Post NYCC thoughts (and 2 small rants)

Just thought I'd post some things now that I've (mostly) recovered from New York Comic Con. I had a blast, but it was definitely an exhausting weekend. This was my first time at NYCC, and my first time spending any real time in New York. It's an awesome city. There's so much to do, and I got to do very little of it. I did get to hang out with a couple old friends who now live there which was awesome.

The convention itself was also great, but, again, very busy and not a little crazy. I met some very cool people, including a number of artists and writers. I got to chat with some people I had met before, like Mark Sable and Paul Azaceta (Graveyard of Empires) and Rachel Deering (go back the In the Dark kickstarter!). I attended a few panels, mostly about breaking in, which were interesting, but I've been to so many of those panels in the last couple years it's starting to get redundant. I did go to the Bob's Burger's panel, which was hilarious. All in all I had a pretty great time.

Just cause I'm talking about it, I might as well drop in my two cents about the major complaints about NYCC this year. This first, and far more minor complaint, was regarding the RFID badges and the whole Twitter thing. Basically, when you got your badge you had to activate it through the website, and you could synch it to your twitter. No big deal. The badges all had RFID tags in them, and when you went to the convention, you had to swipe it to get it and out. Again, no big deal, I thought. Apparently, however, the convention would start sending tweets from your account, saying how much fun you're having, things like that. I did not experience this. I got one tweet sent, checking in, not unlike a foursquare or one of those things. Annoying, yes. Huge violation of my whatever? Not really. I'd probably be more upset if I was getting all the more annoying tweets sent, but since I didn't, I can't really speak to that. Even though I just did. I just think it's kind of a dumb gimmick.

The other big complaint, however, had to do with some pretty upsetting sexism. This article goes into some detail, and there's probably more information online. The cliff's notes are that 1) Arizona ran some pretty obnoxious ads in the program and in front of some of the panels, talking about their 'big cans' and showing a lot of busty women with gratuitous cleavage. (Get it? They sell their drinks in oversized cans, but cans can also mean breasts!) 2) Their were some severely skeevy guys wandering around with a camera and microphone, 'interviewing' female cosplayers and being just plain skeevy and gross. 3) Just a general level of inappropriateness from a number of male attendees towards female attendees.

As far that first point goes, quite simply, you guys should know better. You could feign ignorance ten years ago, even five years ago you could get away with a quick apology and pulling the ads, but gender has been such a visible issue over the last few years, anyone promoting a convention at this point should see something like that, realize it's going to make some people uncomfortable, and look for a different sponsor. Especially considering that something like this will directly inform those other two issues. Guys will think it's perfectly acceptable to go around making asking inappropriate questions and making inappropriate comments, because you've basically told them so.

And guys, seriously, grow the fuck up. The world does not need to be subjected to your eighth-grade mentality. If you can't behave like an adult, stay the fuck home. You're not welcome here.

And yes, I did read those accounts of people grabbing young women mid-'interview' and kissing them, and yes, I hope those people are prosecuted, because that shit is beyond unacceptable.

So yeah, I'll end the negative portion of this post here. All in all, I did have a really awesome time, and I hope to check it out again next year. I also stopped by the comiXology booth, mentioned that I had a book pending. The response was pretty much what  expected, that they're heavily backed up on books and are getting them out as fast as they can. I would complain, but the only way they could likely speed up the process is by accepting fewer books, and I'd rather wait longer than risk mine not making the cut. So we'll see when that happens.

One other thing I thought I'd mention, because I've encountered this at the last few bigger conventions I've been to. It seems there's a trend now of taking movie pitches, turning them into comic books, and clearly spending an assload of money to print out copies of that comic and distribute them at conventions. Don't do that. Just don't. The comic will turn out bad, always. It doesn't fit the medium, it's probably not a very good pitch in the first place, and you're likely only going to half-ass it anyway. Because the whole approach is half-assed. Comics (and movies, for that matter) are for creative expression, not for marketing gimmicks. And when you hand a shitty comic book, and I look at the back and see a mock-up for a movie poster, it just depresses me. Hone your craft. If you want to make movies, make movies. If you want to make comics, make comics. If there's one thing I've learned in that last few years, there are no short-cuts. There are plenty of ways to waste time and money looking for shortcuts, but they're always dead-ends.

Anyway, that's all I've got. Also, Blockheads has really good tacos (and margaritas, though don't get those at 4 in the afternoon when you've just been on a bus for eight hours and have a convention to get to).

NYCC and other stuff

A couple of things I wanted to mention. First of all I wanted to mention that I made some edits to the Raven script. The main difference is that the main character is now a woman. I think it adds a new dynamic to the story that I really like. Other than that I tidied up some of the pages. I was hoping to cut down the page count, ten seems a little long for a short comic like this, but to be honest, I really like the pacing on this. Most of these scripts I just write as practice, but I'm quite fond of this one, and I'd really like to see it get drawn (so if anyone's interested hit me up). Might even submit to Dark Horse, or somewhere like that.

Of course, I will be in New York this weekend for NYCC. I'll just be wandering around, so if anyone wants to hang hit me up. I'll mostly be stalking editors, and there's a few panels I'm planning to check out.

Also, I'm thinking of getting into flash fiction. It seems like a decent way to keep myself writing every day even when I can't get myself motivated to work on any of my bigger projects. And there's apparently a decent sized market for it online, so that's a bonus. I have a story I wrote last night, about 520 words, that I think is pretty neat. We'll see how long I can keep at this.

The only other thing I wanted to mention was the movie Gravity, which I saw over the weekend. In IMAX 3D, which was pretty awesome. And I mean the real IMAX, not those screens that are, like, a little bigger than a normal screen. That was an impressive movie. And while the IMAX 3D helped, I think it still would have been an excellent movie without it, it was just a very well crafted story.

That is all.