Conventions

Geek Punditry #107: Big Cons, Small Rewards

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Last weekend was one of the biggest nerd events that hits my neck of the woods every year: Fan Expo New Orleans. This is the single biggest media convention to come to southern Louisiana annually. I’ve gone almost every year, going back to its early days before Fan Expo took over, all the years it was Wizard World New Orleans, and even before that. I have attended with friends, with family, with my wife and son, and I’ve occasionally attended on my own. I’ve been there as a podcaster, I’ve been there as a panelist, and I’ve been there as just a fan. If I thought I could make back the booth fee by selling books, I would like to attend as a professional, but I don’t feel I’m quite there yet. And I fully intend to go to this show every time it comes to town for as long as the universe allows me to make it there.

How could I deny the world this face?

But at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, it’s not really the same as it used to be.

I know, this is always the refrain of people as they get older. “It’s not as good as it was, the stuff they did when I was young was better, your music is too loud, what’s a SnapChat?” It’s very much a cliche. But just because something is a cliche doesn’t mean that there isn’t an element of truth to it. Before it was Fan Expo it was Wizard World, and before that it was a relatively small comic book convention started by a local comic shop owner that slowly built up over a few years. That was in my podcasting days and I attended every one. In the last one, I even got to host a few panels and do an interview with artist Francis Manapul, which was a lot of fun. Then, after this little show started rolling, Wizard snatched it up and made it part of its ever-growing assortment of conventions, like Thanos collecting Infinity Stones. So when I say “it used to be about the comics,” I can say that with authority. 

Over the years I’ve watched as the larger shows get more and more consumed by other media. It started with genre movies and television shows, which makes perfect sense. If you make a venn diagram of comic book readers and fans of things like Star Trek and Star Wars, it may not be a perfect overlap, but those circles will likely have very little hanging over the edges. As time went on, though, other things began to creep in. Dr. Who makes a lot of sense. And who doesn’t love things like Back to the Future? Game of Thrones started kind of niche, but it quickly went mainstream. Then you had things like Outlander, which is technically a fantasy show but traditionally serves a somewhat different demographic than most of the other fandoms that were being serviced. The same went for Twilight, but that never stopped actors from those films from appearing. And now, increasingly, we’re seeing the stars of video games like Five Nights at Freddy’s or the voice actors for popular anime when they’re translated into English. 

I’m almost certain the only person in this graphic who ever actually worked on a comic book is Kevin Smith. But he hasn’t finished yet.

I need to be clear about this: I do not object to any of these things being added to things like Fan Expo. I’m no gatekeeper. I have always had the mindset of the more the merrier. My sister has attended before, but this year she brought her husband and two kids with her for the first time, and they had a blast. My niece, who’s a huge FNAF fan, made her own costume and got to meet some of her favorite voice actors. My brother-and-law and nephew got to dress up like Ghostbusters and get their pictures taken with movie-quality proton packs. I love that they had so much fun, because I want there to be something for everybody. The problem is that all of this stuff seems to be coming at the EXPENSE of the things that brought me to shows like this in the first place, rather than being there in ADDITION to them.

In the early days, the comic book vendors were a vast swath of the shopping section at this show, but this year I could count the number of booths selling actual comic books on one hand. There’s plenty of people selling toys, of course. Prints. Funko pops. Stickers of dubious legitimacy, from a copyright standpoint. Swords. 3-D printed tchotchkes. Candy. Candles. Soap. And one booth where you could pay $40 to hold a snake, cash only of course. But if you’re there to try to fill in those last three issues of Green Lantern you need to complete your run…well, places like this USED to be where you would want to go, but this year you were kind of out of luck.

Still couldn’t pass up the Fudge of Steel, though.

Once there were publishers at these shows. Not often the big ones – Marvel and DC, I don’t think, ever had any official booth in New Orleans – but at least smaller publishers would make the journey. I don’t think I saw a single publisher booth this year. There were still a good number of creators in artist’s alley, but even there, I think the majority of them were local writers and artists, by which I mean friends of mine. I love seeing them, but I wish that there were other people too. 

I don’t want to give the impression that it was a total wasteland, mind you. The legendary Don Rosa was there, making his first appearance in New Orleans in several years, and it was fantastic to talk to him. And plenty of self-publishers were in attendance trying to draw eyes to their books and comics. But I know from experience how tough it can be to snare a potential reader’s eye wandering a convention floor, and for these kinds of comic creators it’s just going to get harder, because as there is less and less comic book content at these shows, there will be less and less reason for their potential audience to attend.

