WALKING THE WALK

You know you had a good San Diego when you still can't feel your feet five days later. I had a great San Diego. I may never walk again.

It's only my second time at this particular con. Last time I went, back in 2001, I came away with a terrible sense of ennui. Everyone seemed to be going through the motions, and optimism was clearly at a premium. This time the mood seemed more upbeat. Fans and creators alike seemed enthused, and the convention floor was twice the size and packed to the gills, which certainly bodes well, although it did no favours to a flitting social butterfly like myself.

Of course, contrary to the signs, the period since 2001 has been rather a good one for the industry. It could be that my barometer is horribly off, and we're about to enter into a period of terrible creative and financial stagnation and this was the last hurrah.

Neil Gaiman certainly doesn't think so. Gaiman gave the keynote address at the Will Eisner Awards, and spoke of his great hope that we're about to enter into a new Golden Age for comics; And not just because he's actually writing comics again and has two major projects out this year from Marvel and DC.

'The mood seemed upbeat. Fans and creators alike seemed enthused.' A transcript of the address is available at Gaiman's journal, but the main thrust of it is that there are more great works being produced in comics and more classic works being collected; that there is a greater diversity in the works available, and a greater diversity in the make-up of both the industry's audience and its creators.

Furthermore, comics appear to be at last achieving a degree of mainstream recognition and acceptability, as evinced by the numerous reviews for the LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN movie that noted that the movie had actually taken a comic and dumbed it down.

"We may not have reached that glorious shining comic-book utopia yet," Gaiman observed, "But we're getting there."

It's sad, then, that so many people that I've spoken to recently - away from the convivial carnival of San Diego - have been bemoaning how bored they are with the state of comics today. Too many friends have told me lately that they're not inspired by what they see on the shelves.

Now, this could be the usual burnout that affects every long-time comics reader every once in a while. Or it could be that, though the industry truly is on the cusp of Gaiman's utopia, the industry's best still isn't as good as the promise. Diversity and availability are wonderful things to reach for, but if comics are failing to simply entertain their audience, none of it is worth a damn.

But Gaiman got there first on that one, too, exhorting his audience to "strive towards excellence". It's hardly controversial, but it's nice to hear it said.

DIE-HARDS WITH A VENGEANCE

One of the most miserably weary faces I encountered at the 2001 con was that of Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada. I missed him this time around, but I doubt he'd have been any more cheerful, given how successfully DC stole a march on the House of Ideas, dominating the news cycle and announcing exclusive deals with both WOLVERINE writer Greg Rucka and NEW X-MEN writer Grant Morrison.

'My fear is that DiDio can't do enough to combat Levitz's conservative streak.' Marvel had nothing very noteworthy to announce, and didn't even have a significant convention presence. Marvel has ditched booths in favour of sending more people to more cons, but I heard both fans and creators alike bitching that, to all intents and purposes, the biggest company in comics basically hadn't turned up.

Several die-hard DC fans, knowing me to be a die-hard Marvel fan, took gleeful delight in rubbing the Rucka and Morrison announcements in my face. There's a feeling that the seesaw is swinging back in DC's favour. At one panel, CATWOMAN scribe Ed Brubaker noted that DC was taking over from Marvel as the "cool" publisher. If this is true, then it's presumably thanks in part to DC editorial vice-president Dan DiDio.

I've mentioned before that DiDio is the great hope for DC. While it's president and publisher Paul Levitz's job to avoid doing anything even slightly risky that might alert parent company AOL Time Warner to DC's presence and make it wonder why it's still carrying this deadweight little division, it's DiDio's job to sneak around the slumbering Levitz and find any way he can to push the envelope.

My fear is that DiDio can't do enough to combat Levitz's conservative streak, and DC is snaring some great talents into an environment where their freedom and creativity will be curtailed. But obviously I hope I'm wrong, just as I hope those who believe New Marvel is finally being driven off the rails by an increasingly ego-driven Bill Jemas are also wrong.

Forgive me, I'm jetlagged, but I'm going to say something uncontroversial again: Wouldn't it be nice to have both the industry's big companies doing well, both creatively and commercially? Who knows, it may even happen, despite the best efforts of the two companies' respective heads.

HALL MONITOR

One of the great disappointments of the convention, for me, was the announcement of the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame inductees.

Most readers probably don't give a damn about the Hall of Fame; it's not as if there even is a hall anywhere with pictures of these acclaimed creators hanging on the walls, though the con organisers do dutifully build one every year out of exhibition boards and hide it at the far end of the convention centre, somewhere beyond the small press ghetto.

'If Hergé hadn't been picked by the judges, would he have made it in?' Even the Comic Con's own website doesn't appear to have a page dedicated to the winners, so it's understandable that the awards normally go without note. Even so, for most of these creators, this slim recognition is the only recognition they get, and it's probably time we did give a damn about comics' past. It does have plenty to teach us.

Every year since 1999, six names are added to the hall - two by the Eisner judges, and four by the voters - retailers, publishers and other comics professionals. (Initially there was only one inductee each year, but the number has steadily risen, presumably in an attempt to make the hall look a little less bare.) This year the judges picked Hergé and Bernard Krigstein - easy choices given that major books have been published about both of them in the past year (TINTIN: THE COMPLETE COMPANION, by Michael Farr, and B KRIGSTEIN VOL 1, by Greg Sadowski).

The four inductees chosen by the voters were Jack Davis, Will Elder, Al Feldstein and John Severin. That's four artists best known for their work at EC and on MAD magazine. Now, these are all great artists, there's no question of that, and I would never wish to suggest that they don't deserve their places on the rostrum. All the same, it feels to me a little like stacking a Comedy Hall of Fame with nothing but the cast of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. If there had been room for two more inductees, I wouldn't be surprised if Johnny Craig and Reed Crandall had been next to make the list.

And I wonder, if Hergé had not been picked by the judges, would he ever have made it in? If Osamu Tezuka had not been picked by last year's judges, would he still be languishing somewhere outside the Great Hall?

René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, creators of ASTERIX, were also on this year's shortlist, but they were passed over. To me, that's an utterly appalling oversight. I admit to personal bias - the ASTERIX books are the books I grew up with and the books that turned me and thousands of other Europeans on to comics. True, Goscinny and Uderzo haven't had the same impact in the US as they have in Europe - though I suspect ASTERIX books still sell better in Barnes & Noble than those EC reprints do - but it's an international convention; shouldn't it also be an international Hall of Fame?

Every year it seems like another six guys who shared a studio in New York make it through the doors. Meanwhile, Hugo Pratt is still waiting for his invitation.

Andrew Wheeler is a London-based entertainment journalist.

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