The following comes from Bully Says: Comics Oughta Be Fun! but it bears re-posting and people ought to be aware of what's going on there. -The Editor
Overheard at San Diego Comic-Con while I was having lunch on the balcony of the Convention Center on Sunday July 27: a bunch of guys looking at the digital photos on the camera of another, while he narrated: "These were the Ghostbusters girls. That one, I grabbed her ass, 'cause I wanted to see what her reaction was." This was only one example of several instances of harassment, stalking or assault that I saw at San Diego this time.
1. One of my friends was working at a con booth selling books. She was stalked by a man who came to her booth several times, pestering her to get together for a date that night. One of her co-workers chased him off the final time.
2. On Friday, just before the show closed, this same woman was closing up her tables when a group of four men came to her booth, started taking photographs of her, telling her she was the "prettiest girl at the con." They they entered the booth, started hugging and kissing her and taking photographs of themselves doing so. She was confused and scared, but they left quickly after doing that.
3. Another friend of mine, a woman running her own booth: on Friday a man came to her booth and openly criticized her drawing ability and sense of design. Reports from others in the same section of the floor confirmed he'd targeted several women with the same sort of abuse and criticism.
Quite simply, this behavior has got to stop at Comic-Con. It should never be a sort of place where anyone, man or woman, feels unsafe or attacked either verbally or physically in any shape or form. There are those, sadly, who get off on this sort of behavior and assault, whether it's to professional booth models, cosplayers or costumed women, or women who are just there to work. This is not acceptable behavior under any circumstance, no matter what you look like or how you're dressed, whether you are in a Princess Leia slave girl outfit or business casual for running your booth.
On Saturday, the day after the second event I described above, I pulled out my convention book to investigate what you can do and who you can speak to after such an occurrence. On page two of the book there is a large grey box outlining "Convention Policies," which contain rules against smoking, live animals, wheeled handcarts, recording at video presentations, drawing or aiming your replica weapon, and giving your badge to others. There is nothing about attendee-to-attendee personal behavior.
Page three of the book contains a "Where Is It?" guide to specific Comic-Con events and services. There's no general information room or desk listed, nor is there a contact location for security, so I go to the Guest Relations Desk. I speak to a volunteer manning the desk; she's sympathetic to the situation but who doesn't have a clear answer to my question: "What's Comic-Con's policy and method of dealing with complaints about harassment?" She directs me to the nearest security guard, who is also sympathetic listening to my reports, but short of the women wanting to report the incidents with the names of their harassers, there's little that can be done.
"I understand that," I tell them both, "but what I'm asking is more hypothetical and informational: if there is a set Comic-Con policy on harassment and physical and verbal abuse on Con attendees and exhibitors, and if so, what's the specific procedure by which someone should report it, and specifically where should they go?" But this wasn't a question either could answer.
So, according to published con policy, there is no tolerance for smoking, drawn weapons, personal pages or selling bootleg videos on the floor, and these rules are written down in black and white in the con booklet. There is not a word in the written rules about harassment or the like. I would like to see something like "Comic-Con has zero tolerance for harassment or violence against any of our attendees or exhibitors. Please report instances to a security guard or the Con Office in room XXX."
The first step to preventing such harassment is giving its victims the knowledge that they can safely and swiftly report such instances to someone in authority. Having no published guideline, and indeed being unable to give a clear answer to questions about it, gives harassment and violence one more rep-tape loophole to hide behind.
I enjoyed Comic-Con. I'm looking forward to coming back next year. So, in fact, are the two women whose experiences I've retold above. Aside from those instances, they had a good time at the show. But those instances of harassment shouldn't have happened at all, and that they did under no clear-cut instructions about what to do sadly invites the continuation of such behavior, or even worse.
I don't understand why there's no such written policy about what is not tolerated and what to do when this happens. Is there anyone at Comic-Con able to explain this? Does a similar written policy exist in the booklets for other conventions (SF, comics or otherwise) that could be used as a model? Can it be adapted or adapted, and enforced, for Comic-Con? As the leading event of the comics and pop culture world, Comic-Con should work to make everyone who attends feel comfortable and safe.
–John DiBello
Crossposted From Here
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
On Evaluating
It seems to me that comics fan culture and publishers have three basic criteria for evaluating and marketing both weekly and collected comics. In the following post I provide a brief sketch for these three modes of evaluation. They are by no means encyclopedic in their nature, but I do believe that I get the broad strokes correct.
I. The Important Work
The "important" work has its origins in the mid-1980s and is mostly tied to the emergence of the direct market and an aging fan base well versed in the history of comics lore. The "important" work only makes sense if its audience is aware of the tortuous histories of copyrighted characters and if the comic magazine - either in its individual or collected form - has to be perceived as more or less a permanent object. The importance of this work rests on the permanence of the artifact and a deep knowledge of comic book history because it often promises grand scale action which will guarantee some irrevocable change. As such, it needs to remain on the stands so that it can remain as a sign of some turning point.
