Comic Con 2010: Day 2
Photos continue to be updated here!
Highlights of today were the Moto Hagio panel and the "Girls Gone Geek/Genre" panel, lunch with ashears, and procurement of various fannish items that I'd been wanting. Compared to yesterday, the Exhibit Hall was more crowded, but still navigable.
[Side note: ashears reports that she would be more interested in LiveJournaling were she not so full of Scotch. Given that she just completed work on the first part of her awesome awesome awesome magnum opus Blood Dreams, I would say that she has earned it.]
The Moto Hagio panel was fantastic, although sparsely attended (I'd say the room was only 1/3 full.) But the fans who were there made up for it with enthusiasm and great interest in Moto's work. (My favorite part of the whole thing was the older Japanese women in the audience who kept murmuring to one another that they'd adored Moto's work as a child and couldn't believe they were meeting their idol.) She brought examples of her earliest work and talked about what it was like to get her work published in the '70s. Apparently, the editors at Kodansha found her stories too dark for Nakayoshi (as she said, "in my stories, someone always dies") but the editors at Shogakukan loved her work and took all of her rejected works and published them. The compilation of her first work, The Poe Clan sold out of its 30,000 print run on the first day, which was what really got her career started. But despite success with readers, her parents never approved of her work and constantly pressured her to quit because being a manga artist was a "vulgar" job. She fielded questions about the serious and dark themes in her work (childhood sexual abuse, parental neglect, loneliness), stating that she's a very dark person sometimes and her art is very often personal. She also made an interesting comment on the current state of shoujo manga: "shoujo and shounen manga are young people's genres, written by young people", which I took as a very, very diplomatic statement about the shallowness in numerous, more popular/modern titles. And then she thanked everyone for coming and asked that we continue to read her stories, despite their depressing/dark nature. (By this point, I was already sold.) Later on, as she autographed my book, she smiled patiently at my somewhat fractured Japanese and was amused by the aku character on my hat. All in all, she was just wonderful. :)
The Girls Gone Geek/Genre panel was also great, but in a different way: you get a bunch of strong, capable women screen and comic book writers together, and you're bound to get some great discussion. However, the moderation of the panel was (for lack of a better word) moderate at best, and three of the panelists ended up running the show, while the others languished. (Much to the obvious annoyance of one, while the other had a better poker face.) The question of what degree of sexism is still running the show in Hollywood clearly weighed on their minds, and their solutions for dealing with it were as varied as they were. (There was the general consensus that the more you dress up in meetings with executive types, the more your "nerd cred" is questioned.) The weirdest thing about this panel, though, was the announcement of the related swag. An excited murmur from the audience! I hoped for some cool comic book extra from The Guild since Felicia Day was there, or maybe a t-shirt or something. But instead, the moderator, who's editor-in-chief of io9, said excitedly, "We have advance copies of I Am Number Four for everyone, a week before they come out!" Two days ago, io9 published a review of this same book, calling it "forgettable" and "dull". (The scathing review is here, if you're interested.) This was weird and strangely contradictory.
A. and I had lunch at the SyFy channel's themed restaurant, Cafe Diem, outside the Convention Center and down the street, and it was surprisingly good, considering that the entire breakfast menu was named after characters on "Caprica". We also got our photos taken at the Eureka photobooth, the best of which is in the picture gallery (above). EDIT to add: LJ is being stupid about adding this photo. Maybe later, when I feel like wrestling with it. :p
And then I wandered around the Exhibit Hall for a while, and it was glorious. I got Moto Hagio's autograph, as well as Tom Sidell's, and generally took it all in. People were in very good moods, for the most part, and even though the crowds were a little crazy, no one was complaining or shoving. (This has been the general Con standard every year I've gone.) I was tempted by a few crazy-expensive things, but held back on most stuff. (Except one excellent present for yebisu9 that he has no idea about. Mwahaha!)
This year, more than ever before, I felt sad a few times I wasn't wearing a costume. I tried to figure this out: do I want the attention? (Errr... sort of? Not the scary kind, that's for sure.) Am I keen on one particular character's clothing and/or persona? (Can't figure this out yet.) I guess I had never craved that level of geekiness before, and I suppose I want it now, for whatever reason. That said, I know I would be such a perfectionist that it would take the whole intervening year to assemble the costume to my satisfaction.
Tomorrow: Quick Draw panel! Mythbusters! Staying off the Exhibit Hall floor if I can help it! Meeting with various awesome people! Stay tuned!
