Cold, Vulcan logic

Tom Spurgeon, for the win:

“I’m baffled why it should take anything more than prominent people in the comics industry declaring they’re uncomfortable with a business this year to make folks consider with seriousness and respect the courtesy of a bare-minimum effort to patronize another place until the situation shakes out. Instead, the response from many people seems to be finding ways to justify continued patronage as if this were a very, very precious thing. In fact, most of the rationalizing being done on behalf of continued patronage not only invests it with importance, it seems to presume one’s decision to hang out and drink in a certain location comes as the fulfillment of an expectation for received business that no entity on earth should get to claim or have claimed on its behalf. The end result: no one simply disagrees. Rather, there seems to be a compulsion that one agree with the spirit of the objection being made and explain why they can’t do anything about it.”

No birds were harmed in the writing of this post

Chris Butcher offers some excellent advice on nurturing the next phase of the manga industry:

“If you’ve got a store that believes in the material, and that keeps it in stock, not just makes it available for pre-order, then you can sell the material. In short, we have to invest in the industry we want, not just as retailers, but as journalists and pundits by covering the material we like, and as consumers by supporting the books we like with our dollars.

“That’s my prescription for the manga industry: let’s make the industry we want, do our best to convert fashion into function, and celebrate our successes where we find them rather than complain that we’re not quite successful enough.”

I’m all about combining errands, so here’s a possible way to kill two birds with one stone. (Sorry about the inherent animal cruelty of that phrase, but I haven’t had enough caffeine to recall a more benevolent alternative.) If you’re attending Comic-Con International and find some extra spending money in your pocket because you don’t feel like giving any to the Manchester Grand Hyatt, you could swing by the Fanfare/Ponent Mon booth (C04) and buy some of their lovely, lovely books. As Deb Aoki noted, Fanfare’s distribution system with Atlas isn’t quite 100% yet, so SDCC is probably your best chance to browse the publisher’s catalogue, gape in wonder at books like The Walking Man, Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators, and Kinderbook, and to pick up a copy of Hideo Azuma’s nothing-else-like-it Disappearance Diary (which I reviewed here).

Now, as for “supporting the books we like with our dollars,” Brigid Alverson works in an excellent way to do that in a recent post at MangaBlog: ordering titles via your local bookstore, especially if they’re books that might not otherwise get shelved. This strikes me as a great way to put offbeat titles on a store’s radar, and I’ve heard from various people that many stores will order a couple of shelf copies of a title when they get a special order. Also, you don’t have to worry about potentially climbing shipping costs from online retailers, though you still have to pay for gas to get to the local big box.

At Comics Should Be Good, Danielle Leigh gives a fine example of “covering the material we like” with her latest Manga Before Flowers column on CMX, DC’s stealth manga division:

“But CMX made me a fan for life by bringing over really extraordinary titles that no one else ever has and published them on a very consistent schedule over the past few years (Even though three of four volumes of Eroica a year isn’t a lot, it is enough to make me happy).”

Reservations confirmation

Chris Butcher points out that the owner of San Diego’s Manchester Grand Hyatt made a substantial donation to efforts to pass Proposition 8, which would confine marriage in California to heterosexual couples. I guess that Hyatt property won’t be offering any honeymoon packages to same-sex couples either.

“The group’s message Thursday was to urge residents and tourists to stay at other hotels. The boycott call comes at the height of the summer and just one week before the start of the 2008 Gay Pride festivities in San Diego, during which 200,000 attendees are expected to attend, according to festival organizers.”

July is a good month for gay nerds in San Diego.

I’m not sure what I would do if I were going to the comic convention and had made a reservation at the Hyatt. I like to think I’d cancel my reservation and try to find other lodgings, but who knows if that’s even possible at this point? If at all possible, I try to do research in advance so I know that I’m not giving my money to a narrow-minded bigot. In this case, given the timing of the donation and the scarcity of lodging, I think I’d probably have to lump it. I know the climate in San Deigeo is supposed to be lovely, but I’m just not a camper.

Just out of curiosity, and knowing that the hospitality industry tends to be one of the gay-friendlier segments of the economy, I thought I’d see if I could dig up Hyatt’s non-discrimination policy:

“In addition, Hyatt abides by local equal employment opportunity policy to assure that all personnel related actions are administered without regard to race, color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, age, religion, mental or physical disability or any other group protected by law.”

And I looked into their domestic partner benefits policy, which is quite inclusive.

I wonder what corporate policy is in regards to franchisees and their business practices, and how stringently they expect individual hotel owners to adhere to corporate policy? I doubt it would apply to a private donation made by someone who just happens to be a franchise owner, but I can’t imagine Hyatt is happy with the publicity.

Theoretical hounding

I’m not going to make it to this year’s New York Comic Con, but if I were there, I’d be hounding Fanfare/Ponent Mon’s Stephen Robson as much as possible. And just because I love their books, here’s Fanfare’s press release about convention plans and upcoming titles. Commence squeeing after the cut. (And if you’re going to the con, buy one of Fanfare’s books. You won’t regret it.)

I’m sure this won’t become tiresome at all

Well, that’s cutting it close. With only eight months to go, Publishers Weekly Comics Week is finally getting around to previewing the next New York Comic-Con. Which is in April.

I do think it’s a nice idea to make attendance easier for small-press operations, though I tend to agree with Chris Mautner that an example or success story would have been nice. Then again, with two-thirds of a year before the event, perhaps organizers will have time to execute the plan.

I kind of wonder why the story couldn’t wait until they could name-check an indie house or two, because… well… eight months is a long time. I’m sure it’s not Reed Exhibition’s strategy to use PWCW to alert indie houses to the opportunity when they could just e-mail them. Hell, I can e-mail them, and I use a Yahoo account.

But if I did…

I won’t be attending the San Diego Comic-Con this year. Let’s face it. I probably won’t be attending it any year. I’m extremely reluctant to fly anywhere, for a number of reasons. (I’m not afraid of the experience. I’m just ceaselessly irritated by almost every aspect of it.) And I can’t quite picture myself getting on a plane specifically to attend a comic convention. I’ll drive to one, or better still, take a train, but neither of those options is really practical when your starting point is West Virginia and your destination is Southern California.

A dislike of being herded and anxiety over my carbon footprint don’t necessarily constitute a condemnation of the con itself, and if I were to go, I’d find plenty of interesting panels to occupy my time. So here’s what I wouldn’t want to miss:

Quick manga links

At MangaBlog, Brigid chats with Yen Press guru Kurt Hassler about the imprint’s possible manga magazine and other schemes so crazy they just might work.

TangognaT is celebrating the fourth anniversary of her blog by giving away some awesome books.

The Beat points to T. Campbell’s sum-up of the webcomics panel at the New York Comic Con, with plenty of focus on Netcomics and its business model. The recently announced Netcomics/Yaoi Press partnership is one of the things that has (not safe for work) Simon Jones wondering if digital delivery’s time has finally come.

Boy, I categorized the hell out of this one, didn’t I? Fear my flagrant abuse of WordPress functionalities!

Speculation

I got an intriguing press release from Go! Comi in the e-mailbox yesterday:

WENDY PINI TO APPEAR AT GO! COMI PANEL

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Legendary comic creator Wendy Pini (”ElfQuest”) will be appearing at manga publisher Go! Comi’s panel at New York Comic Con to announce a major new project, which she describes as “darkly exciting and adult oriented.” The panel will be held at 2:00 PM on Saturday, February 24th. Wendy will be joined by her husband, Richard Pini, for an autograph session at Go! Comi’s booth (#564) at 3:00 PM immediately after the panel.

In light of Go! Comi’s previous announcement that they’ll be conducting portfolio reviews at NYCC, it seems increasingly likely that someone’s thinking about branching out.

Con jobs

A dust-up seems to be brewing over the inaugural American Anime Awards, to be debuted this year at the New York Comic Con. At MangaCast, Ed Chavez takes a moment from his travels in Japan to look over the ballot, particularly the manga nominees, and he finds it wanting. Anime News Network interrogates ICv2’s Milton Griepp over the conception of the awards program and what could be construed as ADV’s undue influence.

The awards have struck me as a rather odd fit for this particular con since they were announced. Anime isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about the NYCC, and the impression was reinforced by the closing remarks from this week’s PWCW interview with con organizer Greg Toplian:

“What I’m told is that we’re the literary show. This is New York City, and it’s about comics and book publishing. Editorial staff or the licensing departments can all stop by the convention for the price of cab fare. The Friday trade day also helps. We’re a more bookish show than others and getting Stephen King to attend as a guest of honor is the perfect illustration of that.”

(Dedicated conspiracy theorists will undoubtedly note that the interview is illustrated with a photo of Toplian and ADV’s Chris Oarr. The snark-centric will undoubtedly note the dangerous proximity of “literary” and “Stephen King.”)

Aside from the overcrowding issue, the general impression that emerged from last year’s NYCC was one of wider publisher interest in the category – book publishers scouring the con floor for talent and contemplating ways to slice off their own piece of the graphic novel pie. And while anime is certainly a driver in graphic novel sales, it doesn’t seem like an intuitive fit. Back at the ANN interview, Griepp provides some background:

“New York Comic Con was actively searching for an awards program from one of its categories to be associated with the convention, so a venue and supporting event became available. The association with New York Comic Con allowed the awards program to take advantage of the location in the media capital of the world, with a very large press corps already attending.”

The PWCW interview had plenty on its plate without delving into the new awards program, and Calvin Reid did address another issue that’s been simmering:

“We’ve heard some complaints about a lack of women creators being invited officially to be a part of the show. When I checked the guest list at the Web site, there was one woman out of about 31 invited guest artists. While I understand there are more women involved in some of the as-yet-unannounced programming, this still seems like an unfortunate message to send out. Particularly since the mainstream New York comics industry has a long history of excluding women.”

One out of 31? That’s an even worse percentage than San Diego.

French fried

I think I’ve achieved something of a personal best in terms of laziness with this week’s Flipped. It’s basically just a trawl through the Angoulême catalog to see what licensed manga made the short list for 2007. And can’t we always stand to freshen up the roster of books we wish North American publishers would license?