This was pretty darn sweet, though.

What, then, is the solution? Obviously the convention organizers are trying to draw in the guests that will get the most attendees, because that’s how they make their money. But I feel like more of an effort needs to be made to appeal to the comic vendors and creators that helped build these things in the first place. It’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy – they attract fewer comic vendors because fewer comic fans are attending because there are fewer vendors because there are fewer fans. Somebody’s gotta figure out a way to break that cycle.

Oddly enough, in recent years, I’ve found that the smaller the show, the better it is for people like me, people who are there for the comics. Last year, for instance, I went to one of the St. Tammany Collector’s Conventions that are held in Mandeville two or three times a year. They’ve been doing it for a few years now, but for one reason or another I hadn’t been able to attend until last spring, and I was amazed by how great a show it was. The venue was much smaller than Fan Expo, but it was packed to the edges with stuff. There were, of course, the vendors that sold toys and knick knacks, but there were comic books too – so many comic book vendors. I could have spent days digging through all the back issue bins there, and I walked away having spent more money and feeling more satisfied than I have in the last two or three Fan Expos. Not only that, but those local writers and artists, those friends of mine I saw last weekend at Fan Expo? Most of them were there too, along with some media guests, including folks like Five Nights at Freddy’s actors and others. They may not be as big as Fan Expo, of course – they’re never gonna get Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd – but they can get Sgt. Slaughter, and that ain’t nothin’. 

And that’s just at that one show. There are plenty of smaller shows across the state all year long. I don’t get to go to all of them, of course. My attendance depends on a lot of things, not the least of which is my wife’s work schedule (because Eddie is a little too wild to take him to something like this on my own), but I know that there are smaller shows coming up in Slidell, Gonzales, Morgan City, and plenty of other places within driving distance. They’re all on my radar, and they’re all going on my calendar. 

I know this might sound weird, especially if you remember the column I wrote last summer about how badly I want to attend San Diego Comic-Con some day, but these smaller shows are much more of a haven for people like me than the big shows are. That’s not to say I’m abandoning the big shows. I still like them. I still have fun. I love getting to see the costumes and talking on the panels and hanging out with some of the finest geeks that have ever graced Southern Louisiana. But the smaller shows are better at scratching the itch that drew me to conventions in the first place. I hope Fan Expo and any other convention organizers out there realize this. I hope they understand that bringing in new fans doesn’t have to mean excluding the old ones. And I hope they figure it out before there’s nothing left for the people who brought them to the dance to begin with.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He hopes to see you at one of those smaller shows before the year is out.

Geek Punditry #82: I’m Going to Go Back There Someday

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It’s that time again, friends. Every year, as July races to a close, kids sharpen pencils for school, and teachers spend an inordinate amount of time and money getting their classrooms suitable to post on Instagram, the geeks of the world converge on San Diego, California for the annual bacchanalia officially known as Comic-Con International. And every year I sit here in Louisiana, gazing to the west, and wishing I could be there with ‘em.

Goals.

It’s a bucket list thing for me, guys. Some day, at least ONCE, I want to go to San Diego Comic-Con. I’ve got a lot of friends who have been – heck, with the pals I have who work in comics, I’ve got a lot of friends who go pretty much every year. I see the posts and I gaze at the photos shared on social media and I think about what it would be like to be there, even though I know it’s not going to happen any time soon. It’s expensive, first of all. Admission to the convention aside, I think about the costs of airfare, food, car rental or Ubers to get around, and hotel rooms (some reportedly going for over $1000 a night on this particular weekend) and I know there’s no way this can be swung on a teacher’s salary in the current economy. Then there’s the kiddo – making this trip would either require my wife to take time off work to stay home with our son or her take off work so all three of us could go together. Going together is my preference, but not really feasible at the moment. So it stays on that bucket list, unchecked, right next to “Play Benjamin Franklin in a production of 1776.”

Also goals.

“Ah, it’s okay Blake,” say some of my friends. “Comic-Con isn’t what it used to be anyway.” And that, at least, is true. It’s been a really long time since Comic-Con was actually about comic books. The media empires have taken it over – movie and TV studios are the stars of the really big panels, and video game companies flock there to shill their upcoming games. And while I don’t begrudge any of them, comics are my real jam, and are what I’d really want to see. I’d rather go to a DC Comics panel than a Warner Bros. panel most days…although if it were James Gunn and company talking about the upcoming Superman movie, it’d be a heck of an internal battle. 

