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The following events took place at Comic-Con International in San Diego on Friday, July 21 between 5:30 PM and 11:30 PM.

FRIDAY 5:30 PM
“This is a snake-free zone,” proclaimed Michael Dooley, the moderator of the panel “Masters of American Comics,” about the landmark museum exhibition of the same name. Apart from people recording the panel with video cameras, including the ubiquitous Mike Catron, there were a mere eighteen people seated in the audience in Room 8 when it began. Mr. Dooley was implying that everybody else was attending a competing event going on at the same time over in the notorious Hall H dealing with that new threat to air travel security: “New Line Cinema Presents Snakes on a Plane,” complete with a personal appearance by Samuel L. Jackson. There was even going to be a “snake wrangler” onstage with live snakes from the movie. Snakes at a Comic-Con! (But I note David Letterman’s observation following the revelation of the Heathrow Airport terrorist plot that the threat of airborne serpents no longer seems as bad or as funny.)

I confess that I was tempted to see Mr. Jackson in person for myself. But I decided that the “Masters” panel was more important.

Dooley, the co-editor of The Education of a Comics Artist (and brother of former DC editor Kevin Dooley), commended us for being an “elite audience” and observed that at the “Masters” panel they would be “talking about comics at the Comic-Con, not action movies.”

“Masters of American Comics” is an exhibition that showcases the work of fifteen leading cartoonists, ranging from the early 20th century into the present day: Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland), Lyonel Feininger (Wee Willie Winkie), George Herriman (Krazy Kat), E. C. Segar (Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye), Frank King (Gasoline Alley), Chester Gould (Dick Tracy), Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates), Charles Schulz (Peanuts), Will Eisner (The Spirit), Jack Kirby (Fantastic Four), Harvey Kurtzman (the original MAD), Robert Crumb (Mr. Natural), Art Spiegelman (Maus), Gary Panter (Jimbo) and Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan).

This show debuted last year in Los Angeles, and was so colossal that it was divided between two museums: the Armand Hammer Museum at UCLA and the Museum of Contemporary Art. “Masters” spent the summer in reduced size at a single venue, the Milwaukee Art Museum, but starting September 15 will be divided again between the Jewish Museum in Manhattan and the Newark Museum. There is also a comprehensive catalogue of the exhibition published by Yale University Press.

The panelists in San Diego included comics historian Brian Walker, who was co-curator of the exhibition (for reviews of his recent books on the history of American comic strips, see “Comics in Context” #66 and 71); Claudine Dixon of the Hammer Museum; and publisher/cartoonist Denis Kitchen and cartoonist/comics historian Craig Yoe, both of whom lent original artwork to the show.

As Dooley told the audience, the story of “Masters” actually began with another museum exhibition, the infamous “High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture” show, curated by Kirk Varnadoe and Adam Gopnik, that was held at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art a decade and a half ago. This exhibition “put great works of 20th century art” “side by side” with comics, advertising art, and even graffiti. Dooley said that “art people thought it was a desecration,” while “comics people were resentful at the secondary status given to [their] medium.” (That’s exactly why I didn’t go to “High and Low,” although now I wish I had.)

Dooley showed on screen Art Spiegelman’s “High Art Lowdown,” his critique of “High and Low,” done in comics form. In it Spiegelman quite bluntly asked why he and his friends (presumably the alternative cartoonists from his magazine Raw) weren’t in the show, as well as inquired about the absence of the early 20th century German artist George Grosz, whose illustrations, employing caricature, are now considered fine art, but are also arguably cartoons.

Spiegelman went further and invited museum curators to visit his studio, One of them was Ann Philbin, who was then the director of the Drawing Center in New York City, She agreed that the comics medium deserved museum exposure. She later became director of the Hammer Museum, where she instigated the “Masters” exhibition.

Claudine Dixon, the show’s catalogue coordinator, told us that she and the show’s coordinating curator Cynthia Burlingame were “drawn in against our will”: and “had no idea what comic art was about.” “I learned a lot in a year and a half,” Dixon said, and liked a lot of what she saw.

