… or Here Comes a (Furry) Fan Girl Wearing the Cranky Pants
a tale from the road by Dasha Ariel Clancey
Once a year the anthropomorphic fanzine Yarf! makes their annual pilgrimage to the sunny San Diego bay area in an effort to promote and sell their recent and not so recent efforts. An unusual small press ‘zine, their print run is 250 done by a professional printer instead of with a laser printer and copiers. These little guys have been printing their fanzine for fourteen years, producing an average of four issues a year. They can’t pay their artists and contributors, but instead provide them free issues. And their fanbase supports them by buying issues and subscriptions.
The destination is the thirty-fourth annual Comic-Con International. Originally, this was a convention of two hundred people to trade comic books and fanzines, and held in one of the area’s many hotels. The precise date or weekend has changed a few times over the years. This year the July weather is warm without being hot, humid without being sticky, and slightly overcast as the fog rolls above the Pacific Ocean in the distance, way out on the horizon. The road is speckled with sightings of the ocean, naval and military installations, and the railroad. The music today is the soundtrack to Spirited Away. Occasionally an aircraft carrier or Aegis cruiser is seen in the bay as you drive past, and the red trolleys chime as they run through San Diego south to San Ysidro and the Mexico border.
This year, as in recent years past, Comic-Con is held in the San Diego Convention Center — a half-mile long building of cement and glass that features a section of the roof that is made of nothing but white canvas ‘sails’ in a tented ‘teepee’-like configuration. No one is here yet, except for those (like the folks from Yarf!) who are setting up their tables or booths in the dealer’s room. Entrance today is only gained from the underground parking garage, which isn’t crowded yet, and the only noise is the sump pumps doing their due diligence to keep the San Diego Bay out of the convention center.
It’s the San Diego Convention Center.
Photo by Dasha Ariel Clancey.
The interior is dark and interrupted by the messy assortment of beeping forklifts and supervisors in electric go-carts. Most of the convention center is the dealer’s room. From first glance you wonder how on Earth a large half-mile room will ever be filled up, but time slowly begins to demonstrate the reality. Carpets are laid out forming aisleways, as tables and chairs are arranged in rows. Small metal bars and stands are erected with sheets of cloth to create barriers between aisles. Signs are hung, denoting the numbers of the aisles. The cavernous half-mile room is transformed into its eventual form — a half mile of big and small corporations, all assembled to share their goods for a price.
As Yarf! arranges their assortment of old and new issues on their small six-foot table, New Line Cinema erects their thirty foot table model of the Tower of Isengarde with inset movie posters for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and the giant 16-screen TV to play movies of marching elves to encourage purchase of it’s latest DVD product. DC Comics has a large aluminum and cloth booth featuring fifteen-foot Batman logos and figures to sell. While Yarf! sets up their small Apple laptop to track their sales and inventory, EA Games has erected four columns with various computers in them to allow people to try out their complete line of Lord of the Rings games. Disney, nearby, erects several plasma-screen displays over computers so that the young and young-of-heart can sample the computer game for the Haunted Mansion movie which has not even been released yet.
The wall of marching elves to promote the DVD release of “LOTR: The Two Towers.”
Photo by Dasha Ariel Clancey.
The dark cavern becomes a half-mile of palace of commercial greed. Perhaps a better title — instead of Comic-Con International — would be the “Annual San Diego Popular Culture Trade Show and Exhibition”. Where once the comic book was king, today it is only a minor player in the bigger media drama.
The room is divided into a few distinct sections, but is mostly dealer’s room. There are two artist’s alleys where the popular and well-known artists draw. Many of these are elderly and in wheelchairs, as the artist’s alley manager coos and coddles them much to their chagrin. The smaller artists, still young and trying to make their break in the industry are in the second artist’s alley (stashed in a far dark corner where few paying customers will dare to venture). Then there is the art show, where art from many artists is available to view and bid on. No cameras or bags are allowed in this area. That’s okay, the barrier is only waist-high so you can see a lot of it from outside with your camera and bags in your hands.
All these people can’t be going for milk?
Photo by Dasha Ariel Clancey.
As the show opens, fans of all kinds fill the aisles as they run to their favorite booth at break-neck speed. There are the young ones who line up for the fun of fake gunshot wounds painted on their foreheads in promotion of the Freddy Vs. Jason movie. Or the young boys that go from table to table pointing to everything for sale and asking, “Is this free? Is this free? Is this free?” Every mother and father are entering to win that Eddie Bauer SUV or stretched Hum-Vee. Meanwhile, not far away, large vendors are selling copies of the first printing of J.R.R. Tolkein’s works sealed in plastic for $1000 a shot. Newer copies are available with photos from the movie, to which newer readers look at and are heard to say: “Oh look! A movie novelization!”
So, where are the comics anyway? There are any number of comic vendors to sell you the most popular anime-style X-Men comics from Marvel to the most obscure and limited-run episodes of The Wasp imaginable. Open up your wallet, and they will be happily sold to you at a hundred bucks a shot. But they may be willing to make you a deal… After all greed on both sides of buying and selling is what keeps many folks coming back, year after year, after year, after year…
In the day, comic books were the major focus of the gathering. Today, that is decidedly more of the overall media in scope. In the Golden Era of comics, there were only the major players such as Marvel, DC and Harvey. That changed with the growth of small press publications. The variety of subjects and art styles is something enjoyed by many of the folks coming through the door year after year.
Small press tables face large corporate booths like Hasbro, so that those viewing overpriced toys will be encouraged to look at the young lady’s booth who is trying to vend her first comic that she drew and wrote herself. Thousands of people pass these small tables, but only a small few stop and look and even fewer buy these low-run comics and fanzines. After all, why would you want some small anthropomorphic fanzine when you can enter to win a stretch Hum-Vee? How can funny animals hope to compete against all that power, flashy lights, and chrome detailing?
The altar of retail greed in all it’s glory! The showfloor with sales at the ready.
Photo by Dasha Ariel Clancey
Comic-Con features more than just the dealer’s room. There is great programming about art and writing and movie making with big-name figures to sit with you and tell you all about it. But oddly enough one notices the audiences in these panels to be very sparse and thin. Most of the paid audience is in the dealer’s room partaking at the fount of commercial greed. Gaming continues long into the night if you sign up in advance; if you don’t mind it all being dominated by Dungeons and Dragons players from the Role Play Gaming Association (Anyone interested in Role Playing Games other than D&D? Perish the thought!) And don’t forget there are hall costumes, the masquerade, and all sorts of fun to be had for the whole family (and then some).
As for our small anthropomorphic fanzine, they sit back and talk with other small press dealers, play computer games on the laptop, and generally tide their way through four days in a busy and noisy room. The socializing out weighs the sales in many aspects.
They consider themselves successful to have paid for their table in sales, and are glad to have less material to schlep home than they came with, So they head off, with the fog rolling in now after four days of sun, to spend the next year wondering if they’ll be back for another crack at it. All to the soundtrack of Cowboy Bebop.