SDCC Topic 3: The Future of Comic-con

By all accounts it was the biggest year ever for Comic-con, but there were troubling signs mixed in with all the good news. The convention had record attendance, but fewer and fewer of those convention-goers were actually interested in comics. The biggest rooms were generally reserved for media panels, and the lines for those panels began hours before the panel and in one case, I am told actually overnight. The convention floor was bigger than ever, but even more space was taken up by things only tangentially related, or not related at all, to comics. And from the reports I hear, two of the mainstays for such a large comic convention are being priced out—given the cost of the high-demand floor space, comic retailers and artists are unable to afford the space. All of this leads to the general feel that it's not a comic convention any more, and the signs around San Diego would seem to indicate the same: they described it as a "convention for the popular arts."

There are some benefits to this: a lot of people who would otherwise not be exposed to comics had the opportunity to talk to creators or see what they are all about, but there are no real numbers to know how many folks took advantage of the opportunity. It's very easy to stay on one end of the convention floor and never get beyond games and media companies, and I suspect that a lot of people who were there for the Lost panel never made it to the convention floor, let alone to see what the latest offerings from Boom or IDW might be.

I find myself taking an awfully conservative stance on the issues that affect Comic-con; while I was happy to go to some of the media panels when I started going to the convention, they were rare and they were easy to get into—there was always space in those rooms. But they were a momentary alternative for the reason that I was actually there. It appears that in the minds of the organizers and PR folks, the audience for comic books is the same audience for science fiction movies, and even less corresponding TV shows like Prison Break and Bones. But those same organizers would have a difficult time weeding out the least related media events, since the media has been encroaching very slowly into the schedule of the con. If they had started out with a firm stance against such things, they might be able to support such a position now, but the door has been flung open, and while those media things may not meet the original goal of the convention, they bring in tons of money, both in payment for booths and by the convention-goers they bring as well.

An unfortunate effect of this unprecedented growth is the inability to find rooms in San Diego for the week. Fortunately Mrs. Speculator works with hotels and travel agents as part of her regular job, and so knows how to find her way through the labyrinth of obtaining rooms at convention rates at our favorite nearby hotel. But if she did not know how to do this, the timeline for us getting a room would generally work like this:

1. As we are checking out, ask about the availability of a room for the following year. The answer is always either that they can't reserve rooms that far in advance, when the better answer should be that we have to get the rooms through the convention planning service when they are made available for the entire convention.
   
2. Come February, the reservation system is opened up and we find that very few rooms are available because companies coming in from out of town are wealthy enough to not have to pay convention rates and thus have booked rafts of rooms.
   

The problem, as it is with most processes, is in consistent enforcement of the rules. Some hotels do allow early reservations at con rates. Some hotels apparently don't make as many rooms available as they promise to—and who can blame them? Given the choice between renting a room for full rates and convention rates, I would do what I could to maximize my income as well. But a good friend of mine has reservations for next year at the con rate, while if we're not careful, the Speculator household will have to struggle to find a place to stay within easy transportation range, because we're using a hotel that, explicitly at least, is following the rules.

And, lest my devoted reader thinks that I am a lone voice in the wilderness, it's clear I'm not. There are open conversations about the growth of the con and the pressure it is putting on the resources of not only the convention center, but of San Diego itself. And searching through blogs, it's clear there are more than a few people displeased with the influx of media stuff and movement away from the tradition of the con. What to do? I humbly submit some suggestions, in no particular order.

1. Move the convention. There are actually a lot of folks who believe this is going to happen anyway. The convention's contract with the city of San Diego runs out in 2012, and the names you keep hearing are Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Personally, I don't like this solution. San Diego is a gorgeous city, even when 100000 nerds and geeks descend on the city's Gaslamp Quarter and trash it. Part of the beauty of San Diego is the weather—on the last day of the con this year, the high was 69 degrees (F) and the humidity around 20%. Los Angeles would be much warmer, much more humid, and smoggy, and I can't imagine the mass of people who move at the convention now walking their way through downtown LA and its traffic issues. And I want nothing to do with Las Vegas in the last week of July. I just love San Diego and would live there if I could, but neither of the other two cities make me excited about just travelling to them.
   