Walker said that he met the show’s other curator, John Carlin, in the early 1980s when Walker was working at the Museum of Cartoon Art in Rye, New York (which is someday to reopen as the National Cartoon Museum at the Empire State Building) and Carlin and Sheena Wagstaff were guest curating an exhibition “The Comic Art Show” at the downtown branch of the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan. (I did attend this show, and recall being exasperated by its seeming premise that comics were not art, but that artists could create fine art by appropriating imagery from the comics. The work of Roy Lichtenstein provides the best known examples.)

Carlin invited Walker to work with him on the “Masters” show. From curating about sixty-five past exhibitions on comics, primarily for the Museum of Cartoon Art, Walker knew where to find collections of original comics artwork. The “Masters” show borrows from fifty different lenders, ranging from private collectors like Yoe to institutions including the Library of Congress and Ohio State University. (Later during the panel Walker said that he “kept running into dead ends” looking for Kirby originals. Someone asked if some collectors of Kirby artwork were wary of lending it out because so much of Kirby’s art had been stolen. “I couldn’t say,” Walker replied, perhaps diplomatically.)

Then Walker turned to what he called “the most controversial” aspect of the show: the selection of the “Masters.” (Most notably, there have been complaints that no women cartoonists were included. Herriman was African-American, so the show can’t be accused of confining itself to white guys. But to my mind the insistence on including female cartoonists smacks of political correctness. The criteria that the show’s organizers set for inclusion, as described at the panel, make sense to me.)

Rather than display works by hundreds of comics artists, it was decided to concentrate on fifteen cartoonists. A “lengthy” list of possible candidates was compiled. One of the goals was to “tell the story of the development of comics in the 20th century” through the specific artists who were selected. Another criterion was that each artist must have achieved “technical mastery.” Yet another was “formal innovation”: the organizers sought to determine “which artists most added to the form of the medium.” In other words, which artists proved most innovative in crafting the visual language of comics?

In the end, Walker asserted at the panel, the list of fifteen “Masters” was achieved through “compromise consensus.” In an online interview (http://journal.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=%5Fgetfullarticle&aid=1398198) Walker had stated that “John [Carlin] helped me understand in the beginning that, in this type of [museum] environment, you really have to search for examples of work that are the most visual – graphically powerful – and not just the first time that Little Orphan Annie’s dress appeared or something. I’m probably a little more content-oriented, and he’s probably a little more form-oriented.” Walker told us at the panel that “Storytellers like Harold Gray [Little Orphan Annie] didn’t reinvent the form” and so they were not included. He said that Carl Barks (Uncle Scrooge) had also been on the list of possible artists, but “was not that innovative in layouts or design.” On the other hand, Lyonel Feininger, “whose comics career was only nine months long” did such “incredible” artwork that he was chosen. Walker said he had successfully advocated putting Milton Caniff in the show over the objections of Spiegelman, who had “a lot of input” into the selections. On the other hand, Walker told us he had “argued” for including Walt Kelly (Pogo) but failed. This show, it seems, is only about the visual dimension of comics, not abut comics as literature. Examining the idea of comics as the combination of words and pictures, or as Walker put it, “storytelling,” will have to wait for another show.

We were also told that at the opening of “Masters,” Spiegelman had said that they “should start working on “˜Masters II.'” In other words, one could tell the
story of American comics in the 20th century through an entirely different group of fifteen cartoonists. Later, an audience member asked “does this codification of Masters”–this designation of fifteen great cartoonists– “make it impenetrable” for other comics artists? Walker replied that “I hope this group of fifteen isn’t set in stone,” and that people don’t assume that these are the only cartoonists worth serious attention.

During much of the panel we were shown examples of each Master’s work from the exhibition, projected onto a screen, and even photos of the museum galleries in which the original artworks were displayed in Los Angeles.

Dooley informed the audience that the “critical reaction” to “Masters” was “a lot more favorable than” it had been to “High and Low” a decade and a half ago. Walker enthused that “the response to the exhibit was overwhelming,” leading to numerous articles in the media.

(Oddly, Walker remarked that “Art Spiegelman is not crazy about having his art exhibited at the Jewish Museum,” which is hosting part of “Masters” in New York, but Walker did not explain why. Then this week I read in New York Magazine‘s ” “Fall Preview” issue that Spiegelman had withdrawn from the show. If this is true, I wonder why.)

