Con-versations
NOTE: This is the last in my series of reports on the San Diego Comic-Con. We will get back to the regularly-scheduled political ranting tomorrow.
I can think of no other area of popular arts or entertainment where creators are so accessible to their fans as in comics. Among the many virtues of the San Diego Comic-Con, none is more rewarding to me than the ability to interact with the writers and artists who produced the great graphic narrative work of the past and present, and to actually hear the lore and legend of the business first-hand from the participants. Anyone who read and enjoyed Michael Chabon’s novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, will understand what a rich and vibrant medium comics has been (and continues to be), and how closely-connected it is with the intellectual and artistic currents of the 20th century. Over the years, I have had the privilege of meeting many of the people who work in the business, and some who were present at its creation. Here are a few of the memorable encounters from this year’s con.
Tuesday night: Batton Lash, Eric Shanower, Chyna Clugston-Major, Rick Geary
 This year, we arrived at the Con a day early and had the chance to socialize with a few of our friends before the craziness started. My girlfriend had initiated a correspondence with Batton Lash, writer/artist of Supernatural Law, and his wife Jackie Estrada (pictured at left), a Comic-Con organizer who had helped to found the group Friends of Lulu to promote comics by and for women. On Tuesday night, Batton and three other creators had an in-store appearance at Borders Books in downtown San Diego and we caught up with them there.
All of the creators at the signing produce work outside of the conventional superhero genre. Lash’s book is about two New York attorneys who specialize in defending supernatural clients (“Beware the creatures of the night – they have lawyers!”). Fresh, funny, wonderfully-drawn, accessible to general readers, and packed with knowing references to old books, comics and monster movies, Supernatural Law is the comic I most often give to non-comic reading friends.
Eric Shanower, (pictured below, right) who also moonlights as the illustrator of the latest line of Oz books, is producing a serialized graphic history of the Trojan War called Age of Bronze. He has racked up an impressive shelf of industry awards for this thoroughly-researched and lavishly-drawn series. Also working in a historical vein, Rick Geary produces a delightful graphic novel series on famous Victorian murder cases (Jack the Ripper, the assassination of President Garfield, etc.). I had not read Chyna Clugston-Major’s work before, but was impressed with her manga-styled story of young musicians, Blue Monday.
After the reading, we all went out for dinner and drinks, along with a few other artists, fans and dealers who turned up. It was a wonderful, convivial evening and made a fine start to the Convention week.
Wednesday – People-watching at the Hilton
This year, we opted to stay at the Hilton Gaslamp rather than our usual haunt, the Hyatt, because we suspected (correctly, it turned out) that the Hyatt was going to be a construction site and not as relaxing or central to the Con scene as in years past. The Hilton, turned out to be at least as luxurious, more Con-focused, and dramatically more convenient, as it is located just across the street from the Convention Center (note to city of San Diego – please build a pedestrian bridge across that street and railroad track!) On Wednesday, we relaxed at the pool and in the bar area out front, watching the notables arrive. By the evening, the dining room and bar were a who’s-who of the business, with Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, Dave McKean and many others hanging out and chatting with friends, fans, family and fellow pros.
Thursday – Comic-Book Legal Defense Fund
The Comic-Book Legal Defense Fund is a worthy organization dedicated to protecting the (often embattled) free speech rights of comic creators, dealers and readers. As “card-carrying members,” my girlfriend and I attend their annual party at San Diego, which is often the best opportunity to meet the most interesting Convention guests in a manageable social environment.
 This year’s party was extra special because I had made prior arrangements to purchase a piece of artwork from the great Will Eisner (seen at left, with your humble narrator), and was meeting him and his agent, former underground comics publisher Denis Kitchen, before the party at a nearby bar. I had met Eisner several times before at past conventions, but this was a chance to really engage him at length. We ended up having an excellent conversation about the literary value of comics, one particularly excellent story he produced in the 1940s, his upcoming graphic novel Fagin the Jew, and the advantages of the comics medium over motion pictures. At 85, Eisner has not lost a step, and is both thoughtful in his analysis of the artform of comics and authoritative in his historical recollection.
