I had the chance to walk around the comic book festival today for a couple hours, only the second time I was able to go. It was a little wet but still great to see what must be 2 km of kiosks promoting not just comics but the artists who make them, especially local artists.
This is nothing like a comic con, it's much more grass roots and no one dresses up and no big studios are here promoting the latest super hero movie. Graphic novels are taken seriously here and there is a huge variety of content to see from commercially published books to those made at the copy centre to children's stories, to political tale, horror, sci-fi, slice of life, humour... you name it.
There wasn't a lot of original artwork on sale so what i saw was really good and many artists were there in person to sell their books. Book stores and local comic book stores were well represented. I noticed there were a large number of formats being sold from limited edition beautifully designed hard covers and boxed sets to self published works. Almost no toys, movie posters or any of the other trappings of conventions now aimed at the general public over serious art fans looking to see more than just big commercial efforts. There seemed to be more English books this year but they also just might have stood out to me more since i usually don't see English books normally for sale. The people there were mostly men as these things usually are but not too much of an imbalance. The artists were really diverse - racially, age-wise, and it was a very open and welcoming and atmosphere. English and French were pretty evenly balanced as well.
2 comments:
There's a local, smaller comic book fest in Boston called MICE (Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo) and it sound very much like what you're describing here. All just artists and their books. No copyrighted heroes, no franchises, just comics and the thing is PACKED. Tons of people who just love the art form come out. Every year I've managed to go, it's made me just feel good to see so many people interested in this kind of thing. Glad you went out and went to yours.
usually it is on magazine work weekend. I hope this is the last year I have to work for the magazine so I should have no problems going starting next year. I thought of you a lot, especially after passing the vinyl record store!
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