone not in costume is either trying to sell autographs or trying to summon forth their own fake-superhero or fake-zombie or fake-Pokemon publishing empire out of some kind of positive thinking hand-waving, or trying to make a career out of these types of 'comic cons'. None of the advertised guests seemed to be involved in the production of actual graphic sequential art, and none of the featured activities or events involved graphic sequential art.

As a cartoonist who doesn't draw corporate characters and a publisher who doesn't publish works that resemble corporate-owned works, I feel these kinds of shows are poison. They reinforce the public mindset that comics are a genre while focusing attention on everything except actual comics.

We at Mister Kitty have some books coming out next year, and a show like this is a waste of our time. I only have so much free time to spend sitting behind a table. If we could maybe wring the thinking of show organizers back towards actual comic art, that would be great. Thanks.

We went to the Cambridge show! And it was OK! Very super heroey. Cosplayers front and center blocking the doors of the library with photo shoots of Dude Dressed As Dr. Evil (bringing the role back to Ontario, as it were) and Pink Power Ranger, and Guys Staring At Pink Power Ranger's Butt. We printed a lot of zines but only sold a few. The crowd was mostly People Who Bring Their Kids To The Library On Saturday Anyway - a demographic I support fully, but not one really in the market for self-published comics. Especially not self published comics that aren't very kid friendly. Other tables were a pretty typical mix of aspiring super hero artists, a smattering of edgy zombie monstery professional illustrators all chatting with each other about next week's Fan Expo, one table of people selling their board game.

On the plus side, the table was free, the event was well-run and provided coffee, pizza, water, and snacks to the artists. It was nice to table again, it's been a while. The zines and the promo stuff we produced for the show can, of course, easily be used for the next show. I brought the strip I'm working on and Shain brought her sketchbook and we spent most of the time working on our various projects, and having a solid block of time away from typical distractions was really helpful. We handed out a lot of postcards and met a few people and swapped comics with one guy.

The minus side was that this really wasn't our crowd, the event wasn't that well attended, and it's a solid hour of 401 traffic away from our place. If it happens again next year, and the tables are still free, then it might be a thing we think about. But it, and tabling in general, are such a commitment- gas money, supplies, and time - that I don't know if it's worth it. Certainly for a show that pretty much sucks up an entire day, for us the return on investment is dependent on many factors.

I think we'd sell more zines at a show like Con Bravo, at a larger, more eclectic convention. Of course those tables cost more money and demand a larger time commitment. There was a zine festival last Saturday in Toronto that we probably would have done fine at - "Zine Dream" - but one half of a table was $30, which isn't onerous, but still, it's more than zero. It becomes a question of, are you at the con to sell zines, or are you selling zines to be at the con? Are you making comics just to give yourself an excuse to attend as many conventions as you can? Because I've seen that mindset in action and it might be great for some, but I don't want to attend as many conventions as humanly possible. I'm 47. I value my weekends away from my actual job that pays my actual bills.

(I did buy a zine from a guy at "Zine Dream" and chatted with him for a bit about zines and I mentioned the Cambridge comics show, and he lives in Cambridge and had heard nothing about the show. I think if you aren't an aspiring super hero artist, the Cambridge show just wasn't on your radar, if you aren't a super hero fan, the Cambridge show just didn't know how to reach out to you.)

Back in the 1998 daze, we knew enough people that we could send an email and get a free artists alley table at AWA, at ACen, at AZ, at A-Kon, you name it, we could get a table and camp at it for however long we wanted, selling whatever. Most conventions, with the exception of late Saturday nights at Anime North, do not operate like that any more, for several very good reasons. I'm good with doing the very occasional zine or comic show and distributing most of our published output on a one-on-one basis.

Anyway we did meet a guy at the Cambridge show sporting a t-shirt from the 1972 anime series Dokonjo Gaeru, the show about the frog squished onto the kid's T-shirt. He bought the shirt in a local thrift store. So jealous!!

Sunday we met visiting Twitter anime pal Dylan for lunch at a crowded, slow, brunch-filled Lakeview, and then we dropped him off and drove out to Grand Bend and got in some late summer swimming and beach time. The water was just about perfect. We got back to town really late and that was the weekend. Oh yeah, we stopped off at the antique mall in Stratford.

Wow, just read Mark Waid's review of MAN OF STEEL and it's got a spoiler in it and I'm glad I read the spoiler because it saved me spending $12.50 on the movie.

You can go read it for yourself, I won't discuss it here.

http://thrillbent.com/blog/man-of-steel-since-you-asked/

I'm not a big super hero fan by any means, but there are fundamental things that super-heroes should be, bottom-line reasons they exist, and it looks like the people handling those characters now definitely don't get it.

