Hi gang! Welcome back for our Pre-Comic-Con blog entry! I’ll be headed down bright and early tomorrow morning, so this might be a short-ish blog entry– still lots of stuff to do!
If you’ve ever been to SDCC, you know it’s pretty…overwhelming. It’s a lucky thing the con spans four days, because there’s just no way you could possibly do it all in one. Walking the floor for just a day is a workout in of itself– Comic Con is less a convention and more an endurance test of your nerd will.
I’ve been going to Comic Con since around 2002 or so. Every year since, the Con has gotten more and more massive…every year I say: “There’s no way it can get any bigger…” and then they build a whole new section. If you’ve never been, I highly recommend doing it at least one year– it’s like Burning Man for geeks. I’d also recommend taking a few days to spend in San Diego NOT at the con– it’s a beautiful city.
As the years have gone on, my personal Comic-Con has become less focused on the big Media panels. There were years in the past that I would camp out in the famed Hall H for the better part of the day, watching the studios unveil their tentpole movies, or listening to Kevin Smith do his Standup Q&A– But, every year that seems to dwindle more and more. In the day and age of Twitter and Youtube, it seems that most of the content and news streams directly to my phone within minutes of the actual announcement– so, for the last few years my Con goals have changed…
Switching perspective here for a moment: One of the things I realized earlier this week i/r/t being a webcomic author is that the comic is only half of the overall (for lack of a better term) product. I realized that the website you’re on now is the “container” for the comic– and that’s the other half.
I’d talked a few entries back about how I love the comments section, and how comments are really sort of a v.2.0 of the old letter columns you’d read in traditional print comics– and that’s when it hit me: Half of a webcomic is building a community around your comic. I mean, obviously, every comic lives and dies by it’s audience– but with a webcomic, the results are immediately obvious. 0 comments = Frowny face, right?
I think that each webcomic is its own micro-social network, and it’s important to build and maintain it. In all honesty, that’s half the job right there. Again, when you’re Warren Ellis doing FreakAngels, you don’t have to be quite as concerned– but even he keeps himself actively available in his forum. (I really should stop using Freakangels as an example…it’s a whole different animal.)
So, getting back to SDCC– Over the years, I’ve cut back on my paneling in order to start working on my networking…after all, that’s actually part of what a convention is supposed to be! This year, I’ll be spending some time in “Webcomic Alley”, meeting other webcomic creators. I’m excited about the idea of meeting some of these creators face to face– a rarity with the inter’tube medium.
Due to some extenuating circumstances, it looks like I’ll only be down there for Friday and Saturday, but I do plan to make the most of my time there. On Friday, you’ll be able to catch me here and there on GeekWeek Live– where we’ll be broadcasting from a boat behind the convention center.
Friday night will be a pretty active social night, hitting the various parties and whatnot– and then the bulk of Saturday will be spent on the Con floor.
If any of you guys happen to see me, please stop me to say Hi!
If you can’t make it, don’t fret, I’ll make sure to take a bunch of pictures and put up a special POST-SDCC blog for you next week!
Finally, I just wanted to take a second to shout out two of our commenters who were both kind enough to link us via their comic sites this week– Both comics are extremely well crafted and are highly recommended! Go check ‘em out!
Drezz has a comic called El Cuervo:
DREZZ: It’s a classic noir revenge tale. Our main character is double crossed and forced to come back for vengeance – from there he tries to escape with his life, only to find out he can never truly escape. If that isn’t ambiguous, I don’t know what is.
And Prestwick, with his comic, Hard Graft:
Ever wanted to ditch the 9 to 5? Wanted to do something completely different and get away from it all? Welcome to the life of Alan Corbett. Hard Graft is an Anglo-Argentine comic about the adventures of uncompromising tough guy Alan Corbett and his friends as they bump into each other at random places on earth.
Ok– got check out some webcomics, folks! Me? I gotta start packin’ and whatnot! We’ll be back Monday with a new page, and next Thursday with our SDCC wrapup!
As always, if you could help us out by dropping us a quick click here, it’d be super appreciated! At last check, we’re past the mid-700s! VERY EXCITING!
Thank you again for your support!
