Vertigo: Graphic Content

3 Responses to “Vertigo Voices: The Fables Forum panel highlights”

1. Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources - Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment » SDCC ‘09 | The annual Fables one-page tale says on July 26th, 2009 at 12:28 pm :
   

   [...] Every year at Comic-Con, the Fables team hands out an original one-page comic to the attendees of their annual Fables Forum panel. You can check it out below, thanks to the always delightful Pamela Mullin, who posted it on the Vertigo Graphic Content blog. [...]

2. djc6535 says on July 28th, 2009 at 9:57 am :
   

   An open letter to Bill Willingham

   Mr. Willingham,
   I am posting this open letter in forums that belong to you and your fans. I realize that this makes me a guest in these places, as I am not a Fables reader, and as a guest I will do my very best to keep these comments civil and constructive.

   At San Diego Comic Con, there are many many panels and activities for fans to attend. These take place in large ballrooms and are scheduled back to back throughout the entire day. The folks who put the convention on do not clear the rooms between events, so if 90% of the room stays when one panel concludes, only 10% of the room will be available to the people standing in line. This is a difficult situation for everybody, creators like yourself, and fans like me. We all do the best we can.

   This year, the Fables panel was followed by a Venture Bros. panel, and there were a large number of Venture Bros. fans ’squatting’ your Fables panel. I was one of them. However, I am not entirely evil. I let a number of Fables fans who swore to me that they’d leave the room when Fables concluded (Meaning they weren’t taking a seat I would later be interested in) in front of me in line. Still, I am aware of the potential for frustration when confronted with a number of fans of someone other person’s creation sitting where you would rather see one of your own.

   That said, we all do the best we can with these unfortunate circumstances. I was rather surprised when you proceeded to insult the Venture Bros. fans numerous times throughout the panel. Comments along the lines of “This is something strange and mysterious: something you would have to read”, describing how the process of opening and reading a book works, and other comments insinuating my illiteracy were not appreciated. Instead of viewing the 1000 Venture Bros. fans as a captive audience that could be turned into fans of your creation as well, you viewed them as a threat and treated them as such. You very quickly turned a room full of people who had never heard your story but were receptive, and happy to know they didn’t have to stand in line anymore (after 2.5 hours of waiting) very sour to whatever you might have to say afterwords.

   You have to protect your fans who came to see you, and you have to treat them best first. I understand this. I am in no way suggesting you should have changed the content of your panel to a sales pitch, which would have been insulting to your fans. I’m suggesting that if you hadn’t repeatedly attacked the other folks who had no opinion of your story, the excitement of your own fans and the interesting aspects of the story you had to tell would have become a sales pitch to them by default. We, the non-Fables fans should have been thinking “This looks interesting, I should pick up a copy to see what it’s all about”. Instead we were left thinking “When will this such-and-such quit insulting me so we can get on with what we came here for”. I have no doubt in my mind you cost yourself a few potential fans that day.

   Thank you very much.
   Dave

3. Good Comics/ Graphic Novels? | Comic Merchandise says on August 19th, 2009 at 2:09 am :
   

   [...] Vertigo: Graphic Content » Blog Archive » Vertigo Voices: The … [...]

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