I polled the audience at my third panel yesterday and about 80% agreed with my observation that the convention seems less crowded this year, even on Saturday. I'm sure in some parts of the hall it didn't feel that way but wherever I wandered — which wisely excluded the main videogaming areas — the aisles were relatively unjammed. I also noticed a lot fewer cosplayers than usual.
Since the con sells out every day and I believe they issued the same number of memberships they always do, what would be the explanation for less crowding? The only thing that I could come up with is the rise of off-site events and maybe the fact that more and more attendees just come for the events in Hall H, Ballroom 20 and similar venues that cause folks to spend all their time inside and/or waiting in line instead of roaming the main exhibition hall. I'm also wondering if the cosplayers are finding a more receptive audience outside in the street fair.
Whatever the reason, it's making for a lower-key convention, at least for me. "Lower-key" does not mean unexciting. It just means not as hysterical.
Saturday morn, we did Quick Draw! with Sergio Aragonés, Floyd Norman and Mike Kazaleh. Scott Shaw! would have been one of the players but he's home with a shattered ankle. I phoned Scott during the games and let the audience yell, "Get well soon, Scott!" to him via my iPhone while our three cartoonists fast-drew cartoons of him at home nursing his injury.
Later in the event, I had about 40 people in the audience fill out cards with the names of beings they would like to see Sergio incorporate into cartoons. Around half said either Donald Trump or Godzilla. Make of that what you will.
The Cartoon Voices Panel featured Josh Robert Thompson, Jessica DiCicco, Eric Bauza, Keone Young, Pat Musick and Phil Morris. Under the category of "even the moderator learns something at these panels," I discovered that Phil Morris, whose voiceover and on-camera work I had been admiring, is the son of Greg Morris, who you all remember from his role on Mission: Impossible. This somehow had not dawned on me. I always thought Greg Morris was a classy guy on screen and it's somehow pleasing to think a family tradition is continuing.
All of our actors were fascinating and amazing in their talents. I'll write more about this one in the days to come.
The photo above is from "That 70's Panel," an annual event in which we discuss the comic book industry back in that long-ago era. The gentleman out in front in the pic is Don McGregor, who was this year's "alive" recipient of the Bill Finger Award. From left to right behind Don, we have Chris Claremont, Bob Layton, me and Dean Mullaney. Chris was inducted Friday evening into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, a most apt choice.
The reason for a seventies panel — apart from the fact that we no longer have the people around from which to assemble a Golden Age or Silver Age panel — is that the seventies were a dramatic time in the history of comics. Near the start of that decade, almost everyone was forecasting that the industry hadn't long to live; that by 1980, there'd be almost nothing left of the field. The predictions turned out to be so wrong, it's amazing William Kristol hadn't been the one making them.
But a lot of us new kids got into the biz to do what we could while we could. By 1970, comics had been around long enough that the writers and artists who'd gotten into the field in its salad days were starting to die off or go elsewhere. That made room for kids who'd been reading comics and were eager to fill those vacancies, however temporary they might be.
Bob Layton was publishing fanzines and one caught the eye of superstar artist Wally Wood who hired him as an assistant. That led to Bob selling a story to one of the ghost anthology comics then published by Charlton. On the panel, Bob insisted the book was called Creepy Stories of Gooey Death, despite my insistence that Charlton published no such title. (In case you're interested, Layton, it was actually an issue of Beyond the Grave.) He went on from that simple beginning and meager money to become a top creative talent in the field.
Chris Claremont landed a "go-fer" job at Marvel in the late sixties to get his foot in the door. The rest of him got in slowly with occasional editorial duties. The last step was writing — which he proved he could do one day when an issue of Daredevil suddenly had to be dialogued overnight. He took the challenge, things worked out fine and Chris was getting assignments instead of coffee. That sure worked out well, both for him and for Marvel.
Don McGregor went to a Comic-Con and turned a heckle into a career. He told Jim Warren, publisher of Creepy and Eerie, that a lot of the stories in his books were crap. That was the word he said he used: Crap. It led to discussions with Warren, dinner with Warren and finally writing for Warren, which led to editorial work for Marvel, which led to writing. Like the others, he proved he could do it so they let him keep on doing it.
Dean Mullaney passed a test at Marvel and was promised the next editorial position that came open. Then he decided that was the wrong end of the business for him and he turned himself into a publisher…publishing Don McGregor among others. That positioned him to be among the leaders of the many changes that saved the once-doomed comic industry, getting new kinds of comics into new kinds of outlets. We are all very fortunate he took to publishing instead of proofreading.
And me? Well, the panel wasn't about me but I followed a similar, not quite as interesting path as the others. I've written about it here.
Anyway, I thought the panel was quite engrossing and I want to write a little memo to myself here so I can keep something in mind for the future: Self, four people on a panel is just fine if they're the kind of folks who have something to say. Five or six in this case would have been one or two too many. We have this tendency to put people on panels because they're available or because a panel with six or seven people somehow sounds more important than one with a smaller number. Don't make that mistake — and I'm talking to others who arrange panels as well as to myself.
I have four panels to do today. I'd better get dressed and eat something so I can go do them. I'll be back later with a little rant against parties where there's no place to sit and it's so loud, you can't hear the person next to you.