or “Comic-Con Can-Con”
Wow, for the biggest comics event in North America, the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, held this past weekend, was curiously devoid of genuinely interesting comics news stories of any sort, let alone stories or events related to comics culture and publishing from Canada. I understand that Comic-Con is much more than a venue for hype and the unveiling of publishing plans and new books, that it also a social/sexual networking event, party, and marketplace, as well as being an extension of the Hollywood publicity machine and production cycle, and that for most attendees it is simply an opportunity to, variously, and depending on your predilections, shop, meet or view celebrities, cosplay, and generally participate in globalized nerd capitalist spectacle, but Jesus Christ, trying to compile a list of links with any kind of substance for this blog post was like being forced to endlessly re-read the Teen Titans Starfire one-shot from the 1980s while Marv Wolfman’s iteration of Garfield Logan tried to get you to read his one-shot instead: mind-numbing, soul-crushingly sad, embarrassing, confusingly erotic, and annoying all at once.
As a phenomenon, I find the hype, nascent fandom and general attention being paid to Scott Pilgrim (book and movie) the most interesting. Bryan Lee O’Malley may prove to be this country’s biggest comics cultural export ever, and at least the biggest story of the year, but time will tell if the translation of his solidly and innovative-ly crafted, entertainingly humourous and emotionally artful series of graphic novels to celluloid will have a one-to-one correlation, not to mention leading to wider popularity, corresponding renumeration, and a lasting legacy for both franchise and creator.
Below are some links. The following days should see a few con reports from attendees like the Shuster Awards gang (and hopefully some photos of Alpha Flight cosplayers).
Item: Several Canucks won Eisner Awards at the con.
Item: Writing for Postmedia/Vancouver Sun, Chris Lackner connects the dots between 3 of the big comics-related movie stories/hype of the weekend: the stars of Scott Pilgrim, Green Lantern, and Green Hornet are all Canadian.
Item: Udon previewed its Vent anthology, which ironically celebrates 10 years as a packager of video game tie-ins and spin-offs by publishing an original content art book. It costs, like, 80 bucks?
Item: Newsarama has the blow by blow of the Scott Pilgrim panel.
Item: Speaking of which, the first review of the film I’ve seen is sort of a pan, I think?
Item: Most of the “news” from the larger U.S. publishers of comic books was similar to this announcement that Cameron Stewart will illo Thunderworld, Grant Morrison’s latest take on DC superhero Capt Marvel.
Item: The only press release from a Canadian publisher? This announcement from Drawn and Quarterly about acquiring the rights to translate the work of Shigeru Mizuki is not just big news in Canada, I should think. Related: According to Twitter, D+Q essentially sold out of everything they brought to the show.
Item: As reported by Publishers Weekly and pointed out by Tom Spurgeon, Michel Choquette’s Someday Funnies, an international comics anthology of all-star cartoonists from the 1970s that was never published, will finally see the light of day under the Abrams art book aegis.
Item: A report from the Spotlight on Jillian Tamaki by Comicsgirl.
2010-07-27
I’m keen to see this in print, it’s going to be a visually interesting collection, i had the pleasure of spending part of the last two months coloring some of the art along with a few other montrealers.
secretive bastard!
Comic-Con is weird, because unless you’re at the specific panel/etc. where things are being announced, you have to read about it on the Internet anyway and might as well not even be there. It’s definitely sort of like a trade show on that account.
But I liked that the stuff I cared about was easy to get into.
It did seem like Scott Pilgrim was the hit of the show. Part of me thinks that’s amazing — that all these girls are dressing up like Ramona Flowers — but I’m also a little baffled. I guess I didn’t realize that it was that big.
(Thank for the link, btw. And cool blog you have here.)
I remember first reading about the Michel Choquette anthology in the Comics Journal a while back and it’s great to see that it will get printed. Hopefully it will get the deluxe edition it deserves.
Some of the original art was rendered so larg you can write the measure in feet! – crazy Europeans! 🙂 awesome stuff. the book is going to be big. Coffee table. I don’t do a lot of that kind of work but archival jobs are cool, like going to class.