Mark Evanier's Blog, page 220

Print the Legend!

In The Nation, journalist Jeet Heer has written an article about Stan Lee taking credit for other folks' ideas at Marvel Comics. I tend not to get involved in these discussions because what I have to say about this can't be sufficiently communicated through a brief article or blog post. I get into it a lot in the book I'm writing about Jack Kirby at the moment which will be published one of these days but I also can't say when. For now, I'll just say I have a slightly different take on the situation than Mr. Heer…but only slightly.

A Fine, Free Publication

Comic-Con has instituted a few belt-tightening measures to make up (a little) for the money they lost during the COVID shutdown (a lot) and one of those measures is to no longer print the souvenir book. It's now available only as a downloadable PDF. This is good because it means everyone can get a free copy merely by clicking on this link. It's bad because…well, some of us have a bookshelf of past souvenir books and you can't put a PDF next to all the others. I wonder if the con folks have investigated arranging for some print-on-demand company to satisfy those of us who are willing to order a copy printed on paper.

It's still a great book even if it isn't a tangible book. It has a great cover by Becky Cloonan and articles about Mort Walker, the 75th anniversary of Pogo, the 50th of The Human Target, Blade, Red Sonja, Shang-Chi, Howard the Duck and the Direct Sales Market and many more. There are also obits (a couple of which are by me) of great talents we've lost in the last twelve months. How can you not download such a book? Fine job, Jackie Estrada.

And I'll let you in on a little secret: It's not too late to download last year's souvenir book…also a fine, free publication. Don't say I never gave you anything.

Understanding Comic-Con

This was my fifty-fifth Comic-Con and one of the most enjoyable. A lot of folks felt that way and I see some online debates on whether that was because of the dearth of Big Stars or in spite of the dearth of Big Stars. Here's my take on it…

The Big Stars didn't matter. And to most of the 130,000+ attendees each year over the last decade or two, they never really have.

Here's an excerpt from Hollywood Reporter that, I think, gets it all wrong…

This was the year that San Diego Comic-Con was supposed to collapse. After all, with Hollywood studios pulling out and stars not able to promote their work, all due to the double whammy of the actors and writers strikes, why would people even bother to attend?

Well, about 150,000 attendees did, indeed, show up. There were no mass hotel cancellations nor mass refunds issued for badges, which were purchased months in advance. And an interesting thing happened on the way to the Comic-Con apocalypse. There was a renewed focus on comics and other graphic arts, even as Hollywood showed up in a diminished capacity.

Who said this was the year the con was supposed to collapse? Answer: The Hollywood Reporter and other outlets that don't seem to understand the event they cover every year. A more correct lede to the story would have acknowledged that all the talk about the con possibly being some kind of disaster was baseless and way off-target.

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

Comic-Con is one of the hottest tickets in this country. Each year when badges go on sale, they're snatched up faster than you can say "Clark Kent." People fight over them. There was never going to be a flood of mass refunds and if there had been, every one of those tickets would have been resold immediately.

Why do all these people want to be there? If you think it's just the previews of new movies, you don't "get" Comic-Con. It's that but it's also about comic books and comic strips and animation and gaming (video or otherwise) and fantasy art and cosplay and Star Trek and Star Wars and all kinds of collectibles and a dozen-or-so other things. Some don't interest me in the slightest just as some don't interest you in the slightest…and the beauty of Comic-Con is that they don't have to. You can just go for one or two of those interests and there's plenty about them there to keep you interested.

The strikes that kept the TV and movie promotions away were never going to doom Comic-Con. There are too many other things there for the absence of Hollywood to leave much of a void. The confusion is easily explainable: When the mainstream press covers Comic-Con, that's all they really care about. (Well, sometimes because the cosplayers make for good photo and video opportunities, the press cares a little about them. But that's about it.)

The "Comic-Con apocalypse" was, just like John F. Kennedy Jr. turning up alive to become Donald Trump's running mate, a wild fantasy. How ironic that it was about an institution than embraces and welcomes wild fantasies. But as far as I'm concerned, the lesson to be learned from the 2023 Comic-Con International is that the movie previews and TV personalities never mattered that much. Truth to tell, I'd be more worried for the future of Comic-Con if some year, there was no one in the building selling Funko Pop figurines.

