Beware! The biggest, best ever 24 hour comic day kicks off tomorrow, with lots of workshops and minicomics on offer.
What is a 24 hour comic? Well, it is just that: a comic (ideally 24 pages) made in 24 hours. Scott McCloud has bragging rights on its invention. Twenty-four hour comics days now exist all over the world. It's not quite a benchmark of civilisation, but it is as close as you can get to a celebration of comics.
I guess technically you could start at midnight tonight, but if you get lonesome, you might like to join some of Ireland's finest comics creators at the Central Hotel, Dublin, for lots of laughs (and coffee probably.)
Gerry Hunt's non-fiction graphic novel (must find a better term for that) Blood Upon the Rose, has just been published by O'Brien, which seems to the Irish publisher interested in comics and comic artists.
There was a patronising write-up in this weekend's Irish Times, of the 'Zap!-Pow!-Comics-aren't-just-for-kids-anymore' variety. Nary a mention of whether or not the book is any good or what the art and writing are like.
Ignorance of the medium might have been excusable in the 1980s, but with every other Hollywood property based on a Marvel franchise, you'd have to be fairly dopey not to be aware of it nowadays. Ireland really is twenty years behind the rest of the world (at least when it comes to comics; and roads, the roads are shit too).
Gerry and BrenB (Hunt's long-time collaborator, and I'm guessing the colourist on Blood Upon the Rose) seemed patient with the witless reporter, but the nerves had to be frayed:
“If you watch a Disney movie when you’re a kid, it doesn’t mean that when you grow up you stop watching movies.”
The very fact that poor BrenB had to point this out made me cringe.
Of course there are loads of comics conventions in the US - San Diego and New York etc - and quite a few in France, but after reading (and especially seeing) so much about it, this year, Angoulême Comics Festival is the one I'd go out of my way to visit.
Now I just have to talk my fiancée into a holiday in the beautiful South-East of France... but how?
Here are some of the tastiest-looking festivals in Ireland, the UK and a little further afield, over the next few months:
- 27-29 March: Phoenix Convention (P-Con), Dublin, Ireland.
- 9-10 May: Bristol International Comic Expo, Bristol, England.
- 4-6 June: 2D in Derry, Northern Ireland.
- 18-19 July: London Film and Comic Con, London, England .
- 3-4 October: British International Comics Show, Birmingham, England.
- 13-15 November: Dublin City Comic Con, Dublin, Ireland.
- 28-30 January, 2010: Angoulême International Comics Festival, Angoulême, France.
Inconveniently, there is a fixtures pile-up next weekend, 28 March, as P-Con and the UK Web and Minicomix Thing coincide with an anime festival, at the Irish Film Institute.
(Read part two of this article here.)
Comic Book Resources columnist Augie De Blieck Jr played Devil's advocate this week by suggesting that comics fans save money by buying their comics online or even... re-reading their old comics!
No matter how facetious the argument, Augie makes a good point.
Mainstream comics publishers are forced to reconcile their relentless pursuit of commercialisation with their unwillingness to retire old 'properties' by endlessly recycling material. Many DC and Marvel titles are as old as their publishers and many others are spin-offs of those titles.
Four factors keep the costumed hero genre dominant in mainstream comics publishing:
- History - characters such as Batman and Superman have historic significance, of course, as the first costumed heroes.
- Fans - the affection which the current generation of comics readers feels for these old characters.
- Commercial conservatism - the unwillingness of publishers to risk alienating this market and merely to market their existing 'properties' to new audiences.
- Creative conservatism - it is safer for publishers to shackle creators to existing concepts, to have them 'interpret' old characters - viz Frank Miller's Daredevil and Batman - than gamble on their ability to innovate.
No matter how one feels about old characters (or the superhero genre in general), should they overshadow another generation of creators and readers?
(Read part two of this article)
All but the most myopic of comic fans can see that the writing is on the wall for comic shops.
Amazon and online book retail, the graphic novel or trade paperback finding shelf-space in high-street bookshops (like Waterstones and Barnes & Noble), the proliferation of free comics online (legal and not so legal), the move away from print and the development of web-native formats are besieging these grubby palaces of pre-pubescent fantasy.
But should we mourn the passing of comics shops or speed it up?
Many years ago I worked in a shop called Comics Showcase, on Neal Street, in London. This was a geek’s paradise, with walls covered in stupid toys and Golden Age and Silver Age comics in plastic cases, presided over by a cast of grotesques. I loved comics madly, but even I could see that comprehensive knowledge of the history of X-Force and WildCats was useless in any environment other than the comic shop.
When I say that stereotypes are stereotypes because they are largely true, I mean that they accurately mirror a cultural view of their subjects, with all the prejudices and biases entailed. There is a reason why the stereotypes of comics fanboys and comics shops are so fitting. What disturbs me is that comics readers and especially owners of comics shops are so comfortable with this stereotype, that they do nothing to challenge it.
Despite the fact that comics have changed hugely over the past twenty years, to comprise a much larger and more diverse readership, the most insular, immature and vocal constituency of comics culture continues to determine the way comics are perceived on a wider cultural level.
I was shocked to hear on a recent Comic Cast podcast that Irish comics creator Bob Byrne was unable to get an Arts Council publication grant for his graphic novel, Mr. Amperduke. This, despite Byrne’s being the first Irish comics creator to gain international distribution from Diamond for his work, despite producing a graphic novel which has put Ireland on the map.
Happily Byrne has gone on to successfully self-publish the graphic novel. But it points to a serious problem about the way comics are perceived. The US leads the way in terms of accepting comics as a serious medium and there you can find not only the superhero staples, but also more literary comics and graphic novels and small-press work.
Before the 1980s you bought your comics at a newstand or supermarket. I bought my first comics in my local newsagent. In the current economic climate, comics retailers had better realise that comics are a medium, not merely a sub-culture, and cater to a wider group than it does at present.
Unless comics retailers reach out to a broader audience, I believe the market will die within the next few years. This would be catastrophic. As comics fans know comic shops are not just retail outlets, they are the coffee shops, exhibition halls and cultural centres of the medium.
