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Don't Call It A Comeback by Josh Dahl

Conventions are an important part of the comic book world and life style. They have a big ritualistic significance in validating and socializing an otherwise largely individual pursuit.
Sure, you read comics, but are you really a comics fan if you haven’t been to a con? Maybe you create comics, but are you really a comics creator if you haven’t set up a table or a booth? It is a big public declaration, and a welcoming into the fold.
“I am a comics person!”
“We welcome you, brother!”
But, honestly, all of that group dynamics and cultural anthropology stuff isn’t really my field. I just wanted to set up the idea that comic book conventions are important events in the lives of people who live in the world of comics.
Each week I take a look at the comics art, industry, and business from my own point of view. I consider how it looked to me back when the small press group I was a part of ten years ago was just hanging up its hat for the last time, and I consider how it looks from where I sit now. Ready to toss my hat in as part of a brand new company.
This week, I am looking at comic book conventions.
For fans, retailers, creators, journalists, promoters, and storm-troopers, the convention really is a big deal. There are probably twenty different reasons why this is the case for every different con-floor stereo-type you could think of. On a deep level, I am a lot of these motivations overlap and are quite similar, but there is still no way I am going to presume to cover all of them.
Instead I am going to speak in general terms about the aspects I know the most about. Those two roles in which I have attended the most cons, as a fan and as a creator.
So, apart from the reasons mentioned above, why are conventions important to fans and to creators? The answer is simple, and it is the same answer you get anytime you ask why an activity is important to someone. It meets a need or a desire.

Back in the day…..
Cons did a lot for the fan as an individual and as a community. In a general way, as I mentioned above, the convention validated the lifestyle and strengthened the group. Pretty much any ritualistic gathering will do that, though. So, what is so special about the convention.
For the fan, it was a place to buy comics. Comic fans like to buy comics. It really was that simple. There were a whole bunch of comic books, many you did not normally have access to, and they were pretty cheap. Dealers came there to sell comics, so they were ready to deal.
Along with that, there was the chance to discover new books. Creators and publishers were all pushing their newest stuff. It was cool to be in on the ground floor of something new. It made you feel special. You knew about something because you went to the con. All those who did not have the dedication to attend would continue on in ignorance, and you could show off your rare treasure. You were an elite among the dorky elite.
At cons where publishers had booths, there were often announcements about upcoming projects. News! If you were there for the announcement, then you knew about it before anyone else. Maybe it would have been something you normally wouldn’t have cared about, but having exclusive knowledge made it feel special.
I still remember the Marvel slide presentation at a MotorCity Con that revealed that there would be two X-Men teams, featuring the re-integration of the original five. I can recall that the promo art was colored to show Archangel in traditional X-Men blue-and-yellow, and it looked really cool. I knew about that because, in some way, I had earned the knowledge by being there.
Conventions also gave you a chance to meet your people. If you wore a “Kyle Rayner Sucks” t-shirt in your regular daily life you would have to resign yourself to the fact that either no one is going to get it, or you will have to explain again and again that a Green Lantern is not a light source, but rather a power source for an intergalactic peace-keeping force.
At the convention, what had been obscure non-sense becomes a powerful statement about yourself. This happens because there is a much deeper level of base-knowledge. It is assumed that everyone knows who Master Splinter is and that everyone has an opinion about Spider-Man’s clones and about Image’s shipping schedules.
You could feel like you were understood in a way that, if you do get it in your daily life, can take a lot of effort.
And then there were the most special people you could meet at conventions. Girls? No, don’t be silly. Not back then. I mean the creators. The people who made the comic books you read and didn’t read. You could get stuff signed, talk to them, ask them questions, insult them, check out a panel discussion, or just watch them sketch. It is a little bit magical to lift the curtain and look behind the scenes like that. Whether your interaction was positive or negative, it was still a cool opportunity that you didn’t get from just reading an editorial or flipping through a sketch book.
For the fan, the convention was a chance to get more comics, find out about comics, interact with fellow fans and creators, feel accepted and have their hobby and lifestyle understood and validated in a big way.