Today's Video Link

With The Daily Show outta production because of strikes, someone at Comedy Central is trying to keep the brand alive by posting old clips. Here's a 21-minute sampler of things the program had to say about Tucker Carlson. Personally, I think they were too nice to him…

Tuesday Evening

I'm fairly recovered from Comic-Con 2023 where, as I've mentioned, I had a helluva good time.  I ran myself ragged at times but it was a Good Tired.  Right after the Sunday Cartoon Voices panel, I left Room 6A at 12:55 and sprinted down a corridor with an escort of convention staffers to overrule any security guards who might tell me I had to go via a different route.  I stopped in a Men's Room but still started the Frank Miller panel at 1 PM sharp.  Pant, pant, pant.

A couple of security guards gave me some grief at the con, and I also had some friction with folks who were doing panels in rooms before I was scheduled to do one.  You're supposed to end the panel as per the schedule and I always do.  But a lot of them think their panel is so f'ing important that it's entitled to five or ten minutes of the next panel's time.  At times, I think they see more people coming in and they extend their panel a little bit.  They think those new arrivals are there to see their panel instead of entering to get good seats for mine…just as I could delude myself into thinking the late entrants into my panels aren't just arriving for the one after me.

But that's about the totality of the negatives and it ain't much.

People ask me, "How can you deal with the crowds?" and the answer is that I couldn't handle a steady diet of them but four or five days a year is tolerable.  It's especially tolerable when most of the folks who comprise that crowd are having such a good time.  It's fun to be around happy people.  They're also an indivisible part of something enjoyable enough to attract a crowd.  If I wanted to go to the World Series or the Super Bowl or the big Las Vegas Grand Prix this November or some sold-out concert by someone wonderful, I'd just accept that I'm not likely to have the place to myself.  If I want that, I need to go to lousier events.

Photo by Phil Geiger

The above photo is from The Groo Panel on Friday.  It's me and then our new colorist, Carrie Strachan, then Stan Sakai.

I didn't spend a whole lotta time in the main hall; didn't even set foot in there Saturday or Sunday.  It was easy to see on the other days that the sellers were doing brisk business and that most people were having a very good time.  I signed a couple of Groos for a fellow from Lisbon who said that he'd been saving for years and dreaming of finally, some day, making it to Comic-Con.  I asked him, "Worth it?" and he said, "When I get home, I start saving to come back some day."

No way can I pick one moment from the con as my favorite but this would be in the running: I had the pleasure — and it really was one — to interview Barbara Friedlander, who worked on DC's romance comics from around 1964 until 1970.  She was delightful and funny and genuinely pleased that people turned out to hear her.

Once upon a time, my Comic-Con experiences involved interviewing men (and the occasional woman) who'd worked in comics in the thirties, forties, fifties or sixties.  You name 'em, I got to interrogate 'em…but now they're either gone or too old to travel to the convention.  Even folks from the seventies are in scarcer supply then you might imagine.  I suspect that of the 130,000+ human beings who were in that convention hall a few days ago, Barbara had the oldest credits in mainstream comic books. If there was anyone else, I can't think of who it could have been.

Photo by Phil Geiger

And above now, we have the Quick Draw! panel from Saturday. The back row is me, Bill Morrison, Lalo Alcaraz and Lonnie Milsap. Front row is Tom Richmond, Scott Shaw! and Floyd Norman. I have no idea why we're making those strange gestures or why Scott has the expression he has. But the panel was a lot of fun and we did have Sergio Aragonés but only on the telephone. I started it by announcing, "We don't need movie and TV stars! We have CARTOONISTS!"

I'll probably write another post this week about the Cartoon Voices Panels. I'm getting a bit sleepy since I'm still on San Diego Time.

Go Read It!

