Wherein our hero nearly burns down South Boston
Alright, in all honesty, this article can be summarized in three words: F*CK BOSTON COMIC-CON.
(or is that four words?)
If you’re looking for anything deeper from me this week, you are more than less SOL.
I’ve been reading comics weekly for almost…let’s say 10 years now to be safe…yet I have never attended a comic book convention. For years I was told “oh no dude you’re missing out its tons of fun!” So, when I saw that the usually small and largely sub-par Boston area Comic-Con was upgrading this year to a larger space and hosting the likes of Jim Lee, Jim Starlin, Skottie Young, JH Williams III, Cameron Stewart, Mike Mignola and Eric Powell, I said “well…huh.”
That’s when this text chain happened between our fine, feathered (and by that I mean bearded) Multiversity EiC Matt and myself:
Matt: Hey Mocles, old buddy, wanna go to Boston Comic-Con?
Josh: No, not really.
Matt: Great we have press passes, see you there!
And so that was that…after 10 years I would be attending my first Con. Admittedly, despite the extreme amount of stress my non-comics life (yes fanboys, real people have those) was causing me, I was still a little excited.
In short: this was foolish of me.
I’ll spare you a detailed breakdown of how Matt, myself and Matt’s incredibly-unlucky-on-that-particular-day girlfriend Jess got stuck out in the cold for three quarters of an hour because the “much bigger and more comfortable space” reached capacity less than a half hour after doors opened or how I should have taken the waves of people LEAVING less than an hour after doors as a sign of what’s to come but didn’t because I was too busy making racist jokes about Jar Jar Binks with Matt. Rest assured though, both those things happened.
Then, after a massive planning SNAFU regarding our press passes…which really just turned out to be the same wristbands every other Con attendee were given…making the “press list” basically a “guest list”…we finally made our way inside. I immediately became overwhelmed by the immensely claustrophobic set-up of the venue. Tables and showcases were placed almost haphazardly around the room; making it often times difficult to tell where one retailer’s space ended and another began. There seemed to be no real rhyme or reason to the placement of creator tables, which theoretically should have been the HIGHLIGHT of the convention…with many notable creators buried inside a sea of overpriced memorabilia tables and dusty longboxes. Clearly, the priority at this con was given to the retailers…which was immediately a bad sign.
As for those retailers themselves? Complete assholes. (Blanket statement based on the ones I dealt with, which were not all of them…New England Comics, as always, seemed to be their usual awesome selves…I just didn’t have the time or patience to check out their wares.) Now, admittedly, a 100% solid and well meaning (AKA: nice) comic retailer is few and far between even in the outside world, but when you put them all together in one space like that, you are given a sea of egos, shadey dealings and overpricing. Example: Jonathan Hickman’s (fantastic) SHIELD #1 which had come out THREE DAYS PRIOR was going for one dollar ABOVE cover price.
Story time, kiddies: the whole scene reminded me of when I was a little kid going to flea markets with my Grandparents and seeing a ton of middle aged men selling beanie babies and pokemon cards because they saw an adolescent fad they could turn into immense capital by preying on the haphazard desires of young children. Except THIS time it was those same shysters with, in all likelihood, the same wares, back in business, still trying to make a quick buck off a now much less popular fad…and in all honesty, the stuff they were selling wasn’t even that great. Maybe my single issue and trade paperback buying habits have become more refined, but in allll the boxes I dove through, I only found nine single issues I wanted…or rather, would have wanted if there was anyone there to PAY for them…which there wasn’t, leaving me to drop them back into the box from whence they came and walk away…since as much as I advocate for comic downloading, I’m NOT okay with ACTUAL theft. It really just seemed like nearly (but not all, granted) seller there had just loaded up all the stuff they couldn’t move at their store, dragged it down to the port, slapped a 50% off sign on it and ridiculed people when they STILL didn’t want it.
Continued belowAnyway, as much negativity as there is to spew, there was one shining light…a few diamonds in the rough of that massive sh*tshow…that being the creators themselves, who collectively made up probably the nicest, most down to earth set of artists I have ever met. There were no egos involved…every single person we spoke to seemed legitimately grateful for the praise and recognition they were getting and were more than willing to take time out of their day to just talk to us…which is not only the sign of a good artist, but a good PERSON. You can see two of these interactions first hand whenever Matt posts the videos I took of JH Williams III and Cameron Stewart, but I also want to give big ups to Scott Wegener and Skottie Young for being so chill with us.
(Now…I will point out that this next section is technically my wrap-up…buuut I’ve kinda been pretty wordy so far so chances are I won’t ACTUALLY be done for another page…)
I’m gonna wrap up with what bothered me more than anything else: the attitudes of my fellow con goers. Now, it wasn’t the goddamn high school mentalities I noticed from a lot of people…wherein the Star Wars geeks seemed to replace the jocks in the complete f*cking assholes that for some reason got praised for being assholes category…that pissed me off the most. No, what pissed me off the most was the complete and utter lack of creativity as emphasized by the sketch requests I noticed artists getting. In short: people were asking these artists to draw the exact same characters they’ve drawn a million times before…it’s as if fanboys can’t possibly imagine an artist NOT drawing a character they haven’t explicitly SEEN them draw. I vocalized my disgust to Matt as we watched Cameron Stewart draw the fourth Catwoman we saw him draw that day with a Catwoman print FOR SALE ON THE TABLE IN FRONT OF HIM and he summed it up pretty well in saying that “it isn’t about creativity or the one-of-a-kind nature of the sketch…it’s about ownership, elitism and being able say “MINE IS BETTER THAN YOURS SO NYAH NYAH!” “ I completely agree with this and it seriously makes me wanna hurl. I’m gonna re-iterate what I said back in my first Hate Mail: the comic community needs to be a BETTER COMMUNITY. For such a creative gathering of people, we sure do indulge in the same bullsh*t elitism, homogeny and outright LACK of creativity as the rest of the boring, everyday world. We can do much, MUCH better.
FYI: when it was our turn to get our sketch from Mr. Stewart, we immediately gave him carte blanche to draw someone he HADN’T drawn a million times that day and after a hilarious tale about how he usually draws Jar Jar Binks when given free reign like that, he delivered us with…
(My initial request of Grant Morrison and Animal Man freeze frame high fiving would have been great…but this is better.)
Joshua Mocle is pretty sure this the meanest he has ever gotten in an edition of Hate Mail and promises more kittens and high fives in the future…provided he doesn’t go to any more Cons. To read his rants about things that DON’T have to do with comics (AKA punk rock and burritos) check out soundgrenade