For the creators themselves, the convention served a variety of different functions. All creators should also be fans, so creators also get what fans get out of it. Even back when I was starting out in the mid-90s, some indie guys were already jaded enough that they imagined themselves apart from the con-floor bonding experience. They tried to distance themselves from it by using words like “fanboy”.
Of course, by using those terms they were buying right into their own little sub-sub-culture of aloof, too-cool-for-school, creators. They didn’t need all that back-issue bonding. But, gee, didn’t it feel nice to be able to say “Watch out for the fan boy in the ‘Kyle Rayner Sucks’ t-shirt” and have someone understand?
In some way or another, each con mini-culture had its own bonding and acceptance rituals, and each group got the same sense of validation and acceptance from them.
But creators got a little bit more.
For the small press creator, the con was a great resource.
Money could be made there. Readers came looking to buy, so creators came with books to sell. Books and stickers and t-shirts and posters and whatever else you can print a logo on.
Meeting other creators at conventions was a chance to deepen your talent pool, discover new resources, share techniques, and gossip about who has been “black listed”.
Plus, shop-talk and portfolio reviews made you feel really cool. It made you feel like you were the real-deal. And that was what the convention really did for the independent comic book creator. It was a sense of legitimacy. You could design characters and logos, and discuss printers, and back-door copy-right, and hold meeting in Jason’s kitchen all you wanted. As cool as it felt to be doing all of that, it all flew out the window as soon as Jason’s mom walked through and asked if you guys wanted pizza.
But at the con, no one’s mom was walking through. When people saw you, they saw you sitting at a table. As shy and self-deprecating as most artists are, they were still able to glimpse themselves though the eyes of that fan. Maybe you weren’t big time yet, but this sure as hell wasn’t a kitchen table.

And then, of course, everything changed.
It was gradual, so no one noticed, really. But conventions have changed in some important ways since the last one we did as “Blink” and this most recent MotorCity Con which was the first one we set up as our new company MONOLITH. Like evolution, minor adjustments over time eventually result in large changes.

But why? What happened?

Biological evolution is actually a good way to look at what happened to the cons. Changes don’t just happen in organisms. Variations take root when they become valuable to that organism’s survival. Those variations can be random things that catch on, or they can be niche-based specialties that a creature is forced in to exploiting due to a change in environment. For example, let’s say there is a kind of fish that can vary in size from very small to pretty big, and they just swim around all day having a great time eating little bits of food. One day, a new fish moves in that is a little bit quicker, but is only comes in the pretty big size. Pretty soon the little versions of our first fish are going to find themselves living and eating exclusively in nooks and crannies that the bigger guys can’t dominate. Before too long, the first species of fish is all little, because that is how they were able to continue to survive and have their needs met.

So, back in the day, comic book conventions existed because people wanted to pay to go to them to experience all of the things that I mentioned in the first part of this column.

Cons have changed. There are more ‘booth babes’ and models signing pictures of themselves, there are more announcements and news events, the dealer tables are much more specialized, there are more representative from all over pop-culture, and there are a lot more Storm-troopers.

What caused all of this? What fish is big enough to effect all of these seemingly dissimilar changes? The same big fish that has been flopping all over the lead-up to this new century, The Internet.

The Internet changed the comic book convention by managing to effectively address many of the needs that were being met by the convention.
Those who went to conventions to seek out rare collectibles now have the wonder of Ebay. Buying comics is no longer something that is hard to do. With the internet, nothing is hard to find
Fans could now meet and talk inn cyber-space. That sense of community and understanding that comes form seeing a whole bunch of people who ‘get’ you is easily met on comics chat boards. These web pages even out do the conventions in this area. Where the con provided a simple baseline vocabulary that everyone could share, chat boards have cannibalized and inbred that language to the point where it is now largely unintelligible to the outsider. Not much makes you feel like a cool insider like knowing a secret language.
For news, information, and upcoming projects, the web has the convention beat hands-down. You could maybe pick up rumors at a convention and then read about them later in one of the comics news magazines. It was slow and inaccurate at best. Now, if you are away from your computer for two days in a row, you can miss an entire story cycle.
Not only that, but you can follow specific news on your favorite creator’s personal web site. No need to stand in line to get a signature from a guy who used to draw a book you used to like. Now, folks who want to interact with the men and women behind the scenes can do so via email.
I remember a few years ago I criticized an issue of Kabuki on a public message board, only to have creator David Mack get on a half hour later and explain his creative choices to me. Not only did I have a better appreciation for the book, but I respected the hell out of him for doing that.

