Why I Go To Comic Book Conventions (a somewhat embarassed confession)
I’ve realized this year that a major reason I go to comic book conventions isn’t for fun, but because I feel a need to be legitimized as a cartoonist. After so many years of getting nowhere with cartooning, it means a lot to me to go someplace where readers, and especially other cartoonists, will say “Oh, you did Hereville? That was really good.”
It’s also, sad to say, why I enjoy being nominated for awards. (Did I oh-so-casually mention that Hereville was nominated for an Eisner, a Harvey, and an Ignatz? I did? Well, then, let me just casually mention it again.)
I was talking about this to another cartoonist — someone who has won major cartooning awards and is published by a prestigious company. And he told me that despite all that, he still feels the same need for legitimization. It never goes away, apparently.
In conclusion: Maybe I’ll try to go to fewer cons this year.
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Web-comic creation is an art-form that requires very little group effort.
Compared to putting on a play or producing a movie or TV show it is almost solitary.
Even painters work in a politicly charged climate of galleries and savvy curators, and
novelist must run through a gauntlet of editors before they get published.
All of this feedback prior to production leads to art forms that tend to divert from previous samples of the art very little, if at al! This in turn makes it child’s play for art establishment critics to grade new works then they come out. Not so for web-comic. Web-comic are either clones of each.manga.other or completely innovative in form or content. Lacking established reference points from with to judge and requiring self knowledge from witch to asses the work critics remain silent. Web-comic are a critics mine-field, collectively they will not walk with you. You will walk alone. As was long ago said of SF fans “’tis a proud and lonely thing…”