Comic-Con 2009: Day Zero

After Day Zero, I've got a feeling that most of my con reports are going to read like redacted national intellegence reports. For instance:

Yesterday, I spoke with a publisher I can't name and talked about doing a cover for a project I can't talk about. I think it went well, and at some indeterminate time in the future, I will let you know what it is.

I was at my booth for a little over two hours yesterday. I had to leave early to go have dinner with Bill Willingham, Bill Williams and some other friends. It was a great dinner and even better conversation.

Incidentally, Bill Willingham is the phenomenally-talented writer of Fables, which you should be reading, and Bill Williams is a likewise talented writer and inker. You may know him from SideChicks fame. You'll probably hear more about both of them this show, I think. But that's all I can say about that.

I did pretty well at the booth for such a short time, too. It hadn't occured to me that I'd be meeting some of the Love and Capes wedding attendees here. But I met three of them last night. That was really cool.

A couple other short notes:

The biggest change at Con this year is the Tent City that's formed around Hall H. I don't want to paint them all with a broad brush, but they're mostly Twilight fans, near as I can tell. They've been in line since Wednesday to be in line for Hall H to see the Twilight people. It's like abunch of perky, freshly-scrubbed homeless people.

And I shall not tease them! (Well, aside from the homeless crack, I guess) We've all got our passions, and I did spend five hours and a day off from work in a line to get Star Wars: The Phantom Menace tickets. I love seeing that kind of devotion. In fact, I gave them some copies of Love and Capes with my booth number scrawled on the cover and the only instruction being that when they got done reading them to pass them down the line.

Okay, that may have been enlightened self-interest. But hey, they like romantic stories with guys with powers, and that's Love and Capes, isn't it?

And, I have to give crazy props to the Hilton Bayside Starbucks. My coffee addicition is legendary, especially here at the Con where I try to see just how few hours of sleep I can get and not go insane. This Starbucks got HIT with people. And they were ready for it. A full crew of people, tons of pastries (try the banana nut muffin, by the way) and as fast as possible.

I've done a lot of shows, and often places like that aren't ready for the onslaught of con goers that follows. This one was.

And they played superh-hero themed music, too. The Danny Elfman Spider-Man theme, Particle Man by They Might Be Giants and so on.

For that matter, the hotel's been exceedingly prepared, too. They've got box lunches and specials and all sorts of goodies for the con crew. I think they're making a play to become the de facto convention headquarters hotel, and given some of the things I've heard about the Hyatt, I think they can pull it off.

Just about an hour now until I head back over for Day One. I've got like eighteen parties I have to go to tonight, but I don't know what will happen at the show itself. But then, that's part of the fun.

Betterizing San Diego

Yesterday, I had lunch with Roger Price and his lovely wife (who made me a great scarf). We were talking about San Diego Comic-Con, and how the show is growing and changing. We got on the subject of what to do to improve the show, and I had an idea that Rog said was decent. I could try to present it to the show, but that's a lot of effort to go through. So, I now present my two and a half ideas to improve Comic-Con. And if they want to give me a booth for life, I'm fine with that.

But first, a paragraph of my general feelings on the show: I've complained at times about the show, praised it at others, and have now come to the conclusion that I'm past all of that. The show is the show, it's the biggest show in terms of size and importance to the industry, and as long as I'm in the industry, I have to be there. So move to Vegas or LA or stay in San Diego…whatever. I'll still be there. Whatever the show does, I'll deal with it. I think I've got some ideas that can improve the show, but past that, I'd rather invest my intellectual capital in figuring out who the Last Cylon is. The show can be a bear to do, but I also landed some significant work out of it and had some good fun with some great friends. As long as it's somewhere, I'll be there.

Idea #1: Disneyize. Okay, I'm just barely old enough to remember the days of the "A" ticket and "B" ticket and so on. Cooler rides had rarer tickets, as I recall. Maybe it's time to do that for panels. You get an all-week membership, and you get, say, five A tickets, ten B tickets and fifteen C tickets. A one-day pass gets you one A, two B and five C. (Numbers are just example here.) A tickets are for the big media panels, B are for the smaller, and C are for the meeting rooms. You commodotize the panels. So now, people have to pick and choose what panels they go to, but they get to choose. It's not a perfect solution, but it will alleviate crowds and lines, and even solve that "sweep the room or don't" issue. If you don't have a ticket for the next panel, you have to go.

And let people trade their tickets, too. No harm in that. Give different combos to Pros and Exhibitors and Media. Heck, maybe do the same for Media and give them a press section so they don't overrun the area for the fans. Only 50 press members per panel, and let them decide who goes where. And, as an exhibitor myself, occasionally there is a panel, usually featuring Eliza Dushku, that I want to see. If there were a way that I didn't have to wait in a two-hour line to go to it, maybe I could catch a panel for the first time in five years.

Is it perfect? No. Will it cause much complaining? Sure. But the situation will need to change, and I think this allows the fan to have the most control over the end result, maybe even spend more time on the floor and possibly buy my book. (Nothing wrong with enlightened self-interest.)

Idea #2: Four-Day passes and Pros get different color badges. This was the big mistake in 2008. People who buy a full membership are not pros, so they shouldn't have the same color holder as the pros. As a guy looking for work and trying to find an individual in a mass of humanity, the fact that I know that Joe Editor would have a pro badge, and not a 4-day badge makes scanning for that person so much easier.

Wow, that one was simple.

Idea #2.5: New Layout. I read a lot about people saying "there should be a retailer section, a Hollywood section and so on." I'm not positive about this, hence the half-ness of this idea, but I think something like concentric circles might work better.

Here's a counter-intuitive example. A couple years ago at the NYC show, artist alley was on a second level, and you had to walk through that area to reach the media guests. The artist alley area was too small, admittedly, but artists who complained about it missed one of the best parts: People who want to see the Cheerleader from Heroes have to walk past your booth to get there. As an exhibitor, things that cause people to have to go by my booth are good things. From a crowd control point of view, it helps disperse the crowds.

As of Friday, I wouldn't even try to go to all the TV and Movie Booths at San Diego. It was just too crowded. As a result, I never saw almost half the convention just because of the mass of people. Maybe if the outer ring were Studios, with an inner ring of comic companies, another of retailers, and Artist Alley at the center. So if NBC is at the north end, Disney at the south, and you want to go from one to the other, you'll cut through the companies and the artists to get to the other side, rather than wade through Lucasfilm, Fox and whatever else. People will go new places, and hopefully discover new things.

Oh, and handle this, too.

Okay, that's all I've got. Take it for what it's worth.

Picture This

I've been back from San Diego for almost two weeks now and I never posted those pictures I said I'd post. Things got busy upon my return, including some things I can't talk about yet. (Curses!) As soon as I can say something about these, I will.

Anyway, here are some photos from Comic-Con. With all these photos, you can click and embiggen.

There were some great costumes at Comic-Con. I loved this take on Plastic Man.

And there was a lot of Hollywood stuff around, including this, from "The Mummy 3."

I did some sketches at the show, as well as at the aforementioned Drink and Draw. The Moon Knight was a commission, the others were from the D&D.

That's all I've got for now. Hopefully more cool artwork from current projects soon!