2. Expand into San Diego proper. I've heard rumors this may be happening, where the convention decides to move panels into local hotels. This will take some thought on the part of the organizers, such as grouping related panels in local hotels, recognizing that the ones that are generally less-well attended will just die if they are not in the convention. While there are a number of hotels within easy walking range of the San Diego Convention Center, it's already a long walk from one end of the building to the other, and not many people would be willing to make the trek to the convention center and then have to wander off into the city. And frankly, the convention center usually runs perilously close to chaos, and they would have to get a much firmer grip on security and organization if they were to have outlying panels.
   
3. Expand the convention center. I've also heard rumors of this being considered as well. There isn't a lot of space to expand however. On one side of the convention center is the bay, and opposite it is Harbor Drive. On one end of the convention center are hotels, while there is a courtyard on the opposite, between the center and the parking for Petco Park, the home of the San Diego Padres. I guess the convention can expand into that courtyard, but it was used as an overflow area for the massive lines for the media panels. So if it is taken away, the organizers are going to have to think carefully about safe places for those overflow lines. But the real problem with this proposal and the one before it is that while it addresses crowding at the convention, it doesn't address crowding in the hotels. In fact, those proposals would potentially increase the attendance at the hotel, making the housing crunch that much worse.
   
4. Start enforcing standards of what is allowed at the convention.
   This is supposed to be a comic convention. Of course, there are things that are tangentially related to comics and its fandom, such as science fiction and fantasy, but there are things at the convention that have nothing to do with any of that. While we are big fans of Bones and The Office, they have no place at a comic convention, and those rooms could likely find other panels more closely related to what the convention is supposed to be about. Outside of role-playing games, think seriously about removing the gaming booths. Why I had to bull my way past a display of a karaoke game at a comic convention escapes me, but it had a huge crowd and really large speakers.
   
5. Along those lines, split the convention up. Take all the media and gaming panels and booths and move them to a sister convention that is being held at the same time, say in Los Angeles. Or just put the non-comics and non-SF things in LA, trying to maintain the tradition of what Comic-con is supposed to be about.
   

Ultimately, the solution to the issues is not going to be an easy one, and I don't envy the decisions facing the organizers. All I want, selfishly, is my comic convention, in San Diego, and the panels I want to see. Without being a sardine on the floor of the convention. Come on Comic-con; make this happen.

The Name of the Wind

It's an interesting experience to set down a book, be pretty thoroughly enamored of it—so much so that I am looking forward to finding its sequel—but have no real clue what makes it such a good book. So it is with The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss's debut novel, a novel I picked up due to its many nominations (and some wins) as the book of the year for 2007. As I read it, there were days I wanted to take off from work so I could devote myself to finishing it, so strongly did it move me. But as I set it down, nothing about it really stands out so that I could say a single aspect was among the best I have ever seen.

I think what drives it the most is the always-reliable tale-within-a-tale aspect, where the story involves the telling of another story. In this case, we are introduced to innkeeper Kote, who is apparently a diligent and good innkeeper, but just in an area where he can't possibly have a clientele that could take advantage of his skills and resources. Enter Chronicler, whose name is his job—he's a collector of the important stories of the world we find ourselves in—and he recognizes the innkeeper as the fabulous hero Kvothe, the story of whom he wants to add to his repertoire. Kvothe is uneasy but agrees to tell his story, in part because it appears he expects he may die soon and wants the truth behind all the legends about him to be known.

And so the majority of the book is the first day of Kvothe telling his tale to Chronicler, with only Kvothe's faithful student Bast as a witness. Between the visitors to the inn and the fragments of legend that Chronicler mentions, we know that we are about to be witness to an epic story, for Kvothe has legends and myths surrounding him all over the world—the youngest student ever in the University, the Kingkiller, the fighter of demons, the lover of women. But as Kvothe tells his story, starting from the very beginning—his birth—all these mentions are only harder-than-usual foreshadowing, waypoints for where the story we are reading is going to go. Kvothe himself is the archetype of the epic hero: a young man who shows extraordinary innate talent but who must be trained so that his true power can be revealed. And so, of course, the story involves both triumphs and failures, alternately heartwarming and heartbreaking. And there are "intervals," moments when everyone has to break from storytelling in order to use the privy or make food, or when Kvothe steps back from his narrative to illuminate a point. The narrative device is deftly handled, pulling the reader into its thrall.

