A RUNNING Portland joke is that roughly two-thirds of the comics industry lives here, wants to live here, or is sending their work here to sell it to the half-million customers still spooning money into the mouth of an industry that hasn’t recovered from the debilitating stroke it suffered in the ’90s (thanks, Rob Liefeld).
So why is Wizard World—one of the biggest names in the Nerd Prom game, hosting giant conventions year-round in multiple states—having such a problem getting people excited about their first Portland convention this weekend? They’ve had to Groupon (can you verb that? I guess I just did. Technically one of those days is a Google Offer.) admission to two out of their three days, and many of Portland’s best-known artists, writers, and vendors are nowhere to be seen in Wizard’s list of exhibitors and panelists.
Surely some of this can be chalked up to Portland provincialism rearing its precious head. The city hosts a laundry list of pop-culture parties: Stumptown Comics Fest, Wonder Northwest, the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, OryCon, and more, all home-grown. (There’s something admirable about that, even if you’re amazed by the multiple generations of grown adults who have dedicated much of their time to chasing their evergreen adolescence deep into their 40s.)
Wizard’s timing didn’t help, either. They announced their show in September, two days before the inaugural installment of the Rose City Comic Con, a venture providing a more traditional con experience than the Stumptown Comics Fest’s indie-focused warm-and-fuzzy-fest. And Wizard scheduled their show one weekend before Seattle’s Emerald City convention, one of the fastest-growing geek celebrations in the entire country. Suddenly, this felt less like an opportunity, and more like opportunism: Wizard upstages a new convention and siphons off Seattle’s audience in one swoop. It comes off like the comics equivalent of dropping a Walmart directly between two local grocers.
But this weekend could still be a win-win for PDX’s pop-culture addicts: Those who don’t give a damn about behind-the-scenes comics politics still get to queue up for Dean Cain’s autograph, take pictures with audacious cosplayers, sit in on MTV’s Real World panel, and maybe get verbally berated by Bruce Campbell. Those who do give a damn: The powers behind Emerald City and Rose City are teaming up to help each other with programming future conventions, allowing conscientious nerds to get their con on without any undue consumer guilt. Except for when they buy Orson Scott Card stuff at those cons. They should feel bad about that.
I imagine (or, rather, hope) that most locals don’t feel too warmly about the craven hucksterism of these sorts of corporate cons. It costs $30-$40 for a one-day pass just to get in the door. Want a autograph from one of the featured guests? That’s another $40. Want your picture taken with Bruce Campbell? Shell out another 90 bucks. It seems like an especially ugly way to fleece fans, and antithetical to the spirit in which Portlanders embrace the industry.
This is a great breakdown for those who arent part of the normal comics community and already imbeded in the culture to understand why this convention upsets so many locals and really is such a concern. At one level I hope Wizard World succeeds because if it does maybe it will bring some new life to our community by getting them active possibly in other local cons, but on the other end it does take ALOT of money out of local wallets with the blatant hucksterism of the whole thing (as Dawn so conicsely pointed out).
Blaming the “debilitating stroke [comics] suffered in the ’90s” on Rob Liefeld of all people is outright lazy reporting, blatantly untrue and a cheap, tired jab. (And yes, full disclosure, I’ve been employed by Rob in a freelance capacity, albeit years after the time period discussed.)
Said “stroke” was in actuality a perfect storm, with Rob of all people playing an especially minor part. Did it help he solicited titles which came out at, at best, an unreliable schedule, if at all? Of course, absolutely not. Yet it’s so minor compared to, say, the ‘Distributor Wars’ with Marvel purchasing HeroesWorld, using them as their sole distributor and the fall out which followed. This alone put a lot of people — retailers, distributors and publishers alike — out of business. Then there was Marvel’s staggered release schedule of X-Men #1 covers, then there was the even greater issue with DC promising retailers their Return Of Superman would be even a greater deal than his Death, which subsequently flopped. Both of those examples are merely the largest in a series of poor decisions made by virtually every single publisher working at the time — cash-ins and collector’s items, enhanced covers and variants sold with the promise to make speculators a lot of money, instead of the promise of storytelling. Of course, these ended up largely worthless, causing stores to shutter their doors and speculators turn away from an industry — publisher, retailer, distributor and, yes, sometime creator — that lied to them.
On that note, you know how many variant and enhanced covers Youngblood #1 had?
Zero, save the second printing after the first sold so extraordinarily well.
It was a time of immense greed, to be sure — one Neil Gaiman smartly compared during a 1993 retailer summit to the 17th century Dutch Tulip boom/bust. Rob’s certainly guilty of taking part, but giving him the blame is just ridiculous.
I get what you were going for. A lot of people go for the ground-level low hanging fruit of taking a stab at Rob. It’d be nice if they went for something new, perhaps even factual.
While I understand your complaints about the pricing and timing of both the announcement and of the con itself, it unfortunately worked in my favor. It’s in a convenient location, and there are some names that I haven’t seen go to a con (like James Hong). Yes, it’s more mainstream, but mainstream also means more well-known names (and with it, higher prices). I love Portland, and helping local cons/businesses/events, but does that mean we have to say “no” to everything that isn’t Portland?
Liefeld sucks
I agree with JK that there was a lot more wrong with comics in the 90s than just Liefeld, but JK also minimizes Liefeld’s influence. Liefeld’s artistic style took everything that was idiosyncratic with comics and turned it up to 11. His work is not solely responsible, but it is characteristic of that bad trend.
This is like comparing apples and oranges, Rosecity is going into year 2 and Wizard has been around 15-20 years or so. ECCC also started out small and now price wise they are on par with Wizard World.