KING CON BROOKLYN, Day One.

by Jon Abrams | Sun, 11/08/2009 - 09:37

Location

Brooklyn Lyceum
227 4th Ave.
Brooklyn, NY
United States

 

 
This weekend at the Brooklyn Lyceum, the first-ever King Con Brooklyn is subtly rocking the house. This is a comic book & animation convention that is spotlighting talent born, bred, and/or based in the borough of Brooklyn. This is without a doubt the smallest, coolest, and classiest event of its type that I have yet attended in my burgeoning convention-going career. It’s great because it’s manageable and focused – the emphasis here is on New York cartoonists. Therefore it’s got an indy-rock feel to it, with just a smattering of superheroes flavored in. No crowds, no costumes. Comics.
 
When I got in on Saturday, I ended up in the room where the panels were and I stayed there the entire afternoon. I plan to return Sunday to get a better sense of the exhibitors tables on the convention floor, but for a first taste of King Con, I couldn’t have enjoyed the Saturday panel schedule any more.
 
UNLOCKING THE BATMAN VAULT.
This panel, moderated by comics historian Peter Sanderson, was ostensibly meant to promote a new book by Matthew Manning and Bob Greenberger called The Batman Vault, and all of those gentlemen were informative and interesting, but the obvious star of the panel was Denny O’Neil. Mr. O’Neil was a pivotal writer and editor for DC Comics (and Marvel) in the 1970s and the 1980s, and he is one of the most crucial figures universally acknowledged to have brought smart and serious back to superhero comics. Batman doesn’t get back from the campy TV show of the 1960s to the original Tim Burton film, let alone the operatic heights of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, without the thoughtful storytelling of Denny O’Neil. He’s also a lively speaker, as were they all, and this panel was an unexpectedly thorough and informative exploration of the history of Batman, who is one of the great New York fictional characters ever created.
 
GRAPHIC NYC.
Graphic NYC is a new internet project from interviewer Christopher Irving and photographer Seth Kushner that is meant to profile and promote New York as the center of the cartooning world, and in Irving’s words, “to make cartoonists look like rock stars.” What an awesome idea. In a world of reality TV stars famous for absolutely nothing, here’s an effort to shine the light on some people of obvious and remarkable talent. The website currently features luminaries such as current Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, pioneering Batman artist Jerry Robinson, and underground megastar Dean Haspiel (more on him in a minute), and Saturday’s panel featured four artists: Peter Kuper, Christine Norrie, Becky Cloonan, and George O’Connor. I hadn’t heard of any of them beforehand except for Kuper, and from what I saw of their artwork, I am excited to seek out more. This was an unexpectedly thrilling and inspiring discovery.
 
SPOTLIGHT ON JONATHAN AMES & DEAN HASPIEL
Jonathan Ames is an unusual novelist and essayist; Dean Haspiel is an uncommon cartoonist. They’re quintessential Brooklyn artists, and they’re friends. Their collaboration so far has produced the Vertigo graphic novel The Alcoholic (highly recommended), some memorable cartoons in Ames’ recent essay collection The Double Life Is Twice As Good (also recommended), and the current HBO show Bored To Death. (You must watch this show.) I’ve seen these guys at readings before and they’re always entertaining, to say the least. Ames’s work is unparalleled in its ability to meld the urbane and the literate with the emotionally perceptive and the stingingly melancholy and the unapologetically and gleefully scatological. He can write or say some of the most graphic and perverted things and somehow give the observations a gentleness and an innocence. It’s a great counterpoint with Haspiel, who in person is the most gregarious guy in the room (Zach Galifianakis’s character on Bored To Death is “loosely” based on him), and whose drawings (of which I am a tremendous fan) are full of energy and life and character. His boisterous work has been compared to that of Jack Kirby, the legendary Marvel Comics artist, but Haspiel is far less concerned with the cosmic and much more attuned to human relationships and interactions. Even though I’d heard some of the stories recounted at the panel already, when these guys are talking you can never be bored. Watch Bored To Death, please.
 
ROYAL FLUSH MAGAZINE.
Royal Flush Magazine is a pop culture almanac that is released once a year. Their newest issue was released this past week, and its featured interview with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is already receiving wider press attention. (See this article posted yesterday from Entertainment Weekly.) I hadn’t heard of Royal Flush before I wandered into their panel, but I immediately picked up a couple issues and enjoyed hearing the story of how the staff came together and developed what is a truly wild and irreverent magazine. Picture if Wizard Magazine had an older brother who smokes a lot of weed, listens to a lot of punk rock, and loves strip clubs, or if the Jackass guys could read. Royal Flush zones in on rock music, genre movies, and comedy, and is totally unapologetic about loving comics. Comic books are as cool as anything else, and you can admit to loving them while still getting laid. That’s as valuable a mission statement as any, and I am entirely on that page. 
 
Please click through on the links I provided above; I heartily recommend everything that I encountered at King Con Brooklyn and if you couldn’t make it Saturday, I hope that you find something in this article that you dig. Day Two begins today, Sunday the 8th, and if I’m able to make it over, you can expect another article like this one shortly thereafter.
 
 
 
 

 

KING CON BROOKLYN, Day One.
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