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So another San Diego Comic-Con has come and gone. With it goes the hopes of many an artist. Allow me to explain.
I have had the pleasure and misfortune of being flown to the San Diego Comic-Con for awhile now. My job has much invested in the comic book medium and so, it makes sense we should have a presence at the biggest of the comic book conventions. Where else can the likes of Dick Ayers, Richard Friend and Scott Williams stand in the same room as the average fan and exchange pleasantries, anecdotes and hard earned cash? Sure, the artists who come to the convention do so out of love for their fans but they also do it because that's where they can make the most bank. Penciling comics for around $75 a page isn't really going to get you far - not in this economy. Nope, it's the one on one sale of art between creator and fan where the most money can be made. That however, requires the presence of both the artist and the fan.
Of late, it seems more and more apparent that Comic Con is about big movies, big movie stars, big games, oh...and a little about comics too. When Artist's Alley is confined to the farthest corner of the con, where the least traffic is reached because of the draw booths like Warner Bros and Lion's Gate have, artists go hungry. Every single artist, every single one, has to pay for the right to have a booth at the con. They then have to pay for prints to be made of their art so that when they sell the original pages, they can still sell copies for a little bit more cash. You have to spend money to make money, right? Yet how can you make money if there's no one around to buy from you?
There was a time when you, as a up and coming artist making $25 a page, could sell your work at a con for $150 a pop and only have to worry about competing with Frank Miller or Dave Gibbons. Now, those precious fan dollars that got you through the long dry spells are being taken by toy companies, film studios and actor's who feel the need to charge for their signatures. It's a sad day when folks come to a comic book convention with the hope of seeing Brangelina instead of Jim Lee. It's a horrible thought to know that convention planners think it's ok to put the artists one booth down from Rock Band, drowning out any hope of conversation with the few fans who actually made it to their booths.
Comic Con, my friends, is no more. It is now Media Con, with comics being a mere afterthought to those attending. Comics, once the driving force behind the convention, are now mere precursors to much larger things and thus, mean far less in the hearts and minds of those attending the convention in its name. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
What are your thoughts, if any, on the state of the comic book industry and Hollywood's affect on the average comic artist at this, the most important con of the year?
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Sadness 
As for the company I work for, they've pretty much decided to move more toward the center next year if we attend. The way it should be, if you ask me though, is that Artist Alley is the first thing you hit coming into the con in section A. Most folks enter there and that would give them all the exposure they need. The big studios would still draw attention with their flashy booths and actors, so it's not like they need to be the first or second thing you see when entering the con. Doubt that'll happen though.
Comics can make a comeback, but clearly at this point the most effective way to do it is going to be via word of mouth marketing from those celebrity's that have become the gatekeepers of popular entertainment for the Big 2 and would help all comics. I'm not sure if it would ever happen, but the Hollywood studios that control the comic studios would be smart to enlist their "employees" to blog about comic book story arcs.
Disney and Warner Brothers have paid hundreds of millions if not billions for these corporations...it would do them no good to handhold the comic industry to collapse. At this point quite a lot of the most popular characters/stories have already been told (well or not so well) on the silver screen and audience members aren't interested in more sequels for most of them. It will be new titles/characters like "The Web", "Dr. Voodoo", "Static", "Invincible" and others that will need to build an audience outside of cinema that will ultimately make them viable properties for getting the film treatment going forward or all is lost.
There's great promise and peril though for comic creators that just hasn't been available to independents since...well EVER. Self publishing, print on demand options for books, poster and other ancillary products as well as the forthcoming e-book distribution opens the door to a new set of possibilities, but one Con's worth of promotion aint gonna get it done. Hoofin it all over the place to smaller conventions, comic shops, promoting it online, getting people to help you promote it is really where it's at for the indie artist/comic creator these days. After all of that work is done IF you can garner some popularity than you can draw people to your booth for fan sketches plus other original material regardless of where it's at or how small the area is. It sucks, but that's where it looks like things are headed.