Due to its size and its interest in operating on a large scale, the "important" work pays minimal interest in character development and tends to stress spectacle, size, and generally, crossovers. Archetypal "important" works are Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret War. As of now, this is generally preferred storyline with the Big Two, and given the sales of titles like Civil War and Infinite Crisis, the fans themselves.
II. The Quality Work
The "important" work promises to bring big changes and sells itself as a "must-read" for fans. However, it makes little promise to actually being any good and often fails to institutionalizing the changes that it promises to deliver. There are, of course, notable exceptions to this, but I do not know anyone who is dying to pick up an old copy of Armageddon 2001.
Unlike the "important" work which makes promises to its own importance, the quality work is a little less showy about its promise to quality. Indeed, quality works often have no claims made about them by their publisher because they are often created and sustained in the shadow of cancellation. However, like works of great literature, it implicitly makes a contract with the reader that it will enlighten them about the medium or life in general. The mainstream variation of this type of work is generally cloaked in the trappings of the superhero genre, but it is not principally concerned with good guys beating up bad guys. Thus, Sandman is principally a mediation on free will, Starman is concerned with family relationships, and Alias is preoccupied with living with personal trauma.
The quality work is equally indebted to the direct market and the need for a permanent comic artifact. It requires a sophisticated audience, but its sophistication does not come from its arcane knowledge of character histories. It instead requires an audience who can read for theme and is willing to be devoted to a creator who is recognized as an artist. This is different than the "important" work which is more likely to be sold on the basis of an "event" and while the writer or artist might be part of the appeal, it is a secondary one. Furthermore, the creators behind an "important" work are likely to have mastered a recognizable house style.
In contradistinction to the "important" work, the quality work tends to be idiosyncratic, both in terms of style (although there are certain conventions that normally employed in some way or another) and in character. hile the important event might be long in terms of pages, its time frame is usually relatively short; no "important" work has lasted more than a year. Because of this and its usually diffuse and multi-character structure, the important work minimizes character in favor of spectacle and variety. We are promised that our favorite character will appear, however briefly. In contrast the quality work will often focus on one character or a small family of characters who over the course of five to six years will be fully realized as individuals, who will be distinct, and will often be untouched by future writers. Although they are owned by a media conglomerate, they remain intrinsically their auteur's characters both to fans and to the heads over at corporate.
Besides Fables, I cannot think of any work presently being published that has achieved any level of recognition that we would call a quality work.
III. The Consistent Work
Finally, we have the consistent work. This model of evaluation and creation relies less on any relationship to the direct market or an understanding of complex history. The consistent work might be the product of an aspiring auteur or someone who wants to write the next "important" work, but it is more than anything the writing of a competent comics craftsman who writes with the single issue in mind. He delivers his work on time and in working order. The work may at times be uneven, but at times it rises to near greatness. It has no pretensions either to importance or to extreme quality. It aims to be entertaining. Mark Waid's first run on The Flash might be an example of this in terms of writing and Don Kramer's present performance on Nightwing might be an example of this in terms of art.
While there are plenty of good examples of consistent workmanship in comics today, as the single issue becomes devalued as a moneymaker, this becomes less and less of a priority for companies if not for fans. The "important" work seems more likely to not also strive to be consistent work as its creators and publishers know that it will eventually be collected and published in trade. The "important" work that also strives to be, at some level, a quality work seems even less likely to meet a "consistent" standard.
IV. What The Future Holds
As the value of the single issue continues to fall, the value of consistency will be sure to go with it. Who needs to be consistent or timely when the real money lies in the collected product? As more and more fans begin to wait for the trade, it seems unlikely that anyone will much mind if they have to weight a little longer.
The "important" work, because it can so easily be collected, and because it proves to be so effective in capturing the attention of fanboys also seems to face no serious form of decline and will remain a valuable way of understanding, marketing, and evaluating works of comics fiction.
However, one wonders if the quality work will survive. Marvel has always been less interested in serious character studies (hence Johnny Storm and Peter Parker seem permanent juveniles in a case of arrested development) and DC has for the last few years dedicated itself to "crisis" management. Their current strategy for producing quality work is to repackage their previous successes in the omnibus forms of Starman and Sandman and to dub, previous "consistent" work by Jack Kirby as quality and give it the star treatment in deluxe reprinting. However, where is the new quality? With their Vertigo imprint a shadow of what it once was, and their mainstream line dedicated primarily to sea of inanities and half-thought through concepts, where will the new quality come from?
