Hey guys, it's Scott.
It's Tuesday, May 24, and I'm really glad a lot of you guys enjoyed the paid post about conventions. I'm really excited about convention season. It was announced I'll be at San Diego Comic Con, I'll be there the whole time. We're gonna be doing a lot of stuff for our second wave of comiXology/Dark Horse releases. I have a book coming out with IDW called Wildfires with the great Hayden Sherman about a convicted women’s firefighter team in the California wildfires, it's like a heist book. And Canary comes out then, the big horror/western I've been working on with Dan Panosian. Barnstormers: A Ballad of Love and Murder comes out then, the historical fiction adventure story I've been working on with Tula Lotay, and Dudley Datson and the Forever Machine, the YA influenced book that I've been working on with Jamal Igle, Juan Castro, and Chris Sotomayor, I'm really, really proud of that one, too.
So it’s a completely different slate from the first wave. We'll have all the books there, we'll have giveaways, pins, posters, all kinds of signings and everything, so come on by! And you guys in the paid subscribers tier, though, if you upgrade to a paid subscription, I'm going to be doing a signing or two that's just for you guys. So you can skip the massive, massive lines that happened in San Diego. I'll also be at Summer Con a few weeks before that in June. So if you check that out, that's in Washington state. And I'm going to do the same thing, paid subscribers get a signing line that's just for them. So yeah, the benefits of being a paid subscriber are just starting to really pay off and accumulate. So I hope you'll jump over and do that.
But for you guys, for free subscribers, I wanted to talk today a little bit about a couple things. First, thank you for being patient with me. It was Emmett’s 11th birthday this week. All he wanted was baseball cards. He's incredibly into baseball, so we found a new store, I drove about 45 minutes to it, and it turned out to be his Shangri La. He got a Mickey Mantle card for $150, that was his big gift. I couldn't believe it was so cheap. It has his jersey on it. And he got an Acuña card and an Aaron Judge card and all he thinks about is baseball.
He's one of those kids that has one thing he loves and obsesses over it for a while, So for his birthday party, we're going to a baseball game in June with his friends. The end all be all of our weekend was his birthday and my father's birthday, my father came up. So that's why I wasn't at Megacon or any of that stuff, it looked like a great time.
So also, it got me thinking, I saw somebody cosplay Val from Nocterra at Megacon. It was Lis Wonder, who's amazing.
And it got me thinking about doing little segments like this on all the people that make up the comics community that we don't think about quite as much. I had this experience a few years ago where I was invited to convention on a cruise ship. And I think it was called Con at Sea or SeaCon, and it was a really funny experience. I went with the kids and Jeanie and there were some other creators there—Gail Simone, Brian Azzarello. And it was a lot of fun in that regard, but what you realize really quickly, within a couple days, is that with fans and creators on the boat, you get tired of each other really quick, or they get tired of us, meaning how many times can they come get things signed in a four to five day period on a cruise? And the whole thing started to fall apart.
And it was funny because you could see that it wasn't gonna work by the fact that as we stopped they kept picking up more cruisers. Cruisers, apparently, are people that essentially are retired and live their lives on cruise ships and have these diamond passes and they get alerts every time there’s empty seats on a cruise and they'll just go. So they have an apartment or a condo somewhere in Tampa or somewhere on the coast and they just spend five days out of the week on cruise ships. And they go all over the place and they're really funny and awesome. We wound up talking to a lot of them and it was one of the highlights of the con. But one of them was an elderly couple, and they were like, “we're here to cosplay!” And she was wearing a sheet and she was like “I'm a ghost!” And he had cat ears and he was like, “and I'm a cat!” I was like “that’s not quite how cosplay works…” but it was very cute. They had been on a cruise the week before that was heavy metal and the one after us was going to be country music-themed.
Anyway, the point is, it was clear by watching the ice sculpture melt day after day at the buffet, and the makeup of the ship change, that a convention that just has creators and fans isn't going to work. And that's true of the industry in all these obvious ways, but in ways that aren't so obvious, too. Creators make up a tiny portion of the people that make this whole geek comic industry function and the whole ecosystem run. Obviously there's editors, there's retailers, huge, huge, incredibly important part. They're shipping, there's distribution, there's marketing, there's publicity, there's everybody in between. And so I figured every once in a while we’d talk about a different group of people, just for a minute or two, that really contributes to the whole geek and comics ecosystem but maybe doesn't get as much flashy attention as creators.