On the other side of the table, creators and publishers have really stepped up to exploit this new development. For them (us) the world wide web is like a convention floor that is available all year round.
So long as there is a connection, we can be selling our product. No need to wait for early-bird ticket-holders, just start clicking “buy”.
The proliferation of specialized message boards has replaced the back-room shop-talk that used to go on at conventions. Now I can read someone’s back-pedaling apology almost before I read the gossip that offended to begin with.
Creators have realized, as David Mack probably did in the example I gave earlier, that positive interactions with readers are incredible PR opportunities. Not only did I think it was cool that Mr. Mack talked to me about his comic book like that, a few dozen other fans read it as well.
Probably the biggest struggle in marketing comic books is to get them off of the shelves and into the hands of the reader. Hey-I-know-that-guy-from-the-web, and hey-I-know-that-logo-from-the-web are two great ways to do this.

The internet is outdoing everything at which conventions used to excel.

And that is why the face of the convention is changing. If conventions continued to offer only what could be gotten faster and cheaper online, then no one would pay to go to them or to exhibit at them.

What do the cons still offer?
Buying comic books online gets you the comics you were looking for, but that is it. None of the fun of finding that treasure yourself. Most comic book collectors want to be Indiana Jones, not just some guy programming an Infra-Red imaging satellite. Retailers, many of whom now have storefronts that exist only in cyber-space, bank on the idea that this fun is worth the price of admission.
Comic cons also offer the face-to-face meetings. Yes, it is great to discuss comics minutia into the wee hours of the morning with your cyber pals. And it is great to develop you own complete specialized language to serve that discussion. But it still feels good to actually see some of these people.
I think that this is why there are now so many people in elaborate costumes at conventions. Costume creation and appreciation is one of the few things that you just can not do over the internet.
The value of these face to face meetings also carries over to meeting the pros and the various other celebrities who show up at these events. Yeah, you can talk to them online, but you can’t shake their hands.

All of the survival points I mentioned above are just small ways in which the live convention slightly edges out the 24/7 virtual environment of the web. “Slightly edging out” is no way to guarantee survival

There are some things that the con can do that the internet can’t. But are those things enough to justify all of the time, energy, and money that goes into them?

Yes, I think the convention does justify itself by out-performing the internet, but not in the ways that I have mentioned. The things that will provide for the continued existence of the comic book convention are those strengths which are based on internet weaknesses.

As a communication medium, one of the internet’s greatest strengths is its constantly flowing nature. You don’t turn it on or off. It is just there, always running. 24 hours a day. This is a great asset to anyone who wants to get the word out about their comic project. No need to wait for convention season. However, the culture that this never-ending stream creates has a major problem built in for those who want to sell to them.

Nothing is new. Nothing is exciting. Someone who is keeping up on events sometimes has to stop reading one article to catch the latest one. So, while simple news releases have been made much easier, a bona fide event is a much more difficult thing to orchestrate.

This idea, alone, is what will guarantee the future of the convention from a financial perspective. Making an announcement at a convention rather than on a web site makes it seem like a big deal. And then the announcements make the convention seem like a big deal. The big companies want the big dollars that come with their announcements being made with the drama and flair of a live convention. It is in their best interest that conventions continue to be a cool thing to go to. So, the look and feel of the con might change as it evolves to meet other needs, but it will always be there as long as it means more money for those who have the power to make or break them.
This is good news for me, because I still like conventions. And I like them because they fill one more void where the internet is lacking. Again, in this area, they don’t simply slightly outperform the digital competition. Rather, they capitalize on and exploit a distinct weakness.

Just like they did the first time around, conventions bring with them a sense of legitimacy for the exhibiting creators and publishers. You feel like the real deal when you are sitting behind that table. And now, instead of being a counter point to the kitchen table meting, the convention booth counters the ever-present web page.
There was a point, between “back-in-the-day” and now, when having a web page was a big deal. It was an exiting leap into a new frontier. An extravagance of un questioned esteem, but dubious real value. I mean, who would even have web access to look at it? But then the world moved on. Not only did everyone get computers, but everyone got web pages. A project web page is now a must.

The result is that the web-savvy reader now knows that a flashy web page is nice to look at, but it really doesn’t mean that a comic or a company will be any good. There are really only two ways to know how good those are. On paper, and on the convention floor.

A good web page and web presence can get a company started, but the con is really where the rubber hits the road. That sense of legitimacy, in the mind of the fan and the creator, in invaluable and can not be faked on a web page. How do you know you are a real company? How do you really know that you are the real deal and it’s serious? How do come to believe it so deeply that anyone who walks up can plainly see it? Easy, you are standing right there with a con program in your hand and a cardstock sign on your table, and they both have your name printed on them.
 

Visit Josh Dahl at his website www.monolithllc.com