Highlights of today were the Moto Hagio panel and the "Girls Gone Geek/Genre" panel, lunch with ashears, and procurement of various fannish items that I'd been wanting. Compared to yesterday, the Exhibit Hall was more crowded, but still navigable.
[Side note: ashears reports that she would be more interested in LiveJournaling were she not so full of Scotch. Given that she just completed work on the first part of her awesome awesome awesome magnum opus Blood Dreams, I would say that she has earned it.]
The Moto Hagio panel was fantastic, although sparsely attended (I'd say the room was only 1/3 full.) But the fans who were there made up for it with enthusiasm and great interest in Moto's work. (My favorite part of the whole thing was the older Japanese women in the audience who kept murmuring to one another that they'd adored Moto's work as a child and couldn't believe they were meeting their idol.) She brought examples of her earliest work and talked about what it was like to get her work published in the '70s. Apparently, the editors at Kodansha found her stories too dark for Nakayoshi (as she said, "in my stories, someone always dies") but the editors at Shogakukan loved her work and took all of her rejected works and published them. The compilation of her first work, The Poe Clan sold out of its 30,000 print run on the first day, which was what really got her career started. But despite success with readers, her parents never approved of her work and constantly pressured her to quit because being a manga artist was a "vulgar" job. She fielded questions about the serious and dark themes in her work (childhood sexual abuse, parental neglect, loneliness), stating that she's a very dark person sometimes and her art is very often personal. She also made an interesting comment on the current state of shoujo manga: "shoujo and shounen manga are young people's genres, written by young people", which I took as a very, very diplomatic statement about the shallowness in numerous, more popular/modern titles. And then she thanked everyone for coming and asked that we continue to read her stories, despite their depressing/dark nature. (By this point, I was already sold.) Later on, as she autographed my book, she smiled patiently at my somewhat fractured Japanese and was amused by the aku character on my hat. All in all, she was just wonderful. :)
The Girls Gone Geek/Genre panel was also great, but in a different way: you get a bunch of strong, capable women screen and comic book writers together, and you're bound to get some great discussion. However, the moderation of the panel was (for lack of a better word) moderate at best, and three of the panelists ended up running the show, while the others languished. (Much to the obvious annoyance of one, while the other had a better poker face.) The question of what degree of sexism is still running the show in Hollywood clearly weighed on their minds, and their solutions for dealing with it were as varied as they were. (There was the general consensus that the more you dress up in meetings with executive types, the more your "nerd cred" is questioned.) The weirdest thing about this panel, though, was the announcement of the related swag. An excited murmur from the audience! I hoped for some cool comic book extra from The Guild since Felicia Day was there, or maybe a t-shirt or something. But instead, the moderator, who's editor-in-chief of io9, said excitedly, "We have advance copies of I Am Number Four for everyone, a week before they come out!" Two days ago, io9 published a review of this same book, calling it "forgettable" and "dull". (The scathing review is here, if you're interested.) This was weird and strangely contradictory.
A. and I had lunch at the SyFy channel's themed restaurant, Cafe Diem, outside the Convention Center and down the street, and it was surprisingly good, considering that the entire breakfast menu was named after characters on "Caprica". We also got our photos taken at the Eureka photobooth, the best of which is in the picture gallery (above). EDIT to add: LJ is being stupid about adding this photo. Maybe later, when I feel like wrestling with it. :p
And then I wandered around the Exhibit Hall for a while, and it was glorious. I got Moto Hagio's autograph, as well as Tom Sidell's, and generally took it all in. People were in very good moods, for the most part, and even though the crowds were a little crazy, no one was complaining or shoving. (This has been the general Con standard every year I've gone.) I was tempted by a few crazy-expensive things, but held back on most stuff. (Except one excellent present for yebisu9 that he has no idea about. Mwahaha!)
This year, more than ever before, I felt sad a few times I wasn't wearing a costume. I tried to figure this out: do I want the attention? (Errr... sort of? Not the scary kind, that's for sure.) Am I keen on one particular character's clothing and/or persona? (Can't figure this out yet.) I guess I had never craved that level of geekiness before, and I suppose I want it now, for whatever reason. That said, I know I would be such a perfectionist that it would take the whole intervening year to assemble the costume to my satisfaction.
Tomorrow: Quick Draw panel! Mythbusters! Staying off the Exhibit Hall floor if I can help it! Meeting with various awesome people! Stay tuned!