After the “Masters” exhibition opens in the New York area, I will be writing further about it in this column. This is a landmark event. Back in the 1980s the Whitney Museum held a brilliant exhibition on Disney animation art, but the world of art museums did not follow its lead; perhaps it was too early. Over the last several years, however, there has been increasing interest in the media and academia in the comics medium. Perhaps “Masters” is arriving in the New York area at a propitious time. I am interested in seeing how New York City’s art critics react to “Masters.” contemporary alternative cartoonists like Crumb and Spiegelman have already won favor in the fine art world. Will “Masters” open the eyes of the art world to the great works of American comics throughout their history?

Towards the end of the panel we were told that at the opening of “Masters” in Milwaukee, Kitchen had spoken with representatives of two museums who said they were interested in acquiring comics art for their permanent collections. Dooley asked, “Is this a watershed moment?” Will institutions such as art museums now compete with collectors to buy artwork by leading comics artists, thereby driving up the prices? Kitchen replied that he thought it would be a good thing if museums began collecting comics art and “I hope it’s a trend.”

And that is why this panel, with its miniscule audience, may prove to be the most historically significant at the 2006 Comic-Con. Graduate students of the future, take note. It’s not just that it predicted skyrocketing prices for original comics art by the greats. It’s the reason that those prices will increase. We may be on the brink of a new era of serious appreciation of comics by the world of fine art curators, scholars and collectors. “Masters of American Comics” might well prove to be the tipping point.

We were told at the panel how popular the “Masters” show was at its Los Angeles venues, and I believe it. So it’s strange, and perhaps telling, that there was such a dearth of people at Comic-Con who were interested in attending a panel about a museum exhibition that takes the comics artform seriously.

On the way back to the Convention Center, I saw Captain Jack Sparrow, lead character of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, for the first time during my San Diego trip. It turned out that there were many Captain Jacks at Comic-Con, and, I am informed, many of them were disguised women.

FRIDAY 8:30 PM
“They don’t really need this big a room,” a woman behind me told the guy she was sitting with. I was seated in Room 20, the second biggest panel room at Comic-Con: the room can hold thousands of people. The 18th Annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (named after one of the Masters of American Comics) were about to commence. Not counting the comic industry professional elite at the tables in front of the stage, I’d say there were roughly only two hundred people sitting in the audience when the ceremony began. Keep in mind that there were over a hundred thousand people at this year’s Comic-Con.

Why did so few people show up? Weren’t most Con attendees interested in seeing so many big names in the comics business? Weren’t they interested in learning who won? After all, the Comic-Con program refers to the Eisners as the Oscars of comics!

Indeed, the Beat told me that this year there was actually a video interviewer who was asking pros heading into the Eisners that familiar red carpet question, “Who are you wearing?” Now, I don’t expect that any of us proles who were sitting in the audience should dress up for the Eisners, but I have higher expectations for the pros who appear onstage or who sit at the tables up front. Will Eisner set an example by wearing a suit to the ceremony. But in many cases what happens is that the women dress up and the men dress down.

A prominent exception was the evening’s host, Bill Morrison, who was dressed formally and impressively. He was matched by his wife Carol, an attractive redhead in a yellow gown, who, as he put it, served the familiar award ceremony role of the “one beautiful woman who takes the winner offstage the opposite way in which he was going.” Morrison is creative director of Bongo Comics, which publishes Simpsons-related material. Introducing him, Comic-Con’s Jackie Estrada observed that “about anything you’ve seen with Matt Groening’s signature on it, Bill actually drew.” Ah, so ghosts still walk among us in the comics business.

The “Masters of American Comics” exhibit may ignore the writing component of comics, but the Eisners do not. The first award to be announced was the Bill Finger Award, which was inaugurated last year as a lifetime achievement award for comic book writers. Presenting the award were the late Bill Finger’s colleague, Jerry Robinson, who instigated the creation of the award, and Mark Evanier, who was a full pound lighter than he had been the day before. (Like Earth’s polar ice cap, Mark is disappearing at a disconcertingly rapid rate.)

Jerry Robinson reminded the audience of Finger’s “enormous creativity,” “love of the business,” and “perseverance in the face of the trials and tribulations of being unrecognized for his work.” Robinson observed that there are now “few survivors who remember him [Finger]” and that a reason for instituting the award was “to have new writers and young writers know of his accomplishments.”

