1.) FanExpo is growing so fast it’s honestly hard to believe. Five years ago this was just another shitty corp-con where James Marsters was the headliner. This year? Stan Lee. Nimoy and Shatner. Full editorial presence from DC and Marvel (and promises from both that next year FanExpo will have full portfolio review as per San Diego and New York). A horde of others besides. Don’t get me wrong: in many ways FanExpo is still a shitty corp-con. (And certainly not on par for awesomeoness value with the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, of course.) But it’s one that’s exploding. If it keeps growing at this rate, in two years or so it’ll be the second biggest con on the continent after San Diego; it’s already certainly bigger than anything else other than possibly New York.
2.) Of course, it would be really nice if the con organizers would act like they know they have a rapidly exploding convention on their hands, as opposed to, and I am just saying, a bunch of irresponsible idiots. Last year’s FanExpo had major crowding issues in the larger, southern half of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, so bad that they had to stop selling tickets. This year FanExpo couldn’t get the southern building for the con and, instead of purchasing the reservation from the organization which bought it (something other major cons have done in the past), settled for the smaller northern building. The main hall of the northern building is about half the size of the southern building. When they reached building capacity on Saturday (which happened at around noon), they didn’t tell anybody but let people exit (because there isn’t anywhere worthwhile inside the con to get good) and then didn’t let them back in. If the FanExpo organizers don’t get their heads out of their asses and make sure to get both buildings next year, they’ll have overcrowding issues that’ll probably make this year look wonderful in comparison.
3.) That having been said, the gaming area – off to one side, treated like the idiot stepchild of the nerd community – was full but pleasantly so. Justin Mohareb worked his ass off to provide a solid little gaming convention tacked onto the enormous behemoth groaning beneath its own weight that is FanExpo. It was a lovely experience, especially since I was volunteering and therefore did not have to pay for stuff. Well, if I had wanted to eat breakfast with James Marsters, that would have been extra. But I do not think eggs and bacon become better when you eat them with Spike.
4.) Because I was mostly not doing stuff other than helping people play board games, I didn’t do much con stuff. I generally never do. I made an exception this time and went to the DC Comics “how to get into comics” seminar, which was originally supposed to be Joey DeCavileri’s gig but ended up being Dan Didio’s instead. I want to make something clear before I go any further: whatever my beliefs about Didio’s creative tendencies as an editor, I’m a professional and I know a professional when I see one, and Didio was the consumnate professional. He was polite, honest, friendly, and tried to be as supportive of the attendees as possible without failing to be realistic.
5.) Which is important to note because I didn’t really go to the panel to learn how to get into comics, because frankly I did the research on that years ago and know the score. I went because I wanted to see the competition – this is perhaps not the nicest of reasons, but it’s the truth. The good news, from my perspective, is that a lot of people in that room aren’t interested in writing except on their terms, which is stupid: you have to start compromising to write professionally practically from the first word. You have to cut back against your own indulgences. Somebody commented a while back that one page in Al’Rashad contained the first sentence they considered “Birdian,” and that was entirely on purpose from my perspective; I know my tics better than anybody and I know when not to use them.
6.) A pause from this discussion about writing to say that I saw more people dressed up as the Doctor at this con than I have ever seen anywhere, which is good because the Doctor is a good costume: you get to wear nice clothes and most of them are relatively easy to put together. Only the Third Doctor (lace shirt and archaic jacket), Fifth (cricketer’s dress) and especially Sixth (ugly what-the-hell coat plus whiteboy afro) are a bit hard to manage. Heck, you can convert your Harry Potter costume into a Fourth Doctor easily enough: just don’t put on the glasses and fake scar, and cram jellybabies in your pocket.
7.) Also a good costume: Deadpool. This is because no matter how terrible your Deadpool costume is, people love Deadpool and will say “hey! Deadpool!” at you. If you are very fat and dress up as Deadpool, people might even not call you “Fatpool.”
