Comicon ‘09 & Westercon ‘09 — My god, it’s made of swag!
Kevin Andrew Murphy July 29th, 2009
I’m now back in town after Comicon and Westercon before it, and it’s time for my annual con wrap-up.
In twenty years of Comicons, I have never gotten so much swag. Yes, there was the year of pogs, the year of posters, the years of posters and bags. But never before have I gone to a con, come back laden with more bags than I could reasonably carry (or take as my onboard luggage), and then realize I’d left two behind at my friend Albert’s.
I was told by dealers that they weren’t seeing many credit cards, but everyone was paying cash–a sign of the economy. But it seems another sign of the economy that Hollywood is just throwing free stuff at people as promotion. I came back with four free DVDs (one random one given to me by a little kid in the hall, another box set of The Rose, Hello Dolly and 9 to 5 I’d got as a door prize for being one of the few people to look at “The Middle”) then came home and found a Coraline DVD waiting for me, prize from a raffle I’d entered at Westercon.
But now that that’s all said, let me go through the days of the convention in order. I flew down Monday early to visit, and while doing so, found myself sitting with the staff of Slave Labor Graphics, going down to staff their booth. (Tuesday, I went to the museums in Balboa Park.)
Go over and take a look. Ask the characters questions. Of course, the contestants are all busy with challenges on the show, but who knows, some of them might answer. (Mine are Rosa Loteria and The Maharajah.)
Sometimes readers get so heavily focused on plot mechanics that they mistake the plot — which is simply one element of the art, albeit a crucial one — for the story itself. What happens at the end of the Jump 225 trilogy? they ask me, as if that’s the only question worth asking. Let’s say I tell you what happens at the end: Natch vanquishes his enemies and learns to live in peace with himself. Or, Natch dies heroically. Or, Natch and his enemies join forces to take on a different enemy altogether. You know the broad strokes of any ending I could possibly think up, and you’ve seen them all a million times before. So obviously the important question is not what happens at the end of the story, but why and how.