Evanier continued along this theme, pointedly remarking in the presence of the comics business’s elite that “Bill Finger’s name is not on his greatest creation,” adding, “I wonder who that is.” (That co-creation is Batman; see “Comics in Context” #94.)

The plan is that each year two FInger Awards will be given out, one to a living recipient and the other to a deceased writer. This year’s posthumous prize went to Harvey Kurtzman. Evanier praised his work in the 1950s on EC’s Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat as the “best war comics” in the medium’s history. “Then,” Evanier continued, Kurtzman “came up with MAD,” working on its first twenty-four issues, which Evanier declared to be the “single greatest body of humor writing ever,” which he said influenced movies, television and stand-up comedy. The award was accepted by Kurtzman’s daughter Nellie, who proved that the proverbial apple did not fall far from the tree in her acceptance speech: “My father got the finger from the comics industry many times in his career, but this is the first time I’ve been pleased about it.”

The other Finger award went to Alvin Schwartz, a Superman and Batman writer from the Silver Age of the late 1950s and early 1960s, whose health precluded his attending the Con. Schwartz is an obscure figure in comics history, but his most celebrated co-creation is not: Bizarro. Unlike other comic book writers of his period, Schwartz apparently recognized that superhero stories could have mythological and psychological subtexts. In the recently published book Superman Cover to Cover, Schwartz reveals that he conceived of Bizarro as what the psychologist Carl Jung would call a “shadow” figure for Superman. At the Eisners an excerpt of a videotape from Mike Catron’s invaluable collection, showing Schwartz on a 2001 convention panel speaking about Bill Finger. In it Schwartz contends that “mostly his [Finger’s] anger was repressed,” but the story of “the creation of Batman through the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents. . .was Bill’s psychological way of getting rid of his [own] parents.” I suspect that comics historians might find it rewarding to reinvestigate Alvin Schwartz’s superhero stories.

At one point Bill Morrison declared that this was “Couples Night” at the Eisners. The next presenters were examples of that: Amanda Conner, looking fetching in a silver dress, and Jimmy Palmiotti, wearing a black shirt with a palm tree motif. Among the awards they presented was the one for Best Digital Comic. (“Some guys don’t know what that is,” observed Palmiotti, who explained it as simply as he could: “That’s on a computer.”) The winner was PVP by Scott Kurtz, who was genuinely funny in his acceptance speech: after profusely thanking his wife, he added, “I also want to thank my girlfriend Nancy, because she made my marriage possible.” But Kurtz also gave the most moving acceptance speech, and broke into tears as he said the Eisner voters “make me feel included, like one of the cool kids.”

I’m not going to list all the Eisner recipients, since you can easily find that information elsewhere on the Net. I’ll just mention a few that I found interesting.

Accepting his award for best lettering, Todd Klein said, “This is one place I can come where I don’t have to explain what I do [and] that they actually still make comics.” Perhaps Mr. Klein still hadn’t gotten the memo that the comics, or should I say graphic novels, are recognized by the mainstream media as hip and cool. Or perhaps he was reminding us that the public at large still has little awareness of the continuing existence of comic books, much less their cultural value.

Nisha Gopolan, comics editor for Entertainment Weekly (in an attractive miniskirt) and Calvin Reid, my uberboss at Publishers Weekly‘s Comics Week (no jacket), presented the Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Comic to Nat Turner by Kyle Baker, who showed up onstage wearing white shorts. (What did I tell you about the casual fashion styles of male Eisner attendees?) “I’m doubly thankful tonight,” Baker said in an effectively understated delivery, “in part because I just walked in ten minutes ago.”

Next Reid and Gopolan announced that the winner for “Best Archival Collection” of comic books was Absolute Watchmen, collecting the series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Apparently Gibbons wasn’t at Comic-Con, and Moore nearly never seems to leave Northampton, England nowadays. I did see Moore’s fiancee, Melinda Gebbie, at the About Comics booth, where the completed edition of their collaboration, Lost Girls, was making its debut. But I recall noticing how uncomfortable Moore looked when I saw him accepting awards at a comics convention in London back in the 1980s, so it was no surprise to me that Gebbie didn’t accept this Eisner on his behalf.