I was on the fence anyways; not a fan of Zack Snyder, am iffy on the whole ethics of how Warners acquired the character, and am not happy with the failure of both Warners and Marvel/Disney to adequately address their responsibilities to the creative legacy of their cash-cow intellectual properties.

So yeah, this was pretty much the third strike here. I may not ever see another super-hero movie in the theater ever again. Not that that is a problem, really. I'm a guy in my 40s; I also don't spend a lot of money on Charms Blo-Pops, baseball cards, Slurpees, or Snap 'n' Pops.

EDITED TO ADD:
There's no Jimmy Olsen? To hell with you, movie.

One of the problems of having a lot of comic books is that you have a lot of comic books and eventually you have to find somewhere to put them. So you get boxes and shelves and eventually the boxes fill up and you don't have anywhere else to put new boxes or to put shelves to put new boxes in. We're not at that point yet, but we're on our way. OR ARE WE.

Usually when you buy comics these days from shops or at a convention they're in bags, and the bags have boards in them to prevent spine slippage or creases or folds or whatever. And that's great for old comics, they're getting on in years and need the help. But for comics that aren't so old, say, 1970 or newer, do they really need the boards? How much space do those boards really take up? This much.



That is about twelve inches of space that was occupied by backing boards. That's a lot of space, especially when space is at a premium. So if you're facing our space problem, ask yourself - how many of your comics REALLY need backing boards?

And another question. Anybody need any backing boards? We've got some extras.

Last night we got up the last Mister Kitty updates of 2011 - if you aren't reading Shain's Element Of Surprise then you're missing out on a professional, entertaining modern romance-drama. Her work has never been better, and I'm not just saying that because I'm married to her and see how hard she works on it. The strip really does look great. On the other hand Zero Fighter is kind of blunt and ugly, but generally it's doing what it wants to do and I'm kind of along for the ride.

To be honest I'm kind of surprised I've been able to keep up the momentum of a weekly update. I need some kind of a deadline, even if it's self-imposed, to stay motivated to finish any kind of cartooning artwork, and it seems like a weekly strip that gets posted online where other people can see it - and I assume people are reading it, I don't look at the stats out of some kind of weird compulsion - is a good way to stay productive. I don't have the self discipline to lock myself in the studio and crank out page after page in a frenzy, my personality is much more do a little bit here, a little bit there. In many ways the strip has become a kind of therapy; I know whatever the week's been like, I will be spending two or three hours on Sunday listening to records and working on my strip. I actually get kind of antsy when I can't spend those couple of hours drawing.

And I know - "two or three hours for one page? One simple page?" But usually I'm going into each page with only the vaguest idea of what's coming next, which is something I borrowed from Shain when she was doing "Behind The Blue Door." What happens on Sunday is built right from the ground up, rough sketches, pencils, inks, the works.

Anyway that's it until sometime in January - we're heading South this week for Christmas, return after New Years, and then it's off to Anime Los Angeles where I'm FGOH and we're doing our Stupid Comics panel, among other things. We're not back until Jan. 10 so sadly, you will have to wait for your Mister Kitty fix until then

Another punishing three days of 12 hour shifts done with. Everybody's back from vacation so hopefully this is the last one for awhile. It's not the working for 12 hours, it's the combination of that, the getting up early, and the NOT keeping to that schedule on my days off that's making it so punishing. Getting home at 7:30 on a Saturday night and not having the energy to do anything more than get some dinner and hit the rack is annoying, especially in a city full of people in costumes going to parties. I think I saw a "Bob McKenzie", though those could have just been his normal clothes, it's hard to tell.

Anyway this week we managed to scrape up some Found Sound for you in the form of an entire Funky Phantom LP detailing the exciting adventures of a Revolutionary War ghost and his ghost cat and the teenagers they hang out with.



And over at Stupid Comics we explore Chilling Tales Of Sorcery with Sabrina, the teenage witch.



Sabrina plays horror hostess, the Bible saves us from evil, what more do you want? It's all at Mister Kitty's Stupid Comics.

Other than that, and working, not a whole lot has been going on around the Toy Factory HQ of Dave And Shain. We did get out and buy Love & Rockets New Stories #4 which is probably the most emotionally moving comic book you'll read all year. If you're like me you've been reading Love & Rockets since you were 15 though the various incarnations and publication types - the magazine, the solo books, the comic, and now the annual book - and if you have any investment in these characters at all, the Jaime story in this latest one will ring your bell and leave you on the canvas looking at all the pretty lights.