8.) But I digress back to my original point. Of course, there were the usual band of “my question is HOW DARE YOU SIR” types, but Didio shut them down quite excellently by being both respectful and saying over and over again that their issues weren’t the point of the seminar. The point of the seminar was how to get work for DC in any of the major disciplines. He stressed the often low-paying nature of the gig frequently because he wanted to be honest; he explained to people, patiently, what editors looked for in art submissions multiple times. He said, straight-up, that writers looking to get work at the big two have to basically steal somebody else’s job, which means the bar is higher. Much higher. And of course people got offended by this, because people are stupid.
9.) Writing isn’t a zero-sum game, of course. But publishing, to an extent, is. That’s how things go: there isn’t enough paying work for everybody who wants to get paid to get paid, and if you don’t know that, grow up. Didio was patient with the people who didn’t understand that, as he was patient with the dreamers who want to change the business or grow the field. Dreams like that are great, but they don’t get you hired.
10.) And he was patient with the people who obviously didn’t understand the point of a pitch. Multiple people tried to debate Didio when he brought up “the gun pitch.” I’d heard about the gun pitch before (from Paul Levitz, actually, years ago). The gun pitch is “I want to tell the story of the gun that killed Batman’s parents.” And Didio explained that the problem with the pitch is that it’s not a Batman story, which is of course obviously true: if you’re telling the story of the gun that killed Batman’s parents, it ends when the Waynes get shot, which means it could be a story about any old gun.
11.) The debaters didn’t get it, of course. “Well, I’d like to read a story about the gun that killed Batman’s parents.” But the point of getting hired in any freelance industry is not “I can do this well,” because lots of people can do that. It’s “I can make your life easier if you give me work.” Pitching the gun story doesn’t make anybody’s life easier, because you’re not gonna give that story to somebody you don’t already know and trust.
12.) Another aside: the shopping at this con was miserably bad. When people are essentially paying a premium to get in the door to buy stuff, there should be, and I am just suggesting this, something resembling a sale price. If I can get it significantly cheaper at Amazon, your sale price is probably not very good. This goes for guy selling the Justin Bieber standups too. Especially the guy selling the Justin Bieber standups.
13.) One more thing: if you want to argue with Dan Didio about the gun pitch, it’s really easy. The trick is to make it a Batman story. You can do it in one sentence.
14. “Somebody is killing people with the gun that killed Batman’s parents.” That one’s for free.
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You know, I haven’t been to FanExpo for literally years (In fact, when I was up to Toronto for the Scott Pilgrim release party, someone asked me if I’d been, I said I’d never heard of it, and my friend had to tell me ‘You remember it as CN Anime’) but it sounds like it has actually grown up enough to be awesome.
Re: #2, do you think its that they don’t KNOW they have an exploding con, or that they don’t CARE? I know a few people associated with Anime North (another con in Toronto that has spent the last five years with enormous growth rates) and according to them it has similar organizational issues, not because the organizers don’t know it’s gotten big, but because they resent twenty thousand plus people are showing up to what was initially organized and billed as an intimate, close-knit con experience and so they really don’t care if their organization isn’t up to the level of, say, SDCC or perhaps Otakon.
Re: everything Didio-related, both DC and Marvel have really learned by now that anyone ‘corporate’ whom they put in front of a bunch of unstructured fans has GOT GOT GOT to know how to work the room. The creative types, the writers and artists, they can be giant douchenozzles or half drunk or whatever and its like ‘ha ha wait until I tell everyone what Warren Ellis did’ but when someone representing the company makes a misstep or is rude to a fan, NERD RAGE.
I am a little bit surprised by the ‘refuse to write except on their own terms’ phenomenon. Well, I mean, not really surprised, but… haven’t these people heard of the internet? Go make your own webcomic, dude. Or hell, write one of those ‘Exciting [steampunk/vampire/sexy drow] Novel Updates With A New Page Every Week!’ thingies if you can’t draw. If you ONLY want to write stories about Batman or Green Lantern or even Booster Gold, you’re… well, you’re a fanfic writer. No shame in that. But if you can’t build from scratch you PROBABLY aren’t cut out for the big leagues, you know?