Kvothe himself is the most fully fleshed out of the characters, while the people around his story are generally one-dimensional, reflecting the scant understanding that a young man would have for the personalities in his world. That is, he is the most fleshed out until the surprising last few chapters that take place after the day's story is done.

Another strength of the novel is the world-building that Rothfuss performs. There is enough in it that the world seems familiar until the moments when it falls into the pattern of the epic settings. There is magic, and it appears to be based on some of the more mundane rules of magic, requiring thought and planning beyond just the uttering of a simple spell. There are dragons, but Rothfuss works really hard to make them fit a naturalistic niche in their environments, so they are both more and less than a reader of fantasy has come to expect when confronted with their name. So part of what pulls the reader into the novel is interest in how this world is like the one(s) we know and how it differs.

And there is no doubt through the book that this is part of a series—there are surprises at the end of The Name of the Wind, but generally speaking no one's life appears to be explicitly in peril. Part of the reason you'll await the next book is to find out more about this boy and how he became the man he clearly is, rather than trying to figure out how he survives some catastrophic peril—all in all a far more natural way to lead in to a sequel than most others.

There are also moments of surprising artistry. But those moments are forced, not fitting the language of the rest of the book, and standing out like an experiment or formal separation from the narrative voices that guide the story. Perhaps those moments are the words that Chronicler will eventually add to his legend, but they are distinct from the rest of the text, no matter their power.

The Name of the Wind is not so much ground-breaking as it reconstitutes the tropes and clichés of epic fantasy. Not in any sort of method like Guy Gavriel Kay uses, but in a way that is just as interesting and compelling. One could make an easy argument that this is a young adult novel, for all the reasons that Kay's own Ysabel was considered young adult. Nonetheless, like Ysabel, it is compelling, and I look forward to more from this author and from this world. We may be seeing the first indication of a major long-term voice in fantasy.

SDCC Topic 2: Loyal Opposition?

I've not been around comics enough to know the tradition of the competition between DC and Marvel. From the things I've been able to pick up, the relation between the two major superhero companies was one of genial competition, and perhaps some ribbing. For instance, I recall Clark Kent showing up behind the scenes in an issue of Marvel Team-up. And then there was the annual Halloween festival in some town in New England where folks in costume would show up on the other company's comics. Of course, the Squadron Supreme is a Marvel-ized Justice League and DC eventually followed up with the Extremists, an Avengers knock-off. There was also a period of company crossovers, led by Superman vs Spiderman, and followed up by others, including the unlikely Batman/Hulk. We're lucky that these are available as back issues with a little searching and have been collected in trades.

In the lifetime of my buying comics as they are released (opposed to seeking out back issues), there have been two major moments of cooperation between the two companies: the Amalgam cross-over, resulting in some of what I thought was that time's best story-telling, as creators were allowed to let their imaginations run wild and combine characters from the two companies. I was particularly fond of Dr. Strangefate and Bruce Wayne, Agent of SHIELD, the names of which just evoke all sorts of possibilities in story-telling. After a long period of time, Kurt Busiek and George Perez were allowed to do a JLA/Avengers cross-over that had pretty good sales for its period, but there are indications that we've entered a cold war period and the companies will not cross over again any time soon.

Of course, my readers and those who know me also know my interest in questions of genre. And so I have spent some time pondering the differences between the two companies, especially in light of Steven Grant's excellent recent post on the difference (http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=17254).

