Con-munity engagement: Building community at conventions

So I’m heading to my second convention within the last 30 days, to moderate my second panel of the year, Scion or Shafted: Being Mixed race in Science Fiction and Fantasy on Sunday at 3pm. This time it’s going to be at GeekGirlCon, which unlike conventions like Rose City, is organized around a central theme, the Geek Girl. Other cons like this, such as Flame Con, rather than being organized geographically, though that’s always a component, are organized around a particular nerdy community. Their mission is to promote intersectional nerddom, the promoting LGBTQA+ community, people of color, and especially women in nerd spaces. While the con is not perfect, with early years being dominated still by a white-girl-nerd narrative, the con has been evolving to better represent their mission statement.

It is also the convention that got me started down the road of “Con-munity” engagement because of their explicit focus on diversity and talking about issues that many “mainstream” nerd venues consider secondary.

So, what is a “Con-munity”?

Conventions, whether comic or centered around any other theme, are a type of impromptu-community. Large amounts of people descend onto a particular space for a limited amount of time, all to celebrate the them. It means that at any given moment at a convention you are probably near someone who shares an interest of your or will get that reference you know none of your co-workers will get. These even get more specific as people self-select to attend panels or other gatherings. This means that, while ephemeral, conventions recur and act as a reunion. Attend enough conventions and be consistent with your interests, you’ll probably find and make a couple of con buddies. These are people who clearly share your interest and probably live in your area, assuming you’ve seen them at geographical cons. So this is the con-munity, people aggregated together for that convention that over time might become part of your actual community.

So, how can they be engaged?

The great thing about the con-munity is that, conventions create a captive audience. Walking around the pop-up mall that is the convention hall is great, but tiring and at one point, you run out of money or credit. Additionally, the people who are interested in what you have to say about pop culture are already there as they choice to attend the convention. Like a conference, people are there to talk about and listen to topics related to the central theme, comics/nerd stuff, so they are looking for what you are selling. Additionally, comics are returning to being more socially engaged. This means the community who reads and creates them are becoming more actively political and engaging with social issues. They want to know how to be better at portraying culture, science, gender, etc. because they know it’s the right thing to do and that it creates better stories. This means if you are a socially-engaged creator having a table, or if you are a specialist in a particular topic organizing panels around that theme

My goal for engagement is to bring issues that I know and care about, discussions of culture and science, to the greater con-munity. Helping them find resources that they can use to make better creations.

Rose City Comic Con in review / What it's like to attend a Comic Convention

Last weekend I attended Rose City Comic Con (RCCC) up in Portland Oregon with the BF. It was super fun and it was a great reminder of how great conventions are for building community, so to ease into a series of blogs on what I term “CONmunity engagement” (community engagement at conventions) I wanted to give a brief description of what comic conventions are like. I assume the majority of my readers have attended at least one but even if you are invested in a fandom, it can be intimidating to go to one especially, if you don’t have a convention buddy.

Comic conventions involve a bunch of different “geek” or “nerd” fandoms. This means that in most cases there will be celebrities, artists, writers, video and board games, as well as all sorts of other meet-ups and opportunities for attendees. If you enjoy something considered “nerdy” or “geeky” you will find community at a comic convention. This also means that there are a variety of entertainment types to appeal to these different communities. For the purposes of this article, I separate these into panels, individual meetings, and shopping.

Specifically, Portland has a high proportion of comics writers and artists and recently Image comics moved their headquarters there to better serve that community. This means that RCCC ends up being a large enough convention to draw big names (from comics and elsewhere) but small enough to be unintimidating. It’s also still affordable to attend and you get a great cross section of the type of work going on in comics, shows, and video games.

Day One: Friday Cosplay: Saya from Deadly Class

Day ones are usually petty chill (assuming it’s a three-day con). They start in the afternoon and not all the special guests (artists, writers, celebrities, etc) are there. Everyone’s setting up and getting prepared for what the con will be like. If you are interested in seeing a big name and they are going to be there on Day One, go to Day One. Generally, their lines will be shorter as many people work on the weekdays, which Day One’s usually fall on, and there’s a tendency to wait until the last minute to do things like ask for a commission or get a signature. Early birds get well-rested creators signing and drawing stuff.

Panels: I attended one that day and that was the Bitch Planet panel. As a creation (comic, movie, show, etc.) specific panel, it included the all creators associated with the book, gave us updates about when new issues were coming out, and then opened the panel up for questions. Creation specific panels are a great way to be introduced to works that sound cool, for keeping abreast of the latest news specific to that work, and for getting any detailed creation-specific questions off your chest. It was a great panel (I love Bitch Planet) and we got to find out about when the new arc will start.

Individual meetings: As I said, Day One is great for meeting creators who might get busy over the next few days at the con as the crowd gets larger. This meant that well-known creators like Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky had short lines and so getting to chat with them didn’t mean a line of 30 people wondering why you are taking so long. For me, it meant that I got to ask if I could get my amazing ODY-C tights signed in the next few days. I also introduced myself to the awesome Yoshi Yoshitani, who was going to be on my panel on Sunday.

Shopping: If you are dying to grab a limited supply item and you do not think it is going to go on sale, grab it on Day One. This is generally the case with items produced by creators themselves, rather than shops who don’t want to carry lots of inventory back with them. Day one for me involved buying an awesome ODY-C pin from Matt Fraction.

Day Two: Saturday Cosplay: Kalliyan from Shