A quick Dalek sketch, as drawn by my 5 year old daughter this morning.As july continues, I find myself wondering the same thing that I thought last year: when is some enterprising young person going to run a comic book convention in San Diego at the same time as the San Diego Comic Con? They'd have everyone already in town. they just need to rent a small hall and get flyers out.
Now, I know that it sounds like a radical idea, but really it isn't. It would help put our marginal little community back where it belongs: in the basement of some church that doesn't have air conditioning, or the back part of the convention hall that hasn't been updated since 1976. We can get our smelly little brethren all into one place and finally have those talks about girls that we've been wanting to have since there will be no girls there. You wear your old "flash gordon" T-shirt and I'll wear my "FOOM" shirt in solidarity.
We can't put the genie back in the bottle. Mainstream culture is on to us now: girls read comics, girls draw comics, and they even write them and they're not going away. There are too many copies of "Watchmen" DVDs for us to take out back and burn. They've figured out that we do escapist entertainment reasonably well and they're ready to pillage and plunder without mercy.
It makes me feel old. I've been going to these damn things since I was, as near as I can figure, 8 or 9 years old and now i'm 43 and I'm probably still seeing the same copies of Detective and All Star for same at prices that would have bought a house back in 1975. And I still like the inventiveness and the storytelling and getting transported by a good story into somewhere "else" and I realize that that is what i'm most on about these days. Getting transported.
It happens in all sorts of different places. i was about the give up on "Nana" vol 2, which just wasn't getting there for me and the very end of the book got to me. and then i put it down and read the newest TPB of Thor and really enjoyed Straczynski's story and was transported back in the Marvel Universe yet again. I get transported when I click over to the great webcomic Sin Tutulo. Its just cool. Going to San Diego both pisses me off and makes me happy. Harried as well.
Pissed off since I'm sure that very few people are transported by my work, which is what i really want to be doing: trying to give some readers the same thrill ride that i get from other's work. But i'm getting there, little bit by little bit I suppose. After struggling with my own artistic impulse for well over a decade, i suppose it will take time now to grow. Happy because I love seeing all the different and great work thats out there to experience and its pretty much all there in one spot.
4 comments:
A variation of this has been discussed in certain quarters.
then just keep me in the loop Tom when it comes 'round.
Here is the problem: we can't bitch that we're not pop culture anymore, when more people now are consuming comics related material than anytime since the 1940's, given animation and the movie versions. Do we want to maginalize ourselves again?
next post on this coming us after the discussion that i had with my wife last night. clarified a few thoughts in my head.
The last paragraph (about your own work) struck a note with me. I think every writer/artist wants to contribute to the field that they are in and every storyteller wants their stories to be heard and enjoyed by an audience. Struggle and doubt is part of growth and never go away...one thing you don't have to worry about is the quality of your work. It is clear you put a lot of thought into your storytelling and your artwork. The quality is there...I just wish there were more pages for me to read :)
thanks alex, my wife has been saying for years that i put waaaaaaay too much thought into them, and yes, i do think that she's right. I should be a good candidate for the 24 hour comic one day.
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