The Batman example intrigues me; my impression has always been that DC explicitly discourages neophytes from pitching their Batman or Superman stories; they want incoming freelancers to pitch solid work (in accordance with industry-standard scripting templates and style guides, to prove you know what the fuck you’re doing) with their B-list and second tier properties that they can use as a filler issue somewhere in order to give you a test drive. Am I totally off base here?
“Somebody is killing people with the gun that killed Batman’s parents.”
I have to say, I’m honestly surprised that this story hasn’t already been done. It seems like the kind of thing that someone in the 70s totally would have written.
Murc, I think the fact that you can now gain some kind of audience for your own work online helps fuel that “only write on my own terms” attitude. If you’re convinced that you’re awesome because you have 15-20 people telling you that you’re a great writer, it’s probably not a huge step to “DC/Marvel should be grateful I want to work for them, I can do it on my own if they turn me down!”
I attended FanExpo (also as a volunteer in the role-playing game room). This was also my first large convention.
I was surprised by the lack of options for entertainment.
The games were not highly publicized. I always found about a game I would like to try after the fact.
The dealer are was so crowded as to make shopping impossible.
I don’t consider paying someone for their autograph to be entertainment.
The panels seemed very hit or miss.
So I question why people go to these things.
The only upside for me was interesting people-watching and I didn’t actually pay to get in.
Curious to know more about the board games! Did you get to try out anything ultra-brand-new I should be watching out for? Or were you sticking to tried & true personal favourites?
The last time I went to Fan Expo it was as the Ninth Doctor, which is perhaps the absolute easiest costume of all of them; black shoes, black pants, black shirt (with the proper neckline, which I happen to have one of), black leather jacket. Helps if you have a sonic screwdriver in your pocket of course, but I didn’t need it to be “recognized” by other Doctors. My wife simply stuck on a nametag saying “HELLO My name is Rose”, and wore jeans. (She is blonde)
I haven’t heard that particular example, but I also wonder if the issue with the gun that killed Batman’s parents is that it’s emblematic of people wanting to pitch stories that change or define some central part of the character’s mythos. (I mean, why would you want to do that story unless it revealed something previously unknown about Batman’s origin?)
That’s the tricky thing about pitching — you need to show a love for the character, but you can’t actually do anything that will have any impact on the character. (Could be worse, though — in TV you actually have to pitch scripts for _other shows_, since for legal reasons producers can’t read spec scripts for their own show.)
You know, your comments feel familiar to me in that Emerald City Comic Con is going through the same crazy growth curve. It hasn’t ever been a corp con, though Wizard did try to buy it out, but last 2009 was around 11K people, 2010 was about 20K people and 2011’s numbers are looking to be along that same growth path. We had Stan Lee and Nimoy last year and we’re getting Shatner next year, so I totally get where you’re at.
Staffing up to meet that growth is hard. Really, really hard.
I’m pretty sure much anything would be better with Spike but I realize I’m likely biased on this.
I learned not to pitch a story about the gun that killed Batman’s parents ever since I read Batman Year Two. Yuck.
Other Pitches We’d Like to See:
–A story about the spider that bit Peter Parker
–A story about the cosmic ray that flew into Ben Grimm
–A story about the barrel of radioactive waste that spilled onto Matt Murdoch
–A story about the shrapnel that got embedded in Tony Stark’s heart
–A story about the trench that Rick Jones got thrown into by Bruce Banner just before the bomb went off that turned Banner into the Hulk (old-school origin)
–A story about the syringe that injected the Super Soldier serum into Captain America
–A story about the giant pile of money that Blue Beetle earned in order to finance becoming the Blue Beetle
–A story about the leftover piece of chained link that Luke Cage turned into a belt (ADDED BONUS: a story about the tattoo needle used to give Iron Fist his tattoos)
–A story of the pen used to sign the Constitution Act, 1867, without which Alpha Flight would not exist
Oh, I can go you one better, Chris: I was at a table for the Durham Comics Guild (www.durhamcomicsguild.com, plug plug) and one of the guys working the booth–who had an exhibitor badge–wasn’t allowed back in after leaving. This is after they’d implemented the oh-so-well-thought-out plan of having exhibitors need to get their fucking hands stamped to get back in.