We were soon joined in the conversation by Kitchen, writer/artist Frank Miller (notorious for his dark version of Batman in 1986’s The Dark Knight Returns), Scott McCloud (author of Understanding Comics, a groundbreaking study of the formal properties of sequential art), and Mike Richardson, publisher of Dark Horse Comics.  This would be like a baseball fan talking to Ted Williams about the art of hitting, then having Stan Musial, Hank Aaron and Pete Rose wander over to pitch in their two cents.
Unfortunately, the venue was fairly loud, which made it difficult to keep the discussion going.
(pictured right: unidentified person chats with Kitchen and Esiner as Scott McCloud looks on)
Friday – Eisner Awards
The comic industry’s annual awards (named for Will Eisner, who is on hand to present them to the winners) take place each year at a banquet on Friday night. It’s a typical awards-show format, this year organized with clockwork precision by mistress of ceremonies Jackie Estrada. Following the ceremony, there is a cash-bar reception in the foyer, presenting another chance for excellent interaction with professionals and fellow enthusiasts (often one and the same).
Here I had a chance to talk more with Denis Kitchen, an extremely friendly guy with a real passion for the business. In the early 70s, he made the decision to sacrifice his own ambitions as an artist to lend his talents to publishing the work of others (including Eisner, Robert Crumb, and many underground artists of the time). He related how he asked the advice of artist Harvey Kurtzman (creator of Mad), and Kurtzman told him “the world doesn’t need another cartoonist as bad as it needs a publisher like you.” After losing his company, Kitchen Sink Press, in the late 1990s, he has resurfaced as an artist’s agent and is consulting on publishing projects for others.
I also had the chance to finally meet Gary Groth, head of quality-oriented publisher Fantagraphics and the long-time mastermind behind the Comics Journal, a magazine featuring serious and substantial critical reviews of the art and business of comics. After discussing the possibilities for reprinting work by various important artists, I asked Groth if I could pose a “rude and self-serving question.” “They’re my favorite kind!” he said (a fact that should be no surprise to anyone familiar with his publication). So I pitched the idea of doing some writing for the Journal. More on this should it develop.
Saturday – History Lesson from Neal Adams
Anyone who grew up with DC and Marvel comics in the 1960s and 70s knows the work, and probably the name, of Neal Adams, whose fresh and exciting style set new standards of quality and opened a world of possibilities for the next generation of creators. Adams left the field in the 1980s to concentrate on commercial illustration, and in recent years has been pursuing a rather novel theory about the formation of the Earth. At the San Diego Con, he holds court at his Transcontinuity Media booth, expounding on his various (and numerous) opinions and offering merciless critiques to young artists with the temerity to present their portfolios for his review.
Adams began working for DC in the mid 1960s, at a time when practically everyone producing comics had been doing it for at least 10, and usually 20 or more years. He was a young guy of 25, with dashing Irish good looks, and all of his editors and colleagues were ugly old Jewish men in their 40s and 50s, with little enthusiasm or ambition for their work (which many of them considered more than vaguely embarrassing). I caught Adams during a lull in the crowd to ask him about this and he jumped into the subject with both feet. 
I wish I had had a tape recorder, because I ended up receiving a fascinating 20-minute oral history of a critical moment in the industry, when the first-generation, mostly Jewish-dominated business of the 30s-60s made the leap from almost a vaudeville attitude of entertainment to a more ambitious and less specifically ethnic artform. Understanding how and when this transition occurred, and how much of the mindset of the secular, liberal-intellectual Jewish-American gestalt of the 1930s and 1940s remains present in the DNA of the comic artform (particularly the superhero genre, which was founded by two Jews, Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster, who created Superman in 1938, illustrated at right by Adams in the 70s as part of his campaign for their creative rights), is a subject of great interest to me. Hearing it from Adams himself, whose emergence as the first hot new talent of the business was arguably the pivot-point between two distinct eras in comics history, was one of those things you just can’t get from reading in a book. Fortunately, there’s little Adams likes better than talking about himself, so my curiosity was more than satisfied by the encounter.
These moments were only the highlights of a wonderful weekend.
2:12:58 PM 
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