parakkum

We attended the first day of WonderCon today. WonderCon, celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, is currently going on (Friday through Sunday) at the Moscone Center West. We took Caltrain there, walking the easy half mile from the train station to the center with a stop for coffee on the way to stave off impending incoherence from a sleep-deprived week.

Inside Moscone itself, I was struck right away by how quiet it was. No massive, serpentine line clogging everything, no chaos of people pushing to get in. As it happened, there was a small line upstairs waiting to be let in when the exhibit hall opened, but that was it.

Inside, I was struck by how small it was. As I mentioned previously, WonderCon attendence is in the ~15,000 range, whereas Comic Con San Diego is in the ~100,000 range. This difference is reflected in the exhibit hall floor. We were able to quickly cover the entire exhibit hall; some years in San Diego that goal is never reached. Absent from the WonderCon floor are the giant booths set up by film companies and such; the balance is far more toward individual shops and dealers. The difference in scale is especially odd because the trappings of the exhibit floor -- the banners with their numbers labeling the aisles -- are done in the same font and colors as in San Diego.

In fact, it reminds me of the San Diego con, back when it was held in Golden Hall and was not such a focus for pimping new movies and such.

WonderCon also has a smaller suite of events, featuring three event rooms and an anime room. There's a gaming area, but it was nearly abandoned, with just some Munchkin demos running.

In addition to our exhausting of the exhibit floor (with Littlestar and others doing an extensive search of the art books on sale) we also stopped in on the Lucas Licensing Portfolio Review and everyone but me went to the New Challenges in Self-Publishing panel (I feel asleep for a while).

Tomorrow promises a much more intense schedule, with a lot more panels to hold our attention. Given our quick runthrough of the exhibit floor, this is a good thing.

We stopped in at the Lucasfilm Licensing portfolio review panel, thinking it might be interesting to hear what they had to say, and that Littlestar could get some pointers.

As it happens, she didn't stick around to.

Troy Alders, Art Director for Lucasfilm Licensing did a bit of Q&A at the beginning*. Before he started on that, he directed everyone to his brand-new article on starwars.com, which contains a lot of the information he finds himself giving over and over again to people whose portfolios he reviews.

Some notables from the Q&A:

Q. What's the first thing you look at when you look at someone's work?

A. What they're looking for always changes. A lot of the time, people are looking for work in concept art, in films.That's not what he does. A lot of this is in the new article -- something unique, fresh, different -- depending on what else is happening out in the world at that time.

Q. What are examples of printed pieces your division produces? What do you make?

A. Most advertising they don't do. Instead, they provide the artwork that licensees might use in advertising. Internally, they produce a style guide. Their goal is to put together a program that represents the brand, that everyone can use and that hangs together nicely.

Q. And you're just giving them artwork, then?

A. Pretty much -- all the stuff we consumers see, merchandising, t-shirts and so on, is based on their artwork and style guides.

Q. What did you think of the artwork on Clone Wars?

A. "Oh, I love that." "It's like Star Wars meets Gendy Tartakovsky."

Q. Are you located at the presidio now?

A. Yes.

Q. Are you looking for freelancers, or mostly in-house?

A. Freelancers. Troy also added that he's not searching right now for a lot of artists, but he likes to do this kind of review because he usually finds a few people each time. He needs people who understand what they're doing -- who understand the myth. He feels the cons are a good place to look for this, rather than recruiting out of art school.

That ended the Q&A, and initiated the mad rush to line up for portfolio review. We decided it wasn't worth the wait and headed out.

*I originally had this bit in there: ...left his energy somewhere else today, and that imparted an odd silence to the room. In retrospect, I think this sounds harsher than I meant it to. See the discussion below for more. I really appreciate Troy's showing up at WonderCon, as, I'm sure, do the people who took him up on his generous offer of reviewing their portfolios. Some day, I'd love to actually hear a full-fledged panel about the process of putting together a licensing style guide / bible for a major property.

Greg Rucka had a substantial line this year, which was really heartwarming -- it's great to see such a fanbase for a writer. I wonder if the lack of artists at the DC table today helped prevent people being siphoned away from him, or if his increased involvement in mainstream DC this past year is to blame.

I respect Greg a great deal as a writer, and I was particularly impressed with the way he integrated his background research into his latest novel, Private Wars. I asked him a number of questions about his writing process.

Q. When you're brought in on a DC title -- for example, the upcoming Supergirl run -- how much do you typically know about the title? Is there a briefing?

A. They definitely don't require prior knowledge of the character in question. "If you hired people based on their in-depth knowledge of the Batman mythos, you'd get really crappy stories." When he was brought in on Batman, he knew the animated series, Year One and Dark Knight.

"Editors are part facilitators..." When you know what kind of character you need, but don't know one by name, you go ask your editor. The editors know the backstory and the world, and will help you avoid mistakes as well as providing you with instances to fit some class you're trying to fill.

Q. Your work -- for example, Private Wars -- represents a huge body of research. How much time did Private Wars represent?

