Pros of Cons

Continuing my thoughts on NYCC... yes there were plenty of good things about the con. Top of the list: Ghostbusters. These guys in the pic were humping the soon-to-be-released video game from Atari. Great costumes, nice proton packs, even better game demo. Can't wait to slime my way across virtual NYC in June.

Top of the list for free swag -- the magnetic S.H.I.E.L.D. insignia from Marvel. Looks great on my desk drawers, right next to the magnetic hula girl and magnetic Mach 5. Good on you, Marvel.

The absolute bestest part of the con, though, were the professionals in attendance. While this may sound like an obvious suck-up, I'd merely point out that this isn't self-evident, because comics, like every other industry, has its share of douchebags. Any of the really bitter blogs can dish on those people. Besides, none of the people I'd be sucking up to are ever gonna read this.

I was on a bit of a mission to find qualified writers to teach a comic writing course at Drexel University in Philadelphia and met some really fantastic industry guys who were not only helpful, but immediately responsive. Randy Stradley at Dark Horse not only put me in contact with someone almost before I got home, but I swear the man was on the floor every hour on Friday looking at artist's portfolios. That's a lot of hours and a lot of pencilled boobs.

Steve Wacker, editor of Amazing Spider-man, who manages to turn out an (almost) weekly book, was on hand and also generous with his time. Perhaps that's because we were sharing jokes about Tom Brennan, the assistant editor on the book, and and an old friend of mine. Yeah, I'll betray old friends for career advancement. But it'll always be in a funny context. Simperin' Steve (his name for himself, not mine), also hosted a pretty hysterical panel on Story Structure in Comics, along with Pete Tomasi and Frank Tieri. Imagine a hot, sweaty room full of wannabe writers and artists. Actually, overfull. Spilling into the hall. All of them after that magic bullet-point template for stories that they can just fill in and be whisked away into comics super-stardom (your own Twitter feed!). The panel basically told them the truth: the story dictates the structure. They couldn't handle the truth. I love watching other writers panic.

One final pro at the con, actually even before I got there, was an old friend and former student who now professionally blogs about comics (which sounds like something you take medicine to correct). Paul Montgomery was much nicer to me in his blog than I have been to him, so you should go and read it here.

More? We'll see.