For another person's perception of this year's Comic-Con, go read Rob Salkowitz. I believe he's spot-on. I also believe that when tickets go on sale for the 2024 Comic-Con, they will be snatched up faster than tickets have ever been snatched before.

Real Early Monday Morning

Those who predicted that Comic-Con would crash 'n' burn without Big Stars on the premises knew not what the hell they were talking about. Oh, I'm sure there will be those who post otherwise. This was my fifty-fifth of these and there are always those who go home unhappy because they didn't find what they wanted — a job, a certain celebrity encounter, a certain rare collectible at an affordable price, even a mate — and there are always complaints about the crowds and prices. That's quite the norm.

But the place seemed to me as packed and happy as it ever is. All but two of the panels I moderated were filled to capacity &mdash even a Groo Panel without Sergio Aragonés in attendance. (He is in fine health. I called him at home during both that panel and Quick Draw! and held my iPhone up to the mike so everyone in the room could hear how fine he is.) And the two that had empty seats didn't have many of them.

I had the best time. I'll write more about it over the next few days. Right now, I need to get back to sleep.

Today's Video Link

This is from The Ed Sullivan Show for October 9, 1955 — which, incidentally, was called Toast of the Town until September of '55. Ed takes us on the set of the movie version of Guys & Dolls, which I think was a good movie but not a great movie. Did I ever tell you what I think would have made it a great movie? Frank Sinatra as Sky Masterson instead of him playing Nathan Detroit…Phil Silvers as Nathan Detroit…and no new songs written for the film. Oh — and I also think they should have sprung for more extras because New York looks like a ghost town in many scenes. One of these days, I'll have to go back in time and tell Samuel Goldwyn so he would have made the movie right…

Saturday Morning From San Diego

Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.

A few folks may say otherwise but I have seen zero negative impact of the two entertainment industry strikes on this convention. And even the attendees who might be upset that they can't go over to Hall H and spend hours in line to see Brad Pitt talk about his upcoming movie (a) don't hold that against the con or even the unions and (b) have found more than enough to make them happy to be here.

There were rumors that the striking unions might set up picket lines outside the convention but everyone must have realized how brain-dead stupid that would have been. It would not have put the slightest gram of pressure on the producers to settle and it would have presented fans with an awkward decision. With very few exceptions, the fans are not fans of the studios and production companies and certainly not of the CEOs. They're fans of the writers who are on strike and the actors who are on strike. Why punish them?

If you couldn't make it here — or, more likely, just couldn't gain admission — I apologize for saying I'm having a great time here and as far as I can see, so is everyone as far as I can see. Maybe I'm lurking in the wrong corners of the con but I'm not spotting quite as many cosplayers as in past years. Otherwise though, it looks and feels like the previous Comic-Con and the one before that and the one before that and the one before that…

The pattern does not go all the way back even though I do. This, for the love of God, is my fifty-fifth one of these. I watched this entity grow in slow-motion from 300 attendees in 1970 to something where the fire marshals have to cap attendance at (I'm guessing) about 20% of all the sentient beings who'd like to flood the hall. Since it reached capacity, it has been a wonderful place to be for those of us who know how to find the things we want to see and do. I really think that if you don't have a fabulous experience at this gathering, you either don't know where to look or are arriving with impossible expectations.

I have a full Saturday ahead of me: Breakfast with an editor at 8:30, Dungeons and Dragons panel (about the cartoon show) at 10 AM, Quick Draw! at 11:45, Cartoon Voices panel at 1 PM, a panel on reporting comic book history at 3 PM, panel on The History of Cartoon Voices at 4:30, dinner with friends at 8 PM. Hope your day is equally full but maybe not as fatiguing. Gotta go get mine started…

Today's Video Link

From The Ed Sullivan Show for October 2, 1966, Gwen Verdon performs one of the big songs from her Broadway smash, Sweet Charity. This is not exactly the way the number was presented in the show and I dunno if this was even staged by her husband-director, Bob Fosse, but he probably at last okayed it. Sweet Charity opened on January 29th of that year so the box office was probably not as busy as they liked by October and someone said, "Hey, let's get a number or two on Ed's program to attract customers!"