A. "I can't quantify it in man hours." But a lot. His research process typically involves a lot of internet research, a lot of books and online article resource. He also ends up asking a lot of people questions.

Q. How do you organize the research to make it accessible?

A. He uses maps a lot (and there will be inaccuracies -- "Someone from Tashkent is going to come to me and say, 'You can't do that'"). Plot-central research has been done during the plotting phase, but the other research is done as needed along the way. For example, if there's a dinner with a bunch of DPMs, you think, "Where would that happen?" Parkfront property is likely to be the expensive stuff, then you read about the park and learn that "a huge earthquake leveled Tashkent!" Then you incorporate that into the story -- it will be added into the story at other places in less detail, and discussed in more detail during the walk through the park.

Q. How does this work with your writing flow? Do you always break for the research, or do you sometimes "tag" things and fill them in later?

A. If he hits something like that, he'll do a quick internet search and look at his books, but if it requires more extensive research, he'll pass it and move on, going back to it later. "I literally type XXXXX at the end of the sentence and just keep writing."

While I was speaking with him, people came up to have DC and Queen and Country material signed. When I told him that I thought Private Wars was good, he said, "Kinda bleak, hunh?" I replied, "I guess Smoker isn't bleak," and he insisted his stuff isn't all depressing.

Day two of WonderCon was far busier than day one, with an actual line (policed by Stormtroopers, no less). Having already covered the exhibit floor, we were chiefly interested in the possibilities of panels and speaking with people.

I started by talking to Batton Lash, of Supernatural Law fame, who moderated the panel on New Challenges in Self-Publishing which Littlestar attended yesterday. She convinced me I should speak with BL, and he was very helpful. A notable point he made in the panel yesterday and reiterated to me today was that librarians are the gateway to bookstores (and they like graphic novels more and more these days).

The first panel we attended was Animation Writing: Getting In and Staying In. My notes are actually too extensive to post right now, but there was a lot of good information and advice from a range of creators including Paul Dini (now writing for Lost), Alan Burnett, Adam Beechen, Stan Berkowitz and Dwayne McDuffie.

One fun bit when Stan asked Dwayne how much research he did before he wrote his first TV episode (for Static Shock, based on his comic of the same name)?

His reply: Alan sent him a script for the show, and he thought, "Man, this sucks. I can do better than this." Then he received one of Stan's scripts and thought, "This is much harder."

After this, we attended an event that was originally intended to be Mark Evanier interviewing Sergio Aragones. Mark, unfortunately, injured his leg and couldn't make it, so Sergio fielded questions himself, occasionally drawing hilarious supporting images with his trademark speed. His life story, of which we heard snippets, was amazing and is a great story in itself. He definitely had initiative and no preconceived limitations.

We left at the end of Sergio's one-man show and walked in half an hour late into Scott Shaw's Oddball Comics. The presentation is a lot of fun, if not as in depth as his column has the room to be.

We decided not to attend the "Second Annual WonderCon Masquerade". Maybe next year.

Littlestar and I were both very tired going into day three of WonderCon, and neither of us felt a strong draw to any of the third day panels or events.

We spent some time after our invigorating walk from the Caltrain station talking to Ryan Claytor. Ryan is a cool guy who does a sort of comics journal called And Then One Day. And Then One Day is great both in its physical presentation -- clean lines, great design and silkscreened, velvet covers -- and in its content, which is a straightforward, non-angsty look at Ryan's life. We stopped in a couple times during the week to speak with Ryan, about his MFA program at San Diego State (which sounds just plain old cool), about teaching and so on.

We checked in with a couple other cool folks on the exhibit floor, whom I'll talk about later.

We caught the tail end of the Wildstorm panel, notable chiefly for having Jim Lee there and only about thirty people in the room. We were really waiting for the next panel on writers, hoping to hear from Mark Waid. We were both falling asleep, though, so when Waid wasn't there, we gave up and headed home.

I'll have more on WonderCon purchases later. Overall, we felt that the material we were interested in could have been compressed into two days rather than three.

It's Wondercon time again. Wondercon 2008 is at the Moscone Center in SF this weekend. You can check out the schedule and guest list by clicking here.

I'm probably not going this year. Last year, Wondercon was kind of underwhelming. The size to content ratio of Wondercon last year was a little too high. Other than the Ratatouille panel with Brad Bird and Patton Oswalt, there wasn't much that really stood out. The exhibit floor actually felt more choked than many days at Comic Con proper (although not as bad as, say, Friday at the 2007 Comic Con). None of this year's panels really excite me except, perhaps, for the back-to-back Herb Trimpe and Steve Leialoha panels. I have great affection for Herb, especially for his work on G.I. Joe, and Steve inked over Larry Hama on one of the coolest G.I. Joe issues ever. I'm just not willing to slog through the rest of Wondercon for those panels, unfortunately.

As an aside, Herb Trimpe's website is quite cool, covering not only some of his illustration but also his tabletop wargaming miniatures, prose book, and more. Worth a look.