My SDCC 2006 - Part Three

So I may be backing up a bit from the Top Shelf time--I can't remember now--but I did end up going to a third panel on Friday, the second featuring Tom Spurgeon. This one was "Graphic Novels As a Universal Language" or somesuch, and I caught up with "Spurge" on his way there. He was looking for a backpack he'd left somewhere to go pee, that someone apparently snatched. It had a camera as well as some research/notes on the various guest panelists. I had one panicky but flattering moment when Tom asked if I wanted to moderate, but I declined and he probably wasn't serious anyway. I really don't do well in that atmosphere.

The panel featured Judge Dredd cocreator/best writer John Wagner, Yoshihiro (The Push Man Tatsumi, making his first U.S. visit, Jean-Claude Mezieres (I probably got the name wrong; cocreator of Valerian--I've read some of his partner Pierre Christin's work but not his before); James (The Golem's Mighty Swing Sturm, Roger (Fred the Clown) Langridge, and Linda (Castle Waiting) Medley. It was such an amazing lineup I really didn't want to miss it, even if I wasn't initially excited by the subject. It turns out Spurgeon hadn't come up with the subject and let the panel be open to anything that struck his or the audience's minds regarding graphic novels and their varying levels of respect and commerciality in the author's home countries. Langridge was charming and self-deprecating and really didn't consider the collected humor strips he did to be a "graphic novel," per se, but Sturm admitted that it was just the title we were stuck with for now, just like we (I'm saying "we" as someone who reads comics--I haven't made any myself) are still stuck with "comics" for largely non-comical stories and strips. All were nice and charming, and it was cool to see Wagner there, as I think genre work is often underrated in comparison to slice-of-life stuff. That said, Wagner was not a great fit, as he has done few graphic novels, Batman/Judge Dredd: Judgment on Gotham a big ol' team-up one-shot, The Button Man a good but short collection of serialized segments, and yes, A History of Violence a legitimate OGN, its film acclaim no doubt helping Wagner get the nod for this panel. I don't know that I really learned anything in the panel, but it was enjoyable, and probably not that many of the audience knew that the predominance of the album format in Europe (French-speaking countries) has made it very difficult for young cartoonists to learn their craft slowly and unobtrusively as they once did contributing to now-defunct anthology magazines. It's the same argument against going to nothing but a graphic novel format in the U.S. -- it's just not where some cartoonists are best served.

The Drawn and Quarterly booth was the next stop (maybe...like I said, it's kind of a blur), where I caught up again with Tim Leong, who then caught up with R. Kikuo Johnson, who I gather was a friend or friendly acquaintance of his. As one should expect by now, the cartoonist is not as withdrawn and shy and in need of mothering as one sees in their work. I mean, Craig Thompson gets himself laid bigtime, as you finally discover in Carnet du Voyage. Kikuo was nice enough but cocky and young. I swear he brought up Spurgeon's name, not me, and said he had a problem with his reviews sometime, even though Spurgeon was very kind to his own The Night Fisher, a debut I found somewhat overpraised last year. He said Spurgeon was "pretentious," which I respectfully disagreed with, and both Tim and I agreed there was some very apt criticism of Comic Foundry in Tom's review. Nobody's perfect, but I really don't find pretension to apply to Spurgeon's reviews. Oh, I forgot to mention earlier that the first thing Tom said to me when I saw him Friday was that he was mad at me about my review of his TCJ Library: The Writers book, but he was kidding and found a good deal of the review right on, and explained some of the reason for the bad production. BTW, if I thought Spurgeon gave a shit about Kikuo saying anything negative about him I would have spared the conversation, but I also never found Spurgeon to be petty, either.

But enough about him! So, just as Kikuo was chatting with Leong, now on video, as Leong came prepared to shoot numerous pieces for an all-video edition of Comic Foundry coming up (crap, I just remembered some stuff I need to edit!), I noticed Jeffrey (Every Girl Is the End of the World for Me) Brown behind us, so I introduced myself and chatted with him a bit, sans video. Nice guy, and more of a gone-to-seed frat boy build than how he portrays himself in his comics. He may or may not have read my reviews of his stuff but he was polite about it. Upcoming stuff from Brown includes some non-relationship comics, and I appreciate him branching out, as well as a Transformers parody he's been wanting to do for a long time, which I don't think I'll appreciate as much, and a very cute book about cats for Chronicle Books, a gift book like you can give a girlfriend who's not really into comics, I guess. I can think of someone I'd give it to, but chances are I won't be going out with her by the time it comes out next Spring. I'm technically not going out with her now, but that's another story. Woe, woe is me.

I should mention we were standing in line at the D&Q booth because we were getting the latest Tatsumi book, Abandon the Old in Tokyo, signed by the author, seated next to Adrian Tomine, who was also signing, but I didn't have anything of his on hand and didn't feel like buying anything I already had. I also screwed up and forgot to bring my son's sketchbook, but there's always next year. I didn't exactly meet Peggy Burns, but she noticed my badge and said, "You probably already have all these" about the books on the table, which was kind of odd because she never sent me any of them and it's much harder to get review copies from them since she came on-board. I do have quite a few of the books and review them, so I guess she knows what she's doing. I did ask her why the two new Depuy & Berberian books were at separate ends of the table, and she promised to amend that. They did do a nice job at their booth, though, with little table standees with major media quotes about their various books. My only suggestion for next year would be to offer some more wide audience prints from their artists. What I mean is, there was a narrow pink print from Tomine that was nice but said "Optic Nerve 10" on it, which really limits its appeal as a frameable household object, if you ask me. Just offer an untitled image from Tomine, probably not in hot pink, and I'd be happy to pick it up. Tatsumi doesn't speak English, so I didn't have much interaction with him, but he did a very nice sketch in the book and signed it both in Japanese and English.

Still to Come: Gin. Tonic. Sweat. Morbid Obesity. Frank Miller's Integrity-Wisking Pimp Hat. Dean Haglund. Jordan Crane. Horrible Dan DiDio.