Still wanna go, though.

It also doesn’t seem to be quite as big in terms of making news as it used to be. For years in these waning days of July, I would refresh my web browser all day long, waiting for news reports coming from San Diego to tell me what was going to happen over the next year in the world of entertainment. Marvel would unveil whole slates of films there back when such a thing seemed like a wise thing to do, and fans like myself would teeter on the edge of Firefox to see what was coming next. I don’t feel like that happens as much anymore. Studios are so desperate to stay relevant that they squeeze out announcements all year long, often prematurely, very often promising things that wind up never happening. It’s frustrating, to be sure. But in terms of what it does to Comic-Con it’s even worse, as so many of the “big” panels have changed. There’s no longer an opportunity to blow our minds with announcements of what’s to come, but rather just a recap of the announcements that have been made since the last time they recapped their announcements. 

Yet I still wish I was there.

It’s not like I’ve never been to a convention, of course. When I was young, I went with my Uncle Todd to a few Star Trek conventions (these don’t really exist anymore, as Comic-Con and its many imitators have become a catch-all for pop culture and cons specific to a single franchise have become much rarer). When the Chicago Comic-Con was still a big deal I did a road trip with my buddies Mike and James. I’ve been to Philly and Houston, and many Wizard World-turned-Fan Expo shows here in New Orleans. And I’ve been to dozens of smaller shows, which are honestly better when it comes to the comic book side of things. Back in April, Erin and I took Eddie to a small show in Covington (right across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans) and it was honestly the BEST show I’ve been to in YEARS when it comes to the number of vendors selling comic books and comic paraphernalia, as opposed to thousands of headshots you could get signed by whatever actors are in attendance. I loved that little show, and I’m looking forward to the next one.

Observe the Native North American Geek in his natural habitat.

But I still feel that COMPULSION to go to the BIG one.

Why?

Because in a weird way it feels like home.

I don’t know if younger readers will get this, because the stigma about being into “nerdy” stuff seems to have largely gone away. With Marvel and Star Wars being so mainstream and things like Game of Thrones and The Boys becoming media juggernauts, things that we used to consider niche entertainment have become dominant parts of the cultural zeitgeist. But when I was in high school in the 90s, I was always made to feel like I didn’t belong because I read comics and watched cartoons. I clung to the things I loved, but often felt the need to hide them, lest I become even more of an outcast than I already was. I’d even quit Disney and Archie comics not because I didn’t like them anymore, but because I let people put it in my head that if I was in high school and reading Uncle Scrooge something must have been wrong with me. If I was seen with a Star Trek novel or an X-Men t-shirt, the reaction quite clearly elicited the same response every time: you do not belong here. High school was a bitch of a place, guys.

I’ve got a core memory of a time in 1993 when Superman: The Man of Steel #22 came out. This was during the whole “Death and Return of Superman” storyline, and John Henry Irons IMMEDIATELY became my favorite of the four potential heirs to the throne. I brought the comic to school with me and, on a break outside, I sat on a bench to read it. And within seconds, a jerk from my PE class yanked it out of my hands because I was such a “nerd,” threw dirt into the die-cut cover, and stomped away laughing.

I can’t help but feel that John Henry would have known how to deal with it.

I don’t remember the guy’s name. I couldn’t pick his face out of a lineup. But I’ll never forget what he did, because you CAN’T forget anything that makes you feel that small.

I look at my own students, and I don’t see that anymore. Oh sure, there are still cliques and groups, there will ALWAYS be cliques and groups, but they aren’t really based on things like what kind of pop culture a kid is into anymore. I see a lot of kids who read Manga (not enough into western comics, but that’s a separate issue), but I never see anyone get bullied for that. You want to pick on a kid for playing video games? Dude, that’s a club whose membership is EVERYBODY. Things have changed and, in this respect at least, have very much changed for the better.

But I come from a time BEFORE those changes, when I only knew two or three other kids in my school who were openly comic book fans, and most of them wound up moving away before we graduated. It was a lonely time.

The first time I walked into a comic book convention, it was like I had finally found my tribe. There were people here who not only wouldn’t MOCK me for reading Superman, but would join me in a spirited debate over the credentials of the Man of Steel, Cyborg, Superboy, and Eradicator, and which of them (if any) were the real deal. There were people here who could ALSO explain why some crew members on the Enterprise wore red while others wore gold or blue. There were people who not only wouldn’t mock me for loving Uncle Scrooge comics, but they would join me in line to get a print and comics signed by Don Rosa, perhaps the greatest artist ever to draw the Laird of the Clan McDuck. (Yeah, I love Carl Barks too, but I said what I said.)