I had reason to think of these issues recently when the Speculative Nephew came to stay with us for six weeks (sadly, Grant's excellent piece had not yet come out while the Nephew was living here). I've been pretty unabashed for my love of DC, and the Nephew is the stereotypical Marvel zombie. And while we don't really clash on it, especially since I read the Ultimate universe from Marvel and pass those comics on to him, and since I spent a good deal of time working in a comic store and so had to learn the Marvel Universe fairly well in order to be an effective service representative. But when he had spare time, he was only able to find mostly DC stuff sitting around the house, and I was pleased to find him poking through The DC Encyclopedia for example. He also found some of Batman: The Animated Series on cable, which piqued his interest enough that he started watching the collections of it and Justice League from our DVD stacks. He's a curious kid, and a smart one, so one day he asked me why the DC animated shows were of such a higher quality than the Marvel ones (actually, it was something like "Why are the Marvel cartoons drawn so bad compared to this?" as he was watching Batman). This led to some interesting conversation about what I could only guess were some of the philosophies behind their editorial and licensing practices. And of course, having talked about it and trying to be even-handed, I had to spend some time thinking about it both during and after the conversation.

And so it was with this background that Mrs. Speculator and I found ourselves sitting in a "Mondo Marvel" panel in San Diego as we waited for a DC Universe panel to begin. While I know that things are kind of cold between the companies at the moment, and Marvel holds a decided upper hand in sales—and until The Dark Knight came out, they were pleasantly surprising reviewers with Iron Man (some calling it the best superhero movie ever made). Mrs. Speculator and I were surprised by the partisan animosity both in the crowd and in the panel. Granted we didn't see the entire panel, but soon after we got in the room, the panel was mocking Green Lantern in a complete non sequitur from the conversation topic. Now I've seen DC make a snide remark about the competition, but there is generally a little laugh and the conversation goes on. But the panel went on riffing on the relatively asinine weakness of the Green Lantern Corps for some time. Now anyone with knowledge of comic book history has to have a little respect for Green Lantern as it brought in some of the great names of science-fiction into the comic writing field. A little joshing would have been fun, but it went on and on, to the point of uncomfortableness. And when they went on to other questions from the floor, a young fellow asked them to name their favorite comic book movie. As they went down the panel, it was fascinating to see the verbal and visual contortions they went through in order not to give credit to the Dark Knight, going so far as to talk about Howard the Duck rather than say the name of a character from the other company.

What happened? I thought that the writers and artists of comics were fans of the medium and would appreciate the efforts of anyone else in the field. And the belittling that was going on had the opposite of the intended effect among some of the audience; instead of joining in the laughter, the audience got quieter and quieter as Marvel spent time calling attention to the successes of DC by refusing to talk about it. It was sad and peculiar all at once, especially as there are more and more eulogies for the comic industry, especially superheroes. It seems to me that for either company to succeed, the industry has to remain relatively vibrant—which requires at the very least minimal cooperation between its two leaders.

It's like the ridiculous siege mentality that has overwhelmed recent American politics has carried over into comics. No longer is politics about the weighing of the benefits and costs of various proposals of the different parties to chart a course to make America excel. Now it's "us" versus "them" and nothing good can be said about the other side, no matter the cost to the process at large as a result. Perhaps DC and Marvel have reached this in part because of their use of exclusive contracts, but there really is no reason to not wish the other side luck in their work to maintain a marketplace where both companies can do well. There's no reason not to appreciate the good work that the other company has performed.

Let's be honest, if this is a battle, Marvel currently holds the position of the Republicans in 2004. The presidency is theirs and they have cleaned up in the midterm elections. Instead of spending their effort belittling and mocking their opposition, they should be doing what they can to expand their market and reach. And folks, it sounds like Brand New Day went over about as well as firing federal prosecutors did for the Republicans. The adamant supporters of Marvel swear it's okay, that Marvel will make it right eventually. But those who are more moderate are asking publicly "What the hell?"

So what I came away from that panel with was an idea that Marvel needs to tends its own needs and let DC take care of itself. DC has managed to shoot itself in the foot a number of times in the last couple of years, and doesn't need Marvel's help in making a mockery of what used to be their strengths. And you know, it's just petty, taking away from the joy that events like Comic-con are supposed to engender in their attendees.

Besides, everyone knows Superman would clean Spiderman's clock if he really wanted to.