So today I thought about cosplayers because I saw Lis Wonder. She's amazing. She cosplayed Val from Nocterra at Megacon. So a story—when you go out and you cosplay our characters, I know it's for fun and all of that, but especially if it's a character that a creator made up, it means the world. It makes the whole convention for us. I mean, I remember vividly in 2012 when I saw the first person cosplay as a Talon at C2E2:
And basically, not only did it blow both my and Greg Capullo’s minds, I literally had tears in my eyes with how much it blew my mind that someone had taken the time to make a costume for a character we created, but Bob Harris, the editor in chief for DC at the time, was standing near me. And I had been arguing about why it might be a fun thing to do a crossover with other books for Court of Owls, since that had been doing well and the fun was to give everybody their own Talon that they made up. And they were going back and forth on whether it would work, and I swear to you he saw me take a picture with the Talon, he called me over and he was like, “you just got your event.” So seeing fan enthusiasm for characters does go a long way with everybody on this side of the fence in the industry.
But cosplay has been a staple of conventions and fan gatherings, really, I think, since the ‘50s and ‘60s and the proliferation of pulp magazines and pop culture. There was a great video on ComicTropes, which is a terrific station, if you don't follow it already, that covers all kinds of topics on comic books, that traces the entire history of cosplay all the way back to the early 19th century and the beginnings of Halloween as a popular holiday, everything, so you should totally go check that out:
But yeah, nowadays they’re so elaborate. I mean, they have awards for all kinds of different stuff—Best Superhero Costume, Best Original Character Costume, Best Manga or Anime Costume, best everything. There’s Best Team Costume, a Best Set Piece one, which is amazing where sometimes they'll award the best scene recreated by two characters. So it'll be, like, Superman holding Supergirl from Crisis or any of that stuff.
The point is, there's a whole landscape of cosplay, from kid cosplay and junior cosplay to all kinds of adults forays into cosplay. And the point I'm trying to make is that all of it is good. It's celebratory, it shows your dedication to this whole comic book and geek culture, and you should let your flag fly if you have any interesting cosplay. There are great tutorials on YouTube on cosplay. Tyler is going to put a link here for one of them that I thought was really, really strong.
But there's also ways of finding community through it. That's the other thing. There's a great hashtag, #28DaysOfBlackCosplay, that happens in February and not only are the cosplayers incredible, and the costumes amazing, but it also gives you a sense of how you can find a community you identify with that celebrates the things that you do. And you can make friendships, which was what comics is all about at the end of the day, right? Finding stories that inspire you and connecting with other people who relate to the same material because of what it's about, what it means. That's really, at the end of the day as a writer, what we're trying to do. You try and write stories that inspire you, inspire other people, and allow you to connect with them in this insane and crazy time we live in.
So anyway, I wanted to thank all the cosplayers who've ever cosplayed our characters. It means the world. There are photos of me and Greg with people that have cosplayed the entire Dark Nights: Metal cast.
Every possible thing from Mr. Bloom…
…to Skinner Sweet, to Gordon Batman…
…to Zero Year Batman. Like we've seen pretty much everything we've made, or I've made with other creators as well, cosplayed and it always is the highlight of convention. So thank you.
If you have any interest in cosplay, we'll go check out some of these links and always welcome and celebrate cosplayers. And remember, cosplay is not consent. If you're at a convention and you see somebody in any kind of cosplay, feel free to go up and tell them how much you admire their costume, how you think it's great, but boundaries are boundaries and be very careful about making sure that you respect everybody’s space. All right, thanks guys, and I'll be back on Thursday!
S
P.S. This was recorded before news broke about the horrific shooting in Uvalde, TX. There are no words, and I’m not going to attempt to convey the sheer horror that I, along with the whole country, am racked with that this has once again happened. Connecticut senator Chris Murphy and Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr have already put out heartbreakingly powerful statements on the tragedy:
Right now there are several GoFundMe campaigns to help the Uvalde community, but here’s one that has not yet reached its fundraising goal, so please donate if you can:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/robb-elementary-school-shooting
Similarly, the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center is in need of donations now more than ever, so if you’re eligible, please provide what you can:
https://donor.southtexasblood.org/donor/schedules/drive_schedule/136932
And lastly, if you’re a licensed attorney in the state of Texas, the shooting victims and their families are in need of pro bono assistance, so for those who are able, please contact the San Antonio legal Services Association using the information below:
Stay safe out there, everyone. You are loved.
Newsletter #73: A Best Jackett Spotlight on... Cosplay!