It looks like there’s some of the ol’ SPX organizational weirdness afoot according to the Camel City Cartoonists’ Guild and Social Club’s blog, The Three Cent Pup. I’m one of the folks whose table space is part of the application packet mentioned in the post–so here’s hoping this gets cleared up–I loves me the SPX! (For anyone following along, though, this would seem to fall squarely into item 7 from this essay of mine from a couple of years ago, although hopefully this is just some weird snafu and we won’t have a problem getting table space.)

This actually prompted me to go seeking an SPX banner to place up top on my page, below the Indie Island banner, but all the ones on the site still say “2006.” So, for now, SPX pimpin’ here will have to wait for new banners… and hopefully confirmation of actually having a table.

For years aficionados of the comics art form have bemoaned its apparent lack of respectability with the mainstream public and wondered when comics would, finally, gain the cultural cache they deserve. An oft-discussed scenario in these ruminations is the prospect of reading comics in public places–as if the true harbinger of comics’ cultural “arrival” would be when one could, without self-consciousness, open a comic book or graphic novel and read it comfortably in the local coffee shop, or on the train.

Personally, I’ve never had any real problem reading comics in public places; I really don’t care if the “unwashed masses” think I’m an imbecile.

Ironically, though, what I have had a problem reading in public places lately is The Comics Journal. My attempts to read the previous issue while working out in the cardio room of the YMCA (one of the few times I have these days for casual reading) was stymied, as I found it too troublesome, amidst a packed room of folks, to try to discretely wade through the issue, whilst avoiding the numerous Frank Thorne drawings of 45 DDD women in chain mail getting humped five ways to Friday by groups of demons and whatnot. (I gave up and read a three year-old issue of Entertainment Weekly. Apparently there’s a movie being made of Spongebob Squarepants–whoda thunk it?)

With this incident squarely behind me, I’d been holding out on reading the newest issue, the “Best of 2006” issue, until just today, since I’d be traveling most of the day en route to Ft. Lauderdale, and figured I’d make use of otherwise dead time in the plane and airport to take in this issue. But, alas, the issue is so festooned throughout with Melinda Gebbie’s technicolor drawings of genitalia in action, that it looks like I’ll wind up passing on it as well, at least when packed in sardine-style next to some random stranger on a plane.

I’m no prude, but there’s something sort of tragic about the fact that I would probably be less likely to be cast a disparaging glance (or worse) reading the latest issue of Maxim than recent issues of The Comics Journal. I mean, I can pick up a magazine on artsy film stuff that features an interview with Akira Kurosawa without having his “package” depicted on the cover James Sturm-style.

Just a thought…

For those you not as ancient as I, that post title is a reference to some TV ads from the 1970s for a brokerage firm. The gag in the ads was that entire rooms of people would stop whatever they were doing, and turn around to listen, whenever they realized a client of the brokerage firm in question was nearby and was about to discuss some advice he had received. It’s not too far from what’s been going on the last few days as Dan Vado, head honcho of SLG (publishers of yours truly) has once again been the cause of much consternation and debate on the internets.

Here’re Dan’s original remarks via Newsarama. If you’re so interested you can get a good wrap-up of the ensuing maelstrom via Dan’s Livejournal page. These are of course Dan’s replies to other people’s reactions, but you can easily track back to the original commentary if you so desire.

I’ve got no burning interest in joining the extended debate going on–a debate which seems frankly to be a classic online “tempest in a teacup.” In fact, I have to admit that, when I first read Dan’s remarks via the Newsarama story, I really didn’t take much note of it; discussion of the financially problematic nature of the creator-owned business model had already been making the rounds of late, and what were obviously some off-the-cuff remarks to a highly hypothetical question didn’t strike me as anything either particularly novel or inflamatory. Given, though, that the internets are alive with the sounds of Vado, I’ll just mention two things this jump out at me:

First, there seems to be a group of folks who have decided that Dan has now revealed himself to be some sort of mustache-twirling money-grubbing soul-stealing corporate comics robber baron. To that, I can say only that I know from personal empirical experience that this is demonstrably false. I’ve had two projects published by SLG. The first, Farewell, Georgia, made a modest profit; the second, Midnight Sun, has yet to make money. And yet, SLG continues to publish my work. My point isn’t that SLG is some sort of charity, (they’re not–they want to turn a profit, as does every business) but rather that clearly the company’s goals have not been (nor would I wager they’re changing to overnight, as a result of a Q&A at Wondercon) the short-term creative rape and pillage suggested.

Secondly, just an observation: over at The Beat, cartoonist James Kochalka comments on his recent, and apparently quite creator-friendly, book deal with publishing giant Random House. James seems like a nice guy (we’ve run into each other once or twice at cons, at CCS, etc.), but I think that–aside even from the obvious “apples and oranges” comparison going on–in this case his comment actually buttresses, rather than disproves, Dan’s point. Although not mentioned by either James or Dan (curiously), James Kochalka is in fact one of the many cartoonists who did early work that was published by Slave Labor Graphics–Little Mister Man and Magic Boy and Robot Elf are both SLG books if I’m getting my facts straight. The fact that now, years later, James could–hypothetically–take characters from those SLG-published books to someone like Random House, and that he’d be in a position to do so as an established creator in some part because of being published initially by SLG, and yet be able to do so without SLG really seeing anything from it, is precisely what Dan seems to be addressing as potentially problematic.