The organization was a complete clusterfuck this year. Just thoroughly unprofessional. We sold miserably compared to previous years, and I partly blame what a sour mood everyone was in.
I would actually read a story about Ted Kord: Entrepreneur.
@Mister Alex: Mark Millar wrote a story about the spider that bit Peter Parker. It’s the first arc of Spider-Man: Tangled Webs.
You’re welcome.
@Diego: I figured if any of those stories actually existed, it would be that one. Oh, and thank you.
Now how about a crossover with Charlotte’s Web?
That’s pretty stupid. If I write Batman, I have to answer to DC because they own Batman and pay me to do what they want. It’s a job, it’s like working in a department store and saying you want to set your department they way you like it and that’s it. You don’t like it, start your own major store or create your own iconic superhero.
Mister Alex: Actually, the barrel of goo that blinded Daredevil would go on to spill on 4 turtles who were crawling in the sewer.
And I believe the gun that killed Batman’s parents is buried in the Batcave….been a long time since I read the story.
[…] Item: Mightygodking has some thoughts. […]
The Fan Expo really needs to find a bigger location, no? The north end of the convention centre’s too small now, and the south end is a glum goddamn bunker that makes me feel like the con has hidden us away, a shameful secret placed deep underground. Maybe the Toronto Congress Centre?
Also I have a pitch ready for a nice four-part miniseries on the cotton plants that became Mr. Tawky Tawny’s suit. Give me a call, Didio! YOU’D LET GRANT MORRISON DO IT!
The “I want to do it my way only” is sadly common. I have a friend who’s an artist. His life ambition has been to break into comics.
He’s literally one of the best comic artists I’ve ever seen. His default style is very traditional comics story telling…marvel house if you will, but his rendering is brillaint, with almost photorealistic duplication of people if he wants..freehand, mind you. He’s like Alex Ross if Ross’s art showed any storytelling. And he’s great at styles ranging from cloning Ditko to Timm’s DCU style.
To say that he’d make a mint breaking in doing books for a company heavy into licensed books..IDW, Dark Horse, Dynamite, goes without saying, but for now, the best he does is ink assisting on random Marvel books thrown his way when a friend of his who’s working there needs some help…so rather than an “Art by” credit, he sometimes has the scribbled in the margin “Special thanks to”.
And why is this?
Because he wants to be Alex Ross of today, doing his special dream projects, rather than having to fist be the Alex Ross who drew a story in Marvel’s Open Space, and did a Now Comics Terminator series, and so on. He doesn’t want to do the time, to get to be prime.
(I doubt he ever even contacted MGK..or even looked him up, to recommend they discuss Dr. Strange pitches, as Strange is his long time favorite).
What about the story about the symbiote that took over eddie brock and became venom… no, wait…
The only problem with the story about “someone is killing people with the gun that killed batman’s parents” is that it’s… a bit meh really – basically its a story that revolves around how someone knows its the gun that killed batman’s parents, and how batman knows its the gun that killed his parents… which immediately makes it into another “villain tries to pull a mindscrew on a man who already dresses up as a fucking bat” story – i.e. as pitches go you’re not really pitching an idea so much as saying “I would like to do the most generic and frequently done batman story in existence” which… no. Especially as its liable to be an excuse to insert a totally kewl new villain who’s totally bad ass and kewl and he’s evil and wants to pull a mindscrew on batman and stuff and stuff into Batman canon.
The way to do the story is to make it not “someone is killing people with the gun” but “the gun is used to kill someone” – so maybe “how would batman react if, for whatever reason, alfred or another member of the bat family ended up using The Gun in self defense to kill someone?”
You could even work in an aversion of the first story by having the setup to the story involve a New & Kewl villain attempt to set in motion the “what if someone is killing people with The Gun” plot by staging a scenario that distracts the majority of the bat family long enough so the villain can break into the batcave and steal The Gun, only to have the issue end with Alfred easily pwning all the villain’s henchmen, and then in the final epic struggle with the main villain have alfred properly kill the villain dead for ever with The Gun.
And that’s the point Batman comes home.
