Monday, July 28, 2003  
San Diego coverage

:: Posted by max @ 7/28/2003 03:46:00 AM
Publishers Weekly, NY - 22 Jul 2003

Mangafest in San Diego: Comic-con Brings Fans, Random House and Everyone in Between



CALVIN REID REPORTS ON San Diego, noting the rise of Manga Madness and highlighting some interesting and exciting news about the biz, And they promise more in next weeks Publishers Weekly.



- Indie houses like NBM, Top Shelf, Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics had big enthusiastic crowds at their booths. Craig Thompson's 600 page novel Blankets (Top Shelf) was all the rage. Chris Ware's beautifully produced Acme Novelty Datebook attracted much attention at the D&Q table and Humanoids Publishing drew long lines of fans with the appearance of French comics artists Alexandro Jodorowky and Travis Charest. -



The Art of the Con: TIME.comix visits the world's largest comic convention



ANDREW D. ARNOLD give his play by play of the highlights, reporting on the con and the 15th annual Eisner Awards.



-Having been a judge who helped choose the nominees (see TIME.comix coverage) I got a front-seat, complete with complimentary chips and guac. Eisner himself handed out the awards, bounding up and down the stage in spite of being 86 years old. Neil Gaiman (best know for his "Sandman" series) opened the ceremony with a keynote speech. His "State of the Comics Nation," as he called it, was generally sunny. "I don't think we're doing that badly at all," he said. He felt that comix had graduated from a public image of forgettable trash to being "just another medium," like film and literature. Eisner echoed this when he got on stage, declaring, "We're almost at the top of the mountain."-



I took particular note of this quote…



- "It's just not working. ... Our future is not in pamphlets," Miller said. "This award [best graphic novel] will be the centrepiece of these awards in the future." His gutsy pronouncement, in front of an audience largely made up of pamphlet comic-makers, received mild, reluctant applause.-



…I’ll second that. While I like the bight size digestibility of a 24-page story in terms of work, they make no sense to me in business terms or as a creator.



I’m sure Andrew’s summery will make some folks in the alt circuit cringe.





The winners of the Eisner Awards are listed here



WALKING THE WALK: You know you had a good San Diego when you still can't feel your feet five days later.



Andrew Wheeler at the ninth art turns in a mostly positive indepth report that heralds a very rosy but qualified forecast for the coming publishing season, fuelled in part buy a keynote speech by Neil Gaiman.



- Of course, contrary to the signs, the period since 2001 has been rather a good one for the industry. It could be that my barometer is horribly off, and we're about to enter into a period of terrible creative and financial stagnation and this was the last hurrah. Neil Gaiman certainly doesn't think so. Gaiman gave the keynote address at the Will Eisner Awards, and spoke of his great hope that we're about to enter into a new Golden Age for comics; And not just because he's actually writing comics again and has two major projects out this year from Marvel and DC. -



And possibly taking a note from the finally of Neil’s speech, goes into more depth on the Eisner Awards than Andrew does in his time report, expressing some lament at the inductees to the Hall of Fame.



- And I wonder, if Hergé had not been picked by the judges, would he ever have made it in? If Osamu Tezuka had not been picked by last year's judges, would he still be languishing somewhere outside the Great Hall? René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, creators of ASTERIX, were also on this year's shortlist, but they were passed over. To me, that's an utterly appalling oversight. –



He also spends some time in the middle considering the state of the ongoing soap opera of the industry, Marvel vs. DC: DC’s looking light in the feet as Marvel hides in the shower and mopes about the convention floor without a home,



-One of the most miserably weary faces I encountered at the 2001 con was that of Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada. I missed him this time around, but I doubt he'd have been any more cheerful, given how successfully DC stole a march on the House of Ideas, dominating the news cycle and announcing exclusive deals with both WOLVERINE writer Greg Rucka and NEW X-MEN writer Grant Morrison. -





Neil’s address as mentioned above can be read here at his site, and his other posts from the Con are here, here, here, here & here.



Reliving Comics' Days of Infamy By Randy Dotinga



WIRED takes the opportunity to give a crash course on comic’s recent history, focusing on the Seduction of the Innocen and the comics code.



-Batman and Robin? Cohabiting homosexuals living in a home with pretty flowers and a male butler. Wonder Woman? A kinky, man-hating lesbian. Horror comics? Tasteless material that warps young minds.

Fifty years ago, a German psychologist nearly destroyed comic books by alleging that degenerate story lines and artwork were turning a generation of children into juvenile delinquents. Shortly after he wrote an influential book, titles like Vault of Horror and Tales From the Crypt fell victim to a restrictive Comics Code.-



And if that aint enough for you, there are several posts on Pulse from the con, one or two at Newsarama, & you can read some first hand accounts here at TCJ
    
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