To be honest I missed the last few issues of the comic book sized L&R. I'd buy it, read it, and then a week later I would be asking myself, hey, did a new L&R come out? Not this one, kids. The Beto story is great too - it looks like his inking is going from a brush to teeny tiny pen lines, which I don't know is a good choice ultimately, but hey, it's his book - but Jaime knocks it out of the park on this one, I'm talking 'Death Of Speedy' here.

If you have never read Love & Rockets, you have my sympathy. Get down to your local library and start reading. These are some of the best American comic books ever published, end of story.

I also got the new Black Jack which has some terrific stories, including one involving a tokusatsu actor.

That's one of the benefits of the 3-day shift, you have time off during the week to catch up on comic books and movies. We went to the cheap Tuesday movies and saw CONTAGION, the Matt Damon - Kate Winslet - Jude Law - Larry Fishburne - CDC movie about what happens the next time we get a really good dose of bird flu or SARS. At this point I think Soderbergh could make a great movie about people reading the phone book, and with material like this he manages a terrific movie, scary, moving, and tight. Not a wasted shot in this picture. This is the kind of breakdown-of-society film that Spielberg was trying to do in his WAR OF THE WORLDS, but Spielberg will always go for the "gosh wow" at the expense of the mundane. WARNING: this movie features an autopsy scene involving Gwynneth Paltrow, and she ain't one of the doctors, I'm just sayin'.

Today is going to be recovering from the work week, drawing, maybe going out to a spook house or junking. Tomorrow it's back to work!

So Fantagraphics has laid Dirk Deppey off and tomorrow will be the last Journalista.

I've followed Journalista since pretty much day one, and with Dirk going, who knows what's going to happen to it? Dirk had the perfect mix of perspective, attitude, outrage and befuddlement at the frequently circlin'-the-drain world of comics. Also he namechecked Mister Kitty a lot, especially the "Betty mentioning Dan DeCarlo" thing. Unbelievable as it may look, I don't spend a lot of time sittin' in front of the computer, and without Dirk's ability to deliver links of note, I'm going to miss out on a lot of interesting stuff. I mean, Comics Reporter is well worth reading, but it's a completely different kind of blog; and most other comics blogs are uselessly obsessed with dumb-ass superhero comics. Well, one more tombstone in the internets graveyard, I suppose.

To be honest, my relationship with the entire field has diminished to the point where I get way more entertainment from the various blogs that detail the various stupidities the "industry" subjects itself to in attempts to wring the last dollar out of a shrinking, decadent market, than I do from anything that actually gets published. Maybe it's just as well I spend less time on such schadenfreudish endeavours.

Today's CBC Rewind had a whole hour of interviews about comics - report from the floor of Cosmiccon'74, an interview with Memory Lane's George Henderson, Arn Saba on "Rural Route" cartoonist Walter Ball, and of course Lynn Johnston. Arn Saba sounds disarmingly like SubG cartoonist and San Francisco-based monologist Hal Robins.

Tread lightly, pilgrims... watch your head... LOOK OUT!! IT'S THE CRAZY GRANDMA COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE IN ACTION!!!

How much are you willing to pay for that copy of TUFF GHOSTS STARRING SPOOKY? Five dollars? Ten dollars? TWENTY DOLLARS? Think again, my pretty! Heh heh eh heh heh cough COUGH HACK COUGH OH JESUS PANT PANT pant.



Not ten or twenty or thirty or thirty-five - but forty whole dollars! Captured by the digital camera of intrepid explorers Shain and Dave as they delve deep, thrusting uncomfortably to penetrate the mysteries lurking within the caves - the CREEPY FREUDIAN CAVES starring HOT STUFF - of the World 'O Crazy Grandma Price Guide. You should probably go wash your hands now.

This was shot on Day One of this year's Xmas Odyssey at, obviously, the "L&K Antiques Mall" which is located on the 401 east of Windsor Ontario, north of Leamington (the Tomato Capital of Ontario) and somewhere within about a half-hour drive of Colasanti's Tropical Gardens, a farmer's market/roast chicken buffet/lawn and patio decor/petting zoo/tourist trap sort of place that's worth a stop if the weather's nice and you don't have anywhere in particular you need to be.

Other highlights of Day One of our trip include, um, getting gas, the US Customs guy being all attitudinal because the passports were not offered to him together in one simple motion, and being stopped by the Olympic Torch as it passed us in Windsor. And dinner at Bob Evans in Dayton and stopping for the night somewhere north of Louisville KY. Where Dave and Shain go, excitement follows!11!1!!! Can you feel it?