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Comic Con vs. Furry Con 2
6 years ago
General
I wrote a similar journal a few years back ( https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6764216/ ). At that con I was merely a spectator pleb, walking the aisles looking for familiar names from the spines of titles at the local comic book store and, generally, just enjoying myself. This time I was manning my own table, courtesy of my co-host on the "Shots with Comics" podcast ( http://slackjawpunks.com/category/p.....s-with-comics/ ), and trying to hawk my wares to a whole new demographic at Michigan Comic Con; it was all new territory for me! It was also a long, weird, and oddly thoughtful weekend. My mind hasn't changed or not changed since that first journal four years ago; instead it's evolved. Like the blob monster at the end of "Akira" it was inside of me all along and it was waiting to come out in all its raw, uncensored power. I'm not angry. I'm not bitter. I'm not even phased. I'm just bigger and meaner and stranger than ever.
Let me tell you all about it.
FRIDAY:
My stalwart co-host and I arrived at the Cobo Convention Center to set up our table. The place is run well, like an even more efficient Anthrocon, and Big Red (my ancient GMC truck) is quickly unpacked and we are set up. I get a brief chance to look around but not long. I like to be at my table pretty much full time, ESPECIALLY at opening when people are flooding in. But people don't flood in, they trickle in, very slowly. I stare vacantly at the three things I am going to be staring at a LOT: a wood-burned plaque of Norman Reedus, a booth that sells bowties with assorted Disney owned properties on them, and an inflatable Jabba the Hutt ( https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECHjsuP.....amp;name=small ). The place was dead, specifically MY place: the Artist Alley. Endless scores of My Hero Academia packs stroll by the passion projects of countless artists in favor of gawking at vinyl records cut out into pictures of Kylo Ren. All around me artists are griping within the first couple hours as the shadow of the Mouse eclipses all and hides our work behind an endless wave of pictures of Deadpool. Do you like Deadpool? He's funny, he's self aware! He's owned by billionaires who don't give a shit about any of that. There are many pictures of Deadpool at this con, his white-eyed stare is carved, etched, inked and painted into every form and style of art you can imagine: Alphonse Muccha Deadpool, Japanese wood block print Deadpool, Deadpool sculpted out of Styrofoam, wood, stone, even hot glue! And of course he's crossed over with every franchise you can imagine (and of course every franchise is mashed together with every other franchise in an attempt to hijack your dwindling attention span by showing you TWO THINGS YOU RECOGNIZE). My mind finally broke when I saw people buying fan-art of Deadpool as a Funko-Pop. I was in enemy territory, these were not my people. Everywhere I looked the molded plastic monstrosity of nerd "culture" stared back at me.... beady eyed: https://twitter.com/Boneitis/status.....53645193089024
I knew I had to put visual filters up, lest my brain melt and I find myself vacuously waiting in line to get Val Kilmer's autograph for a reason my new brain couldn't articulate. I made a rule: visit no table that primarily sells fan-art or "culture" swag. This immediately filtered out 95% of the convention. Now keep in mind: I don't even necessarily hate large IP's; I've seen every Marvel film (and enjoyed most of them) and watch plenty of popular Netflix series etc... My issue is that seeing otherwise talented artists draw nothing but non-stop TV characters is sad to me for two looming reasons: 1) I'd rather see what original ideas they could come up with instead of doing free marketing and advertising for billion dollar companies and 2) I imagine them on social media non-stop, looking for which characters and pairings of characters are popular in disgusting "shipping" communities, where people endlessly ponder the imaginary love life's of cartoon characters that don't matter and shouldn't be a poor substitute for actual human interaction and intimacy. That people are making small but successful careers off of, well, garbage is shitty when I KNOW in my magma filled heart that they're capable of greatness. It's especially shitty because once I had my Disney-Deflectors up I started to find gold. My first find? "Yee Soon Shin", a comic about a Korean warlord who, based on my cursory glance, spent the 16th century getting a lot of head and cutting off even more: https://twitter.com/Boneitis/status.....99254364721152 . I also love buying weird religious comics because they're, well, weird and the "Cross Section Comics" booth did not disappoint with titles like "Shields of Faith", "Alabastera", "Rise", and their flagship title "Christian Flagg": https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECHDr_f.....amp;name=small . In a stroke of social bad luck, however, the author asked me which church I went to and, thankfully, my answer of "My husband and I are still looking" seemed to dissuade further inquiry into my spiritual life. I also found a great Halloween costume: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECH0s-o.....amp;name=small . Business was somewhat slow, a few undercover furs stopped by and bought some prints and commissions so it wasn't a total loss though. The late afternoon rolled by slowly and we drew the day, quietly, to a close.
SATURDAY:
The other vendors I talked to all claimed that Saturday was the best day for business at comic cons. At furry cons it's pretty much always Friday so I trusted their experience and braced for a flood of interest that day and when the doors opened...
...
...It was a bit better. A man decked head to toe in Pikachu themed merchandise spent a nice sum of money at my table and, singlehandedly, made the con for me. Outside of him all my sales went to a brand new demographic for me: children. Maybe it's because of YouTube fursuiter's influence or the media's wholehearted embracing of the furry scene but almost every person that approached my table was part of the ten and under crowd and, noticeably, accompanied by very nervous looking parents. This was not something I was used to. Most people I meet at cons are awkward nerdy adults who, while usually smart, aren't necessarily blessed with social graces or a love for physical fitness. It is what it is, and if you happen to defy the shorthand I'm using for brevity here: calm down. I'm smart enough to realize exceptions to broad statements, especially my own, exist. But: yes the families were going furry and I was literally the only furry themed booth on the con floor so I wasn't just the front lines; I was the whole goddamn army.
I did my best. I talked with kids about animal characters and drawing and what their favorite comics were. I quietly made sure they didn't accidentally stray into the 18+ binders (it's not hard) and talked assuredly to, rightfully, concerned parents about their child's involvement in this, at best, questionable fandom. You can lie to yourself all you want about the "fandom being for everyone" but my calls last September to Texas PD over an established furry business owner grooming, touching, and photographing nine year olds says otherwise. Moreover the fact that my panels suddenly started getting rejected, former contacts ghosting me, and my applications to Dealer's Rooms getting denied ONLY after I wrote the most important journal of my careers says even more ( https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/8883824/ ). But that's just a dumb conspiracy theory.
And Epstein committed suicide. Robert Greene shit sucks sometimes.
Anyhow, find a roundabout way to call me a monster all you want, when it comes to kids I'm going to do the responsible thing. The only thing that'll stop me is to kill me, and you're invited to try. You won't be the first person to try and bury me. Speaking of burials: let's get back on track and BURY this con report!
SUNDAY:
Sunday was easily the slowest day, with almost no customers at all. The only real thing of note was that I had observed a few fursuiters at the con, all of whom had walked right on by my table. This irked me so I broke protocol and started calling out to them, which they actually ended up appreciating. None of them bought a thing but they turned out to all be high schoolers who were broke (despite having very nice fursuits?). Whatever. It was fun to talk to young people who were VERY excited to see a furry artist out and about in public, unashamed and not giving a fuck. Money is nice but being able to brighten someone's day by mere circumstance of "being yourself in a place" is a pretty great feeling. It doesn't pay the bills, this is true, but I wasn't out any money for this con anyhow so I decided to focus on the net positive of being able to be The Cool Furry" where there shouldn't have been one.
I don't know if I'll be going back to MCC though. It was a LOT of work just to make a few people smile and, while that's nice, I don't make much money doing what I do (ethical marketing sucks for your bank account, kids) and I'd like to thrive, not just survive. I'm glad I went THIS year since I learned a lot and the horrifying refresher course in corporate over-saturation is something that keeps my heart thumping loud and angry. It gave me lots to ponder, I met a bunch of very passionate artists, writers, and craftsmen; and I got to hopefully convince a few parents that their kids still had a fighting chance despite liking "Zootopia" a little TOO much. I'm always going to be trying to expand my horizons and find new people who like my paintings and comics, this just may not have been the place or time.
See you at Furry Migration North and MFF.
-Bone
Let me tell you all about it.
FRIDAY:
My stalwart co-host and I arrived at the Cobo Convention Center to set up our table. The place is run well, like an even more efficient Anthrocon, and Big Red (my ancient GMC truck) is quickly unpacked and we are set up. I get a brief chance to look around but not long. I like to be at my table pretty much full time, ESPECIALLY at opening when people are flooding in. But people don't flood in, they trickle in, very slowly. I stare vacantly at the three things I am going to be staring at a LOT: a wood-burned plaque of Norman Reedus, a booth that sells bowties with assorted Disney owned properties on them, and an inflatable Jabba the Hutt ( https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECHjsuP.....amp;name=small ). The place was dead, specifically MY place: the Artist Alley. Endless scores of My Hero Academia packs stroll by the passion projects of countless artists in favor of gawking at vinyl records cut out into pictures of Kylo Ren. All around me artists are griping within the first couple hours as the shadow of the Mouse eclipses all and hides our work behind an endless wave of pictures of Deadpool. Do you like Deadpool? He's funny, he's self aware! He's owned by billionaires who don't give a shit about any of that. There are many pictures of Deadpool at this con, his white-eyed stare is carved, etched, inked and painted into every form and style of art you can imagine: Alphonse Muccha Deadpool, Japanese wood block print Deadpool, Deadpool sculpted out of Styrofoam, wood, stone, even hot glue! And of course he's crossed over with every franchise you can imagine (and of course every franchise is mashed together with every other franchise in an attempt to hijack your dwindling attention span by showing you TWO THINGS YOU RECOGNIZE). My mind finally broke when I saw people buying fan-art of Deadpool as a Funko-Pop. I was in enemy territory, these were not my people. Everywhere I looked the molded plastic monstrosity of nerd "culture" stared back at me.... beady eyed: https://twitter.com/Boneitis/status.....53645193089024
I knew I had to put visual filters up, lest my brain melt and I find myself vacuously waiting in line to get Val Kilmer's autograph for a reason my new brain couldn't articulate. I made a rule: visit no table that primarily sells fan-art or "culture" swag. This immediately filtered out 95% of the convention. Now keep in mind: I don't even necessarily hate large IP's; I've seen every Marvel film (and enjoyed most of them) and watch plenty of popular Netflix series etc... My issue is that seeing otherwise talented artists draw nothing but non-stop TV characters is sad to me for two looming reasons: 1) I'd rather see what original ideas they could come up with instead of doing free marketing and advertising for billion dollar companies and 2) I imagine them on social media non-stop, looking for which characters and pairings of characters are popular in disgusting "shipping" communities, where people endlessly ponder the imaginary love life's of cartoon characters that don't matter and shouldn't be a poor substitute for actual human interaction and intimacy. That people are making small but successful careers off of, well, garbage is shitty when I KNOW in my magma filled heart that they're capable of greatness. It's especially shitty because once I had my Disney-Deflectors up I started to find gold. My first find? "Yee Soon Shin", a comic about a Korean warlord who, based on my cursory glance, spent the 16th century getting a lot of head and cutting off even more: https://twitter.com/Boneitis/status.....99254364721152 . I also love buying weird religious comics because they're, well, weird and the "Cross Section Comics" booth did not disappoint with titles like "Shields of Faith", "Alabastera", "Rise", and their flagship title "Christian Flagg": https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECHDr_f.....amp;name=small . In a stroke of social bad luck, however, the author asked me which church I went to and, thankfully, my answer of "My husband and I are still looking" seemed to dissuade further inquiry into my spiritual life. I also found a great Halloween costume: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECH0s-o.....amp;name=small . Business was somewhat slow, a few undercover furs stopped by and bought some prints and commissions so it wasn't a total loss though. The late afternoon rolled by slowly and we drew the day, quietly, to a close.
SATURDAY:
The other vendors I talked to all claimed that Saturday was the best day for business at comic cons. At furry cons it's pretty much always Friday so I trusted their experience and braced for a flood of interest that day and when the doors opened...
...
...It was a bit better. A man decked head to toe in Pikachu themed merchandise spent a nice sum of money at my table and, singlehandedly, made the con for me. Outside of him all my sales went to a brand new demographic for me: children. Maybe it's because of YouTube fursuiter's influence or the media's wholehearted embracing of the furry scene but almost every person that approached my table was part of the ten and under crowd and, noticeably, accompanied by very nervous looking parents. This was not something I was used to. Most people I meet at cons are awkward nerdy adults who, while usually smart, aren't necessarily blessed with social graces or a love for physical fitness. It is what it is, and if you happen to defy the shorthand I'm using for brevity here: calm down. I'm smart enough to realize exceptions to broad statements, especially my own, exist. But: yes the families were going furry and I was literally the only furry themed booth on the con floor so I wasn't just the front lines; I was the whole goddamn army.
I did my best. I talked with kids about animal characters and drawing and what their favorite comics were. I quietly made sure they didn't accidentally stray into the 18+ binders (it's not hard) and talked assuredly to, rightfully, concerned parents about their child's involvement in this, at best, questionable fandom. You can lie to yourself all you want about the "fandom being for everyone" but my calls last September to Texas PD over an established furry business owner grooming, touching, and photographing nine year olds says otherwise. Moreover the fact that my panels suddenly started getting rejected, former contacts ghosting me, and my applications to Dealer's Rooms getting denied ONLY after I wrote the most important journal of my careers says even more ( https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/8883824/ ). But that's just a dumb conspiracy theory.
And Epstein committed suicide. Robert Greene shit sucks sometimes.
Anyhow, find a roundabout way to call me a monster all you want, when it comes to kids I'm going to do the responsible thing. The only thing that'll stop me is to kill me, and you're invited to try. You won't be the first person to try and bury me. Speaking of burials: let's get back on track and BURY this con report!
SUNDAY:
Sunday was easily the slowest day, with almost no customers at all. The only real thing of note was that I had observed a few fursuiters at the con, all of whom had walked right on by my table. This irked me so I broke protocol and started calling out to them, which they actually ended up appreciating. None of them bought a thing but they turned out to all be high schoolers who were broke (despite having very nice fursuits?). Whatever. It was fun to talk to young people who were VERY excited to see a furry artist out and about in public, unashamed and not giving a fuck. Money is nice but being able to brighten someone's day by mere circumstance of "being yourself in a place" is a pretty great feeling. It doesn't pay the bills, this is true, but I wasn't out any money for this con anyhow so I decided to focus on the net positive of being able to be The Cool Furry" where there shouldn't have been one.
I don't know if I'll be going back to MCC though. It was a LOT of work just to make a few people smile and, while that's nice, I don't make much money doing what I do (ethical marketing sucks for your bank account, kids) and I'd like to thrive, not just survive. I'm glad I went THIS year since I learned a lot and the horrifying refresher course in corporate over-saturation is something that keeps my heart thumping loud and angry. It gave me lots to ponder, I met a bunch of very passionate artists, writers, and craftsmen; and I got to hopefully convince a few parents that their kids still had a fighting chance despite liking "Zootopia" a little TOO much. I'm always going to be trying to expand my horizons and find new people who like my paintings and comics, this just may not have been the place or time.
See you at Furry Migration North and MFF.
-Bone
It was a pleasure to meet you on Sunday though! Glad I met another local fur. :)
It was like 10,000 trees in a forest, all gathered together under the shared interest of a subject that wasn’t there.
Contrast that with a furry con where the subjects of mutual adoration are the attendees themselves, and the difference is just night and day.
More importantly, I'm wondering if you bought that costume for yourself.
And that sucks about being blacklisted too.
Want to fix it? Try using that "Bay Area CEO" money to fund artists and projects that you like that aren't your own. It's cool that you're successful in your field but not everyone gets so lucky. Money talks, internet posts walk.
This is why I don't really get involved in "geek" outside of furry (which isn't entierly geek anyway)
It's been over-corporatized as you saw. And some of the crowds involved are pretty hungry to consume. It's like a less violent version of the Imperium of Man, eager to worship and give money.