Doujicon 07

Nerds and Geeks

Spent yesterday at the Australian comic creators convention Doujicon 07. Set up in a relatively small room at the Monash University, about 30kms out of Melbourne central, it was an interesting day to see what passes for an industry/scene here. I didn't really have a good look at all the work there but what i saw was some interesting humour titles, some vertigo influenced stuff and a healthy dose of manga. I didn't have a heckload of titles to sell, but did pretty well with some folks buying one of each and telling their friends to come get some funny comics from the New Zealander on the little table at the end of the room.

Don't know why but by lunch time I wanted to fight this guy

A young Italian guy, Bruno, was in tears (of joy), relating how he had been through the exact same experience as the main character in the siblings story. he knew "just what that felt like". Oh right so his sister had tricked him into urinating in her mouth? I try not to shake hands with too many people at these things.

Another bloke approached me clasping his newly bought manga books. "I'm cant believe I found these Otakuku (possibly spelt wrong) books here!" "If anyone could read my tee shirt I would be even more sad and pathetic!" I asked what the japanese figures on his shirt read, he replied, "I am single." With that he walked off muttering "I'm so lonely..." Always good to have a a good sense of one's self I guess.

Overall I was glad I went, I started the day feeling pretty low about the state of comics in general. The following quote comes from a pretty famous comic creating fella, Dawyn Cooke at the San diego comic con:

“I think to be honest the Direct Market comics that we’re all here talking about are on their way to extinction. I don’t see any way around it. It doesn’t matter how much money the Spider-Man movie makes, it doesn’t bring more people into shops.”

Sadly I think he's right. New media are taking over and maybe 5 years from now single comics may be history. I'm sure graphic novel collections will still be published but singles sales seem to be in constant decline. If the damn things were cheaper like they used to be when i was a kid then maybe more kids would read them these days. I guess those days are over but i sure do miss comics printed with dodgy colour and black n white on news print for thirty eight cents.