Comicsgirl

YA author Barry Lyga, most known for his novel The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, is going to be penning an illustrated short novel for Marvel called Wolverine: Worst Day Ever. The description makes it sound like fun.

I liked Fanboy and Goth Girl quite a bit because I think it’s one of the few books I’ve read that captured my high school experience so accurately. But I do kind of go back and forth about his character of Kyra — he certainly gets some things right, but she did sort of strike me as Lyga’s vision of how he would’ve liked teenage girls to be (I was actually thinking about this today, randomly). I’ll still probably read Goth Girl Rising — after all, I can’t complain too much about teenage girl who’s a Neil Gaiman fan.

Lyga knows comics and knows the soul of suburban teenagers. Worst Day Ever sounds delightful. I’ll be picking this up.

Media Bistro poses the question and gives a few answers, most of which fall into the “maybe” category.

I do know that a few of my friends, with no disrespect to their local comic book stores, have turned to mail-order subscription services for their floppies to save money. With the prices of floppies ever increasing (some of which are $3.99 per issue now), I do wonder how long the floppy issues have left. I know, I know, plenty of people have sounded the death knell of single-issue comics before, but the price may push plenty of people to stop buying. (I don’t buy single issues too often, mostly out of laziness so I’m probably not a good one to ask.)

I wonder if a sort of Japanese manga-phonebook style model may work for some comics — say for $16, you get 5 comics (like, for example, all of the X-Men titles) all bound together every month. Sure, it may not have the super-pretty Photoshop colors, but you’d still have a cost-effective way to read comics. And maybe, eventually, individual titles/storylines could be collected in pretty color for a premium price. I’d go for that, personally.

But obviously, for a lot of people who are trying to pay bills and keep their jobs, luxury entertainment items like comics will probably fall away. I think comics (and publishing) in general can weather this, but I think we all know there are rough times ahead.

We’ve all had about 24 hours to sleep and recover and go back to our normal lives and possibly read things about New York Comic Con on the Internet.

Edward Champion writes that he felt the fans came last at NYCC — that it was too commercial and didn’t provide enough social opportunities for geeks to get together. He says that’s because geeks are just a demographic now, a group to be marketed to. And I can honestly see his point, because it was loud and obnoxious (in a not terrible way) and I did feel like I was being sold to at every moment.

But I think it was plenty social. When I first got there, I remarked to my friend that this was like “prom for geeks.” And I meant that out of love, honestly. There were all these kids (and by that, I mean anyone between the ages of 14 and 23) in lovingly-made costumes or just in fun anime-inspired hats. It was definitely a place to show off, to see and be seen, in a supportive place. These kids, I imagine, aren’t the “cool” ones in their everyday lives, no matter how “cool” being a geek is now. This was a place for them to fit in with everyone. And that was awesome.

There were great costumes — certainly, we had plenty of people dressed as Batman and Superman. And there were packs of Jokers (old style and The Dark Knight style) and several Harley Quinns. There were anime characters I didn’t recognize. I saw a great She-Ra and two dressed as Aang and Katara from their days inside the Fire Nation from Avatar: The Last Airbender. I also saw another great Katara in her more classic blue outfit. Everyone I saw looked like they were having fun (or were resting from the aftermath of having fun). It may have been too loud and crowded to make new friends or connections, but I still got a sense of community from being there.

And while I can’t ignore the commercial aspects of it, I didn’t really expect anything else — this isn’t a small con held in a hotel. This is, more or less, a retail show. But I do think it’s the sort of event that it is what you make of it.

I’m still not convinced I’ll go back, but honestly, after recharging, I do realize what a thrill it was being there. It’s not something I need to do all the time, but well … maybe.

(But it’s basically convinced me I probably don’t need to go to San Diego Comic-Con ever.)

• 14:01 Had brunch and stopped at The Superhero Supply Store for superhero supplies. Just now headed to the con. #
• 14:02 Probably no actual blogging until I am home, though. #
• 15:54 The Graphic Novels: A New Literacy panel was cool, even for someone who is not a teacher, librarian or parent. #
• 16:06 Last hour. Still crowded, but less so. I managed to lose my friends, though. #
• 16:34 And I’m done. That’s enough for me. #
• 19:18 On the train. Sore from heavy bags and exhausted but happy. #

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(This was written on the train coming back from New York. I am home now. I am too tired to find a photo for this entry — may stick one in tomorrow.)

We kind of dawdled getting going today, but not in a bad way. I wasn’t particularly eager to get back to NYCC – I mean, it was fun, but in some ways, one day was enough. As I reported on Twitter, we made a stop at The Superhero Supply Co.

I am a fan of the whole 826 project – I mean, kids being taught to express themselves through writing is excellent – and the storefronts are fun. The Superhero Supply Co. is awesome. The sense of graphic design on the packing is impeccable and there is so much fun stuff to look at and purchase. I bought a pair of sunglasses shaped like your typical superhero mask. When making purchases, you have to recite an oath saying you are going to use your powers for good and not evil, and you also have to come up with a superhero name (and yes, they do not let you get away with not coming up with one). It’s delightful fun. I think it was possibly the highlight of the trip for me.

We eventually made it to NYCC in time for the Graphic Novels: A New Literacy panel (and a note to con organizers: Please stop scheduling similarly-themed panels at the same time. This was at the same time as the What’s New at Penguin and DK panel and overlapped with the related What are Kids Reading Now? Graphic Novels and 22 Pages panel. This wasn’t the only instance of this that I saw in the program). The panel was awesome, even for someone like me who is not a teacher, librarian or parent. I don’t really discriminate in what I read – certainly I read a lot of comics but it doesn’t keep me from reading prose either. I think comics can show reluctant readers that reading can be something they love and there are so many great comics out there for older children (for instance, anything from First Second, which does have a lot of comics based on history) that there’s no reason to not include them in an educational setting.

And I think Sophie Brookover of Pop Goes the Library is one of my new heroes. She’s smart and doing great things.

After the panel, we wandered a bit more upstairs. For being late Sunday, it was still surprisingly crowded. I didn’t buy anything else due to exhaustion setting in and just a general disinterest in fighting the crowd more.

Overall, I had a good experience and there was definitely plenty of excitement. But I did leave there thinking “OK, I’ve done this now. I probably don’t need to do it again.” It was too hard for me to shop and other than the few things I bought, most of what was there either didn’t interest me (especially in terms of the small press stuff) or can pretty much be found anywhere. There may have been more, but trying to battle the throngs of people made it difficult to look at a lot of things. I would’ve liked to have gone to more panels, but a lot of them were on Friday or Saturday before I got there (that’s just how the schedule seem to fall).

If I go next year does depend on a lot of things, but I’d be happy to do it if I could just skip the whole shopping aspect and just spend the whole time in panels, screenings and presentations. That seems like where the interesting stuff probably is for me.

But I have no regrets. It was a fun weekend and I’m going to home happy.

In that admittedly bad photo are, from left, Matt Bird, Elizabeth Bird and Sophie Brookover