I. The Important Work
The "important" work has its origins in the mid-1980s and is mostly tied to the emergence of the direct market and an aging fan base well versed in the history of comics lore. The "important" work only makes sense if its audience is aware of the tortuous histories of copyrighted characters and if the comic magazine - either in its individual or collected form - has to be perceived as more or less a permanent object. The importance of this work rests on the permanence of the artifact and a deep knowledge of comic book history because it often promises grand scale action which will guarantee some irrevocable change. As such, it needs to remain on the stands so that it can remain as a sign of some turning point.
Due to its size and its interest in operating on a large scale, the "important" work pays minimal interest in character development and tends to stress spectacle, size, and generally, crossovers. Archetypal "important" works are Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret War. As of now, this is generally preferred storyline with the Big Two, and given the sales of titles like Civil War and Infinite Crisis, the fans themselves.
II. The Quality Work
The "important" work promises to bring big changes and sells itself as a "must-read" for fans. However, it makes little promise to actually being any good and often fails to institutionalizing the changes that it promises to deliver. There are, of course, notable exceptions to this, but I do not know anyone who is dying to pick up an old copy of Armageddon 2001.
Unlike the "important" work which makes promises to its own importance, the quality work is a little less showy about its promise to quality. Indeed, quality works often have no claims made about them by their publisher because they are often created and sustained in the shadow of cancellation. However, like works of great literature, it implicitly makes a contract with the reader that it will enlighten them about the medium or life in general. The mainstream variation of this type of work is generally cloaked in the trappings of the superhero genre, but it is not principally concerned with good guys beating up bad guys. Thus, Sandman is principally a mediation on free will, Starman is concerned with family relationships, and Alias is preoccupied with living with personal trauma.
The quality work is equally indebted to the direct market and the need for a permanent comic artifact. It requires a sophisticated audience, but its sophistication does not come from its arcane knowledge of character histories. It instead requires an audience who can read for theme and is willing to be devoted to a creator who is recognized as an artist. This is different than the "important" work which is more likely to be sold on the basis of an "event" and while the writer or artist might be part of the appeal, it is a secondary one. Furthermore, the creators behind an "important" work are likely to have mastered a recognizable house style.
In contradistinction to the "important" work, the quality work tends to be idiosyncratic, both in terms of style (although there are certain conventions that normally employed in some way or another) and in character. hile the important event might be long in terms of pages, its time frame is usually relatively short; no "important" work has lasted more than a year. Because of this and its usually diffuse and multi-character structure, the important work minimizes character in favor of spectacle and variety. We are promised that our favorite character will appear, however briefly. In contrast the quality work will often focus on one character or a small family of characters who over the course of five to six years will be fully realized as individuals, who will be distinct, and will often be untouched by future writers. Although they are owned by a media conglomerate, they remain intrinsically their auteur's characters both to fans and to the heads over at corporate.
Besides Fables, I cannot think of any work presently being published that has achieved any level of recognition that we would call a quality work.
III. The Consistent Work
Finally, we have the consistent work. This model of evaluation and creation relies less on any relationship to the direct market or an understanding of complex history. The consistent work might be the product of an aspiring auteur or someone who wants to write the next "important" work, but it is more than anything the writing of a competent comics craftsman who writes with the single issue in mind. He delivers his work on time and in working order. The work may at times be uneven, but at times it rises to near greatness. It has no pretensions either to importance or to extreme quality. It aims to be entertaining. Mark Waid's first run on The Flash might be an example of this in terms of writing and Don Kramer's present performance on Nightwing might be an example of this in terms of art.
While there are plenty of good examples of consistent workmanship in comics today, as the single issue becomes devalued as a moneymaker, this becomes less and less of a priority for companies if not for fans. The "important" work seems more likely to not also strive to be consistent work as its creators and publishers know that it will eventually be collected and published in trade. The "important" work that also strives to be, at some level, a quality work seems even less likely to meet a "consistent" standard.
IV. What The Future Holds
As the value of the single issue continues to fall, the value of consistency will be sure to go with it. Who needs to be consistent or timely when the real money lies in the collected product? As more and more fans begin to wait for the trade, it seems unlikely that anyone will much mind if they have to weight a little longer.
The "important" work, because it can so easily be collected, and because it proves to be so effective in capturing the attention of fanboys also seems to face no serious form of decline and will remain a valuable way of understanding, marketing, and evaluating works of comics fiction.
However, one wonders if the quality work will survive. Marvel has always been less interested in serious character studies (hence Johnny Storm and Peter Parker seem permanent juveniles in a case of arrested development) and DC has for the last few years dedicated itself to "crisis" management. Their current strategy for producing quality work is to repackage their previous successes in the omnibus forms of Starman and Sandman and to dub, previous "consistent" work by Jack Kirby as quality and give it the star treatment in deluxe reprinting. However, where is the new quality? With their Vertigo imprint a shadow of what it once was, and their mainstream line dedicated primarily to sea of inanities and half-thought through concepts, where will the new quality come from?
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