Instead Len Wein, as the original editor of Watchmen, went up to accept the award He told the audience that he had worked on “probably no project that was more challenging and gratifying than Watchmen.” Len Wein isn’t very visible in comics nowadays, but it was he, as an editor at DC, who hired Moore to write his first major American project, Swamp Thing, which Wein himself had co-created. Moore’s Swamp Thing, and his writing in general, is vastly different from Wein’s own work, but Wein nonetheless recognized Moore’s talent early on and encouraged him in breaking new ground in American mainstream comics. Len Wein is therefore an unsung hero in the history of the comics revolution of the 1980s, and it was absolutely appropriate that he got to take a bow by accepting this award.

The next pair of presenters were newlyweds Paul Dini and Misty Lee, who were introduced as the creators of “Monkey Talk” here at Quick Stop Entertainment, among their other credits. (Quick Stop got a plug in front of the Comics Elite! Huzzah!) This was the first time I’d ever seen Ms. Misty in person. But though she is a stage magician with a renowned resemblance to Zatanna, she came onstage in a long, white gown, not in a tuxedo and top hat, and did not pronounce a single word backwards. Nor, alas, was “Monkey Talk” co-host Rashy anywhere in evidence.

Winning as Best Cover Artist for Fables and Runaways, James Jean reminisced onstage that Amanda Conner, when she worked at a comics store, “sold me some of the first comics I ever read.” Considering that in the 1980s I encouraged Amanda in pursuing her comics career, and that now James Jean looks up to her as a helpful elder, I suddenly felt old.

Another general observation I have about the Eisners is that most of the speakers who think they’re being funny aren’t. There were exceptions to this rule, but, to my surprise, the next presenter wasn’t one of them. This was Dean Haglund, the comedian who is best known for playing Langly, the longhaired member of the Lone Gunmen on The X-Files. (His hair, by the way, is now short.) I saw Haglund perform at an “X-Files Expo” back in 1998, and he was quite funny, but not tonight: he didn’t seem to have a feel for the sensibility of this Comic-Con audience, and his jokes unfortunately fell flat. But he was right about one thing: “It’s a long night, isn’t it?” he asked the audience. Is this one reason so many Con attendees stay away?

Haglund announced the award for Best Comics-Related Book to the Eisner/Miller book of their transcribed conversations. Accepting were Charles Brownstein of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; Dark Horse editor Diana Schutz, looking glamorous in her long blonde hair and black dress, and Frank Miller, whom I didn’t recognize until he spoke. He has suddenly (as far as I know) adopted a new look, that strikes me as being a contemporary updating of a 1930s or 1940s period style: he had on a light gray suit and a white fedora.

Haglund also announced that there was a tie for the winner of “Best Publication Design”: Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library Report to Shareholders, and Sunday Press’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, which reprints the Winsor McCay classic at the enormous size in which it originally appeared in newspapers. Accepting on Ware’s behalf, Chip Kidd of Pantheon Books (in a suit!) said that “Chris would’ve voted for the Nemo book” and that “He’s very sorry he won this award and he apologizes profusely.” That prepared line didn’t fit the possibility of a tie, but it was pleasingly witty nevertheless. And while the organizers of “Masters” have presented McCay and Ware as equals, it’s rewarding to learn that Ware knows better.

Maggie Thompson of Comic Buyer’s Guide performed her annual duty of presenting another familiar component of industry awards shows: the “In Memorium” segment, listing significant figures who had died over the previous twelve months, such as comics artists Jim Aparo, Jack Jackson, and Alex Toth. I was shocked to learn from her presentation that Selby Kelly, widow of Walt, had passed away; somehow I’d never found out about this. Thompson included the late Joe Ranft, head of story at Pixar, and that seemed right, since animation is another form of cartoon art. But she also included Robert Wise, the director of the film version of The Sound of Music (1965) and co-director of the West Side Story movie (1961). What was he doing on the list? Wise did appear at Comic-Con years ago, and he directed the first Star Trek movie (1979) as well as the science fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Perhaps his inclusion was yet another indication of how Comic-Con is metamorphosing into a Movie Con as well.

Watching the “In Memorium” tribute a macabre thought suddenly hit me: will I be included in this tribute someday?

The Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award was presented by the late animation director’s daughter Ruth to Publishers Weekly‘s Calvin Reid for being an “advocate of our medium” to librarians and others in mainstream culture. Calvin is a genuinely nice guy (and I’d say so even if he wasn’t my editor, trust me), though I’m not sure that his support of the comics medium really counts as humanitarianism. Maybe there should be an award specifically for spreading the word about the artistic value of the comics medium to the world at large. But until there is, the Clampett Humanitarian Award will do. Overjoyed, Calvin laughed that he “didn’t expect this”: indeed, his wife had already left the ceremony. (In retrospect, this must be one reason why he was asked to be a presenter: to ensure he would attend this underattended event.) But he seemed thrilled that “I’m a part of this now,” meaning the world of comics.

British writer Grant Morrison, also won awards at this year’s Eisners. He was definitely at the Con, so why didn’t he show up at the Eisners? It’s bad news when not even nominees attending Comic-Con show up.

In contrast, another Brit, artist Mark Buckingham, one of the recipients of the “Best Serialized Story” award for “Return to the Homelands” in DC/Vertigo’s Fables, exulted onstage that after “twenty years in the business” he “finally made it to Comic-Con.” He enthused about “how amazing and unlike anything in the world this is.” I wonder if he’s been to major European comics festivals such as France’s Angouleme and Italy’s Lucca. It’d be nice to think that the San Diego Con has outdone them.

Finally, Sergio Aragones, as always, announced the six new additions to the Eisners’ Hall of Fame.

First was the late Floyd Gottfredson, who wrote and drew the Mickey Mouse comics from 1930 to 1975, and was to Mickey what Carl Barks was to Donald Duck. A representative of Walt Disney Studios accepted, and I found that rather sad, since it suggested that Gottfredson has no living heirs.

The next new Hall of Fame was the late William Marston Moulton, the creator of Wonder Woman. (Shouldn’t Moulton be designated as “co-creator,” since he didn’t draw her?) Accepting on behalf of the Moulton family was their lawyer, Edgar May, who had appeared at the stamp ceremony the day before.

Reading remarks composed by Moulton’s son, May told us that William Marston Moulton had believed that “women were the more powerful sex.” There were cheers from the audience. May unwisely interjected, “I’m not convinced,” whereupon he was loudly booed.

Cartoonist Mark Bode accepted on behalf of his deceased father, the late underground cartoonist Vaughn Bode, creator of Cheech Wizard. The younger Bode reminisced about his father, who died when he was a boy, in a somewhat rambling but nonetheless affecting speech.

Dody Manning, the widow of Russ Manning, artist on Tarzan and Magnus, Robot Fighter, went to the opposite extreme, saying simply, “Thank you all., Thank you very much.”

One of the few female comic book artists of the Silver Age, Ramona Fradon, co-creator of Metamorpho, wasn’t in San Diego, so DC president Paul Levitz accepted for her, confessing that as an assistant editor he “had a crush” on her.

Then came the final addition to the Hall of Fame, Silver Age writer/artist Jim Steranko, in person, with silver hair, dark glasses, and a dapper white suit, in sharp contrast with other, all-too-casually dressed men participating in the ceremony. “I thought I was up for the Rob Liefeld Humility Award,” Steranko said; this joke didn’t go over. “I know this is the Moby Dick of award ceremonies,” he continued (More Tolstoy than Melville, I think), “so I’ll only keep you a moment.” Then he said something the audience very much liked: “I accept this award in the names of all the nominees tonight till they get their own gold.”

I still wonder why so few people showed up at the Eisners. As I observed last year (see “Comics in Context” #97), many of the nominated stories and series tend to be relatively obscure. I certainly don’t believe that artistic merit is necessarily commensurate with the level of sales. But is it possible that that the Eisners voting reflect a minority taste that is too idiosyncratic and unusual for the awards’ own good? Or is it that, as the attendance for the “Masters” panel showed, there still just aren’t enough people who take the artform truly seriously?

Towards the end of the ceremony, I turned around to check on the couple who were sitting behind me at the outset. They were gone.

FRIDAY 11:00 PM
After the Eisners, I engaged in some of the traditional milling about just outside Hall H, where live musicians were performing even before the annual post-Eisnerian party was about to start. I considered staying, since it might be my only opportunity to see some people, but it had been a long day, I was tired, and I still had to make my way back to Coronado Island. Maybe next year.

Copyright 2006 Peter Sanderson