THAT story also allows you to work the “the story of the gun that killed batman’s parents” story into it via batman musing and internal monologueing about how he tracked the gun down and learnt about its history, as well as really run away with the whole “making of a weapon” motif as far as it relates to batman and robin and the entire batfamily.
Hell you could even have him question the logic and sanity involved with someone who keeps that incredibly silver age era “trophy room” of which The Gun forms a part.
And then if editorial was feeling REALLY daring, you could start a whole “minimalist” era of batman, where batman gets stripped down to the absolute core of what makes the character work as a great character without having to go through the whole “reboot” rigmarole for the umpteenth time.
@Fred
I hadn’t intended to go off into a nerdgasm about the gun idea (and oh, it was tempting), but since someone else did already, I feel way less guilty about the threadjack thing and indulge in helping you break the story.
There’s a possibility here you missed in your breakdown; making the gun story a stripped-down detective story. You refer to going towards (and I like that you don’t say back, because it means you recognize such an era never really existed) a minimalist version of Batman, and you don’t really need costumed villains and mind screws and whatnot to make that work.
Go like this; Batman doesn’t have the gun, because they never got the dude who killed his parents. (I do not know if that is the case in current canon, it’s hard to keep track; someone correct me if I’m wrong.) But he DOES have the bullets; Thomas and Martha Wayne’s murder was a big deal so the normally corrupt/inept Gotham PD of that time actually took care when it came to the evidence. Some years later, after he became Batman, Bruce liberated them from the cold case evidence locker and analyzed the fuck out of them.
Now imagine Batman arrives too late to the scene of a deadly mugging. Par for the course; it happens way to often, and there are tons of murders in Gotham he never even hears about, but he still takes arriving thirty seconds late as a PERSONAL attack, because he’s Batman. So he waits for the coroners to get done, and then scores a bullet for himself. Guess what it matches!
Now you have a set-up for a MYSTERY. Moreover, its a mystery rooted in straight-up detective work and criminology. Hardly unique in the annals of Batman, but it allows for a lot more subtlety than ‘lolz got your gun’ played out by a Hush type. It’s the sort of story that would have been perfect for ‘Legends of the Dark Knight’ before they shitcanned that title; something from the first couple-three years of his career, most likely pre-Robin, when he was more about CRIMINAL criminals than he was about costumed freakjobs.
And it doesn’t even have to end in a giant confrontation or huge emotional breakthrough. Maybe he NEVER tracks the bullet back to the gun. Maybe it turns out the current guy with the gun is a two-bit thug who got the gun from a guy who got it from a fence who bought it from another guy who is dead now. But how much of Gotham’s underworld is he gong to have to kick through before he gets to that point?
Oh, and I think you might have missed the point of the trophy room. The JLA’s trophy room is to remind them of all their great triumphs. Batman’s trophy room is to remind him of everything that rests on him NOT FAILING, or driving home the consequences thereof. The Giant Penny isn’t a reminder of one of Two-Faces more ludicrous plots; it existed to remind him that Harvey KILLED PEOPLE as part of that plot because he, Batman, just wasn’t good enough. It’s a giant ongoing self-inflicted guilt trip. It’s why Jason’s costume got a special lighted case.
Murc pretty much got what I was going for.
About a million other bullets in existence used by the same model of firearm?
Hey, no dissing James Marsters! ^^ Spike was awesome!
Skemono, in addition to narrowing down a bullet to a general class of guns, and sometimes to a specific model, ballistic fingerprinting can identify an individual gun, by irregularities introduced by imperfections in tools and production processes, and by wear and tear over time.
If a gun has seen a lot of use, its possible that these individual characteristics can undergo enough change to render the new bullets unrecognizable as coming from the same gun, but there is no need for that to derail the story. unless you can figure out a way to improve the story with a derailing like that.
More Pitches…
A guy who has the gun that shot Batman’s parents gets into a duel against a guy who has the gun that shot Uncle Ben. (Yeah, it’s different universes… I smell CROSSOVER!)
Or, here’s a two-parter:
1) A story where Green Arrow kills somebody’s parents.
