April 2007

By Katherine Keller
April 1, 2007

I've got a lot of ground to cover in this month's list of topics that caught my interest, but I'll start with a bit of shameless plugging.

The Sequential Tart CafePress Store has been updated so that all covers are now available on colored and black shirts.

As most of you know, Sequential Tart is a labor of love. The only payment any of us receive is the satisfaction of a job well done. It is the revenue from our banner ads and CafePress sales that enables us to pay for our bandwidth and server related costs. But there's another reason we Tarts will be pushing the store so hard in the coming year. Four years ago, for our fifth anniversary we hosted a booth at the San Diego Comic Con; we've been asked every year since then when are we going to have another booth. Well, we'd like to have another booth in 2008 to celebrate our tenth anniversary.

Here's the thing, Sequential Tart is not a charity. We were able to afford our fifth anniversary booth (which had an excellent location) in large part due the kindness and generosity of The Powers That Be at CCI. Money raised through our CafePress store helped defray the amount that each Tart had to chip in out of her own pocket.

We really want to have a booth for 2008. We've got what we think is a really nifty idea for what to do with it. Revenue raised through our CafePress store is going to be a large part of making that happen.

And, if you'd like any one of those images on some item that we're not currently offering? Drop us a line and we'll make it happen. Thank you.

And now, for other, less pleasant news. The grim reaper took his toll last month.

I never met Marshall Rodgers personally, but I have read large chunks of his run on Batman and have always wondered why he wasn't a bigger name. He was an exceptional draftsman and had a clean, bold, style. Fifty seven years was not enough.

I knew Drew Hayes a little bit — I bumped into him a few times at SDCC until his health took a drastic downward spiral and he seemed to fall off the planet. I first got to know his work back in the early 1990s when he put out the first few issues of I,Lucipher, most of you probably know it by the new name he gave it in the mid 1990s: Poison Elves. Hayes brought a wonderful bit of satirical piss and vinegar to fantasy comics, and frankly, helped reinvigorate the genre. He died much, much too young, and my heart goes out to his young daughter.

I met Arnold Drake through "Networking Dave" Siegel in 1999, and managed to snag an interview with him. The man was an irascible, feisty old curmudgeon, and all of my subsequent interactions with him were delightful. Although his mind and wits remained clear and sharp, his physical health took a marked downward turn after his wife (a very warm and wonderful woman) died a few years back. Yes, he had lived a long and full life, and gave us many wonderful creations (read the interview), but I'm blinking back the tears as I type this, because, hot-damn, was he a funny man, and SDCC will be a little less rich without his unvarnished presence on silver age panels ... where he usually would let slip a few details about where the bodies were buried.

Speaking of people who know where the bodies are buried (and hopefully we won't be standing over his grave any time soon), Mark Evanier took the time to write a rebuttal to my article about why Comic Con International: San Diego should move to Las Vegas.

Evanier points out that the transit situation isn't as rosy as I seem to think it is, that it's a four hour drive to Las Vegas if Cal-Trans doesn't happen to be working on the I-15, that it's hot in the summer, and that hotels jack their room rates up, etc. etc. etc.

The reason Evanier wrote that rebuttal (or was pointed to my article and asked if he would write a rebuttal) is that Evanier is a regular visitor to Las Vegas. (Obviously the transit time doesn't keep him away, and, by the way, it's not like a trip on the I-5 from the northern LA metro area to San Diego can't take four hours if traffic is bad ... which it often is.) Yes, Cal-Trans has been doing a lot of work on the I-15 of late, because it's winter/spring right now. Trust me, unless it's a dire emergency, Cal-Trans will not be working on the Barstow to Primm stretch come July, because, yes, it's hot out.

Note the last word of that last sentence. Yes, it's hot outside in Las Vegas during the summer. But how much time does the average convention goer actually spend outside during daytime at the con? Not much. To paraphrase something my friend Bill said to me last weekend, yes, it may be 110 outside, but Boulder Dam says it will be 72 degrees inside. And while Evanier is right that CES is held during February, there are still many conventions held in Las Vegas during the summer. The difference between Jan/Feb and July/Aug convention numbers is far less drastic than one might think.

Room rates? As if the hotels in San Diego haven't drastically jacked up their rates for the weekend of con! Anybody who has had to book a room at non-convention rates in San Diego can also tell tales of room rates as high as $600 a night, some with a huge, non-refundable, deposit required in advance.

Look, at the end of the day, there is no easy, 100% pain-free, one-size-fits-all solution to the problem. Mark Evanier and I both love comics and we both love "Nerd Prom." However, nothing Evanier has said changes the fact that SDCC is growing much too big for San Diego to support it. Las Vegas is the only place on the west coast capable of conveniently hosting and housing that many people, especially if the con hits over 125,000 people.

Finally, speaking of outspoken, opinionated women, a recent issue of Bitch magazine did a feature on violence against comic book superheroines and the sort of treatment they receive. The article spotlighted Girl-Wonder.org and featured several quotes from Girl-Wonder co-founder and Tart Staffer, Mary Borsellino.

There's been a substantial revival of feminism in comics in the past year. Makes me think of that old Chinese curse — "May you live in interesting times." Yes, we are, at last. Thank goodness.

Katherine Keller
Editrix In Chief
April 1, 2007