If my house caught on fire I would save my son, and then this. My wife is faster than me, she’s already outside at this point, that’s why I didn’t mention her.

Nobody should ever have to feel the way I felt on that day back in 1993, certainly not because of what they like to read or watch. But I wish that EVERYBODY could have that experience of walking into a room and suddenly feeling like that’s where you’ve belonged all along.

I still get that when I walk into my local comic shop (BSI Comics in Metairie, Louisiana – and I’ll never be shy about giving them the shout-out). I feel that way on Free Comic Book Day, when hundreds of like-minded folks come together to see what’s new. And I feel that way when I attend a show full of people selling, drawing, reading, and talking about comics and movies and TV shows. And even the people who aren’t into the same comics and movies and TV shows as I am are still part of the same tribe, because we know that even if I’m into Star Trek and you’re into Star Wars, we’re still more alike than we are different.

Not like that Stargate weirdo.

So why would I possibly want to go to the big, bloated, past-its-glory-days Comic-Con International in San Diego? 

Because in a way that I don’t know if you can understand if you’re lucky enough to never have felt like an outcast, it’s where I feel like I belong. With my people. With my tribe. Just because I’ve never been doesn’t mean it doesn’t call to me like home.

Ah well. Maybe next year.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He believes the Great Gonzo said it best when he sang, “I’ve never been there, but I know the way,” and a tip of the hat to Steve J. Rogers for putting that bug in his ear. 

Hello, BayouCon!

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writerI’ll be back early next week with a longer post talking about my experiences here in Sulphur for BayouCon 2016, but with one day left, I wanted to extend a warm welcome to the many fine folks I’ve talked to in the first two days.

I’ve sold some books, I’ve given out lots of bookmarks, and this afternoon I co-hosted a panel on world-building in a novel series along with horror author Alexander Brown. (I think that was some of the most fun I’ve had here — I talk about books and movies and TV shows all the time, but it’s rare that I actually get the chance to discuss my process and how I write.)

For those of you who got the address of this website from one of my bookmarks and want to know what I’m all about, here are the two most important links you can have. First, my Facebook Author’s Page. I update it frequently, any time I’ve got something worth sharing with people, from a new book to a new episode of my podcast. The other link is the Buy Blake’s Work page on this very site. This page features all of my work that is currently available, including all five of the books you saw on my table, plus lots of other stuff that’s only available in eBook format.

Enjoy the last day of the con on Sunday, come on over and say hello, and I’ll be back with more BayouCon thoughts next week.

Welcome to the new BlakeMPetit.com

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ProfilepicHello friends, old and new, and welcome to the new BlakeMPetit.com. After several years at my old blog, I decided it was time for a new coat of paint, time to make things a little spiffier for a new era of (hopefully) new readers. In fact, I’m launching the new site now in order to get ahead of the  folks I anticipate meeting this weekend at Bayoucon. (More on that later.)

New readers — howdy! I’m Blake M. Petit, author of the novels and short stories  in the worlds of Siegel City and The Curtain, as well as a lot of other stuff. All of it is available right now, by the way, by clicking on the “Buy Blake’s Work” link at the top of this page. I’m also a high school English teacher, member of the board of directors at my local community theater, podcaster, and all-around geek. All of these things will be blatantly obvious if you stick around.

Old readers, any time I’ve got big news, announcements, or a major release coming up, it will be featured right here. Also, in the past, you’ve found my ruminations all over the internet. Now they’re mainly concentrated in three places: here, my movie blog Reel to Reel Movies, and the blog for my podcast and comic book discussion, All New Showcase. And if, for some reason, you really want to poke around at the content in my old blog, don’t worry, it’s still there. I’ve kept the old Evertime Realms page archived, trapped in internet amber, as it were.

IMG_0926As I mentioned before, I’m going to be at Bayoucon this weekend, June 24-26 in Sulfur, Louisiana. I’ll be part of a panel about world-building (Saturday at 5 p.m. in the Cypress Room), and my wife Erin and I will be there all weekend selling and signing copies of my novels and giving out bookmarks and high-fives. If you’re in the area, please, come on by and say hello!

That about does it for now, I suppose. I’ll be back early next week with thoughts and pictures from the convention. In the meantime, poke around at the links on this page and see what’s what.