2) A story about the arrow that Green Arrow used to kill somebody’s parents.
No? How about…
1) A story about the gun used to kill Jughead’s parents
2) A prequel story where a crazed meth addict brutally guns down Jughead’s parents
I think probably the worst Dr. Who costume is the Eighth Doctor, because fuck if anybody will recognize you. The cravat is a nice plus though.
I would like stories about
-The exposed ankle which made Turner D. Century wig out and become a terrorist.
-The automat where Namor had a bad turkey sandwich in 1938, giving him indigestion and provoking him into swearing vengeance on the surface world.
-The bottle opener which Frank Castle couldn’t find at the bottom of his picnic basket which allowed his head to be safely ducked out of the way of the bullets which killed his family.
-Robert Cauterio, who portrayed Manuel the Horse Groom in “The Mark of Zorro,” which Bruce Wayne saw on the night his parents were killed.
More seriously, a story about the skald who sang Thor and the rest of the Norse pantheon into existence, but I don’t see Grant Morrison writing for Marvel again anytime soon.
I believe it was the recent miniseries, The Oath, where Doctor Strange got shot with the gun that Hitler used to commit suicide. Because of all the psychic resonances around the damned thing, it ripped right through his mystic defenses. The gun that killed the Waynes? Oh man.
Dammit, YOS. Now I want to read a story involving the gun that killed the Waynes, the Arkannone, the Ace of Winchesters, and the unquiet shade of Tommy Monaghan.
I have to wonder if the MTCC is the right venue for the FanExpo.With the way it’s growing, they probably should find a larger place to hold it. Maybe the Air Canada Center. Next year, it will be held once again three stories underground, Toronto’s dirty little secret out of sight and out of mind.
Another problem is the lack of media coverage. None of Toronto’s major newspapers, or the Sun, have articles about it, and the only coverage on TV (that I say) was talking about how the buzzkill fire marshal shut it down.
Still another problem is ticket sales. On Sunday, the Con was supposed to open at 11, but the ticket booths weren’t open until 12. And despite there being about 13, they still weren’t enough.
On a more positive note, I did buy one of those mousepads MGK featured last year.
Well, i’m sure Didio is very glad that his golden boy Geoff Johns managed to tell the story of not only Hal Jordan’s jacket (cause its *very* important) but also Barry Allen’s bow tie (also very important).
I wonder how those pitches went?
I’m almost positive that the real reason why people can’t make the gun pitch is that Johns called dibs.
This is a guy who felt it was necessary to explain Power Girl’s cleavage and the sun logo on the Crimson Avenger’s horrible second costume. I just know he has at least three different versions of the gun story on his hard drive.
I received this email a few days ago
LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
Dear fans,
On behalf of the staff of Fan Expo Canada™ I would like to apologize for the lengthy delays and inconvenience experienced by many at Fan Expo Canada™ this past weekend. We were, quite simply, inadequately prepared for the increased crowds in a venue that was neither familiar to us nor not capable of meeting our collective demands. We recognize and have heard from many of you that this was unacceptable and unfair to our loyal fans.
The staff at Fan Expo have been and will continue to read and act upon the concerns communicated by our fans about Fan Expo 2010. In preparation for Fan Expo Canada™ 2011, we have already confirmed a booking of the entire South Metro Toronto Convention Centre. This will be the largest area ever used for our show and its layout is far better suited to the size and nature of our event. We are also committed to the communication of key practices for ticket purchases, show access and other related logistics effectively and well in advance of the 2011 show. In addition, we intend to engage all of the event stakeholders as we work through the planning process including: staff, fans, venue, security, Fire & Emergency Services, Tourism Toronto and the City of Toronto in this process.
We appreciate the continued support of each fan, and are grateful to have fans who are willing to take the time and effort to help improve the “Fan Expo Experience”. Again we sincerely apologize to the fans that were unable to enjoy the full experience of Fan Expo 2010. Please know that we welcome your feedback and suggestions for how we can improve the fan experience. Please forward your comments to us at info@hobbystar.com.
Sincerely yours,
Aman Gupta and the Fan Expo Team