After the conference is over it's always hard to believe it actually happened. A week ago I hadn't even left and now I'm sitting at the same desk, working on the same projects, and yet my memory tells me that over the past six days I returned home, saw some of my most valued colleagues, met one of my favorite comics artists, mounted three long days of programming, saw a display of archival treasures (including an original Little Nemo), paid warm tribute to Will Eisner, and got to talk about comics and Citizen Kane with the man who created the Joker.
SPX was missed, Bethesda's restaurant options even moreso--but what Capitol Hill lacks in dining it more than makes up for in sheer beauty. (Once you learn to ignore all the antiterrorist barriers.)
Besides the aforementioned and jaw-dropping display of comics art, holding our tenth annual conference at the Library of Congress also did great things for our accessibility and visibility with the general public; ICAF 2005 was a watershed for attendance and press coverage. We got not one but two pieces in the Washington Post, including a prominent feature in their free Express paper (couldn't find a link). And then there was this article in the George Washington University student newspaper (the Hatchet--great name). That's me brandishing a list of 57 known communists an anthology of early twentieth-century comics scholarship. Paul Grist was so excited that giant word balloons and sound effects literally burst out of his skull.
I knew we'd made the big time when we got our first newspaper article in which a columnist grouses curmudgeonly about a conference on comics (exclamation points liberally added) being held at the Library of Congress. The author of the Express piece demanded to know, "Has Congress been alerted? Wasn't it just a few years ago that Congress held hearings to investigate the corrupting influence of comics on America's youth? What's next, Marilyn Manson for House speaker? No wonder this country is going to hell in a handbasket." Ladies and gentlemen, our sneering mass-media coverage cherry has been popped.
In jest, I hope, and it did end up being a pretty positive article. The important thing is, we got billed above Jethro Tull.
Seriously. Above "Ian Anderson's mincing, Middle Earthian prog rock" to be precise.
(But I'm pretty sure he got the larger dressing room.)
the man who created the Joker
Who? I don't remember the exact credits on Batman #1, but it was either Finger or Fox on writing, and they're both dead, and probably Sprang on art.
Posted by: Greg Morrow | October 19, 2005 at 11:35 AM
Jerry Robinson, who created him with Bill Finger.
Posted by: Marc | October 19, 2005 at 12:36 PM
In David Lodge's novel CHANGING PLACES, a group of English Department faculty play "Humiliation," a game designed to reveal the most embarrassing gaps in their educations. You win the game by admitting to the most important book you've never read: the guy who wins "Humiliation" in Lodge's novel is a newly-hired Shakespeare scholar who confesses that he's never read HAMLET. Naturally, he doesn't get tenure.
I bring "Humiliation" up because Marc neglected to note, in his ICAF report, that we played our own bizarro version last Friday night, after the George Washington University/ICAF event. Around pitchers of beer, pathetic fanboys Marc, Charles Hatfield, Paul Grist, Jose Alaniz, and myself, and pathetic fangirl Deborah Shamoon, confessed to the comic or comics they felt most embarrassed to have bought and read.
Now I won't give away any secrets--at least, not without being bribed--but I think it's newsworthy that I flattened the competition with my purchase, at 18 YEARS OLD, of the first 10 issues of DAZZLER. It was when the disco roller-skater became the herald of Galactus that I finally dropped the title.
Now don't you regular readers of NOT THE BEASTMASTER want to know Marc greatest "humiliation"? (A hint: you'd suspect that someone who writes extensively on SPIDEY SUPER-STORIES would have some serious embarrassments to hide, and you'd be right.)
Posted by: Craig Fischer | October 19, 2005 at 01:30 PM
Craig, my understanding was that certain of those esteemed scholars did not want their misspent youth made public, so I vowed not to out any closet Beyonder fans this year. I will protect their sterling reputations with the tenacity of Judith Miller, and the journalistic integrity of somebody much much better than Judith Miller.
And my humiliating comics purchases are on display here every day...
Posted by: Marc | October 19, 2005 at 06:06 PM