Big Con Speaks, Small Publishers Listen
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on July 25, 2006 Sign up now!
By Ian Brill, Douglas Wolk and Calvin Reid, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 7/25/2006
At Fantagraphics' 30th-anniversary panel, Gilbert Hernandez reminisced about the days when he and his brother, Jaime, were first creating Love and Rockets--they felt like punk rockers out to create an alternative to corporate rock music. It has been many years since the Hernandez brothers dropped their stunning creation on the comic book world, but a glance at the exhibitors at this year's San Diego Comic-con reveals that not much has changed since. At a convention dominated by blockbuster films like Snakes on a Plane and Spider-Man 3 and by mainstream comics companies Marvel, DC and Dark Horse, small press publishers had to find their niche and work it. Fortunately for them, even the smaller exhibitors managed to attract a healthy crowd.
Top Shelf easily had the "hot book" at the convention, Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls, a pornographic—a term Moore and Gebbie use proudly—re-creation of such classic fictional characters as Alice from Alice in Wonderland and Wendy from Peter Pan, in a new explicitly sexual narrative setting created with Moore's characteristic literary depth and nuance. It was packaged in a $75, handsome lavender slipcased edition being sold at Top Shelf’s booth. Even at that price, the publisher was selling a steady stream of copies. And Gebbie, making a rare appearance to sign books and greet fans, was surprised to see that the impressive pile of 500 advance copies Top Shelf started with on preview night had dwindled to less than 40 by Sunday morning.
"I think it's the most beautiful writing he's ever done," Gebbie said. "He’s so adept at speaking in a woman's voice." Many of the people buying the book were women of all ages; Top Shelf was carefully checking to make sure every customer was over 18.
Gebbie and Top Shelf copublisher Brett Warnock agreed that fan reaction has been enthusiastic. Lost Girls was introduced 15 years ago in the defunct comics anthology Taboo but was never completed. Every year since, fans have been asking various publishers, most recently Top Shelf, when a definitive tome f would be available. All the while, Moore and his work on such books as Watchmen and V for Vendetta, have reached higher and higher levels of recognition. Moore is notoriously particular about his work, so it was no small reward when Top Shelf got an enthusiastic call from him. Warnock reported that on Saturday Moore told the publisher that he has never been more impressed with the presentation of his work than with Lost Girls. "When you make the effort, people will appreciate it," Gebbie said.
In fact, indie publishers and their authors were feeling the love from the fans despite the loud rumblings from the sound systems of the movie, video game and animation vendors at the other end of the exhibition hall. The Drawn & Quarterly booth had a succession of authors signing and a steady stream of fans buying. Appearances by legendary manga-ka Yoshihiro Tatsumi at the D&Q booth (not to mention a downright moving interview with the author by Adrian Tomine at the panel where he received his Inkpot award) helped sell at least 300 copies of his new book, Abandon the Old in Tokyo, albeit more to art-comics aficionados than to manga maniacs. D&Q also managed to sell 100 copies of last year's Guy Delisle hardcover, Pyongyang, basically on word of mouth. (D&Q also let slip a project planned for next year: an oversized book of Frank King's Gasoline Alley Sunday strips, in the same format as last year's Little Nemo collection, and copublished by that project's Sunday Press.)
Archaia Studios Press had a knot of fans and at least one impressive admirer at the booth to meet author and copublisher Mark Smylie (Artesia), David Petersen (Mouse Guard) and Alex Sheikman (Robotika). Turns out Hellboy creator Mike Mignola is a fan of Petersen's much-praised, hot selling (it's sold more than 20,000 copies of the first issue) animal-fantasy adventure series Mouse Guard and, to the delight of ASP publishers Smylie and Aki Liao, he stopped by the booth to tell him so. The little New Jersey house announced that the trade paperback edition of Sheikman's Robitka will be available in October and also unveiled a new slate of titles, including a nourish French crime series, The Killer by Matz and Luc Jacaon; Hub's Okko, a mystical samurai tale; and an epic fantasy series, The Secret History by Jean-Pierre Pecan.
Fantagraphics also rolled out a slew of new projects along with near-constant signings—although the longest lines were for Daniel Clowes. Plans for next year, noted publisher Gary Groth, include the first of a series of books reprinting Bill Mauldin's cartoons. Meanwhile, at his signings, Gilbert Hernandez displayed sketches for a forthcoming series of graphic novels, The Fritz Movies, adapting the (fictional) B-movies in which one of his characters from Love and Rockets has acted.
Image reported strong sales for its new 24seven anthology of full-color stories about robots in New York, as well as steadily growing interest in writer Robert Kirkman's ongoing series The Walking Dead—bolstered by Kirkman's sleeper hit for Marvel, Marvel Zombies, soon to be collected as a single volume.
And while Mark Seigel's First Second imprint, on hand for its first San Diego con, is hardly a small publishing outfit (it's an imprint of Henry Holt/Roaring Brook), its books (not to mention its artists) sure seem like they came from one. Siegel premiered his fall line (including the English-language edition of Cambodian cartoonist Lat's Kampung Boy), and artist Eddie Campbell (who split time between the First Second booth and Top Shelf) showed off some advance artwork from his spring 2007 First Second release, The Black Diamond Detective Agency.
Despite the throngs who came to see movie stars and play video games and the swarming hordes of costumed manga fans, there still seemed to be enough of the art comics crowd on hand to support small publishers and the idiosyncratic books they love. At the "What Is Mainstream?" panel, there were hints that the stylistic divisions in comics are becoming more complicated than the old mainstream comics/art comics/manga divide. A panel of cartoonists, including Owly's Andy Runton, Castle Waiting's Linda Medley and Kid Gravity's Eric Jones and Landry Walker, discussed the difficulty of getting their comics across to an audience that isn't quite the masses packing Comic-con halls for panels like Marvel's Civil War on the one hand, or the art-comics crew on the other.
At Archaia Press, Mark Smylie agreed that they were a bit overwhelmed by the scale of the movie and big publisher presentations. But he also said that ASP seemed to be able to find its audience—even in the swirling chaos of Comic-con. "I'm not complaining, we're doing well. We've had a great time here."
