Leaving Aside Homestuck, Looking Towards Maryland And Beyond
There’s something about Lord Baltimore’s stomping grounds that just grabs hold of comics in September and won’t let go. Three weekends, three shows, serving three different constituencies. Let’s run ’em down.
- Up first, this weekend brings the return of Baltimore Comic Con to Charm City, with its big-name companies in a comics-centric show. With an awards ceremony and Stan Lee, it’s got everything the very largest shows have, with the exception of a million media companies crowding comics off the floor and a non-PDF programming guide. Lotsa people from the webcomicky world listed as showing, including your Brads and Sohmers and Braden & Shellis and Cubes and Speeds.
- One week later, Bethesda hosts the indy- and art-comics types at SPX, with the Ignatz Awards and more webcomickers and their natural allies than you can shake a stick at. I know I missed a lot of people from the list (including repeats from BaltoCon) so give it a good going-over, yes? On the off chance you don’t find somebody you want to meet in person, you can see some of the brainiest comics panels around or hit the handy hotel lobby bar.
- One week on, Intervention hits, also in Bethesda, and less “comics” than “things made on the internet”, with a real focus on programming late into the night, but with a preponderance of webcomics types on the guest list, including some repeats from the prior two shows, and a rare East Coast sighting of webcomics resident West Coast Tiki Queen and one third of the Nexus of All Webcomics Realities¹, Shaenon Garrity, and her Skin Horse writing partner, Jeffrey C Wells.² I don’t know if there’s a lobby bar, but it there is and any of the drinks come in glasses with faces on them, don’t get between them and Shaenon if you value your life.
- A little further in the future, Matthew Inman and the Little Gamers crew will continue webcomics traditions in 2013 by, respectively, presenting at the next SxSW Festival and driving from London to Ulan Bator. Gonna be a busy year next year.
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¹ The other two thirds being The Tall Man and The Smiling Man.
² I’m pretty sure I just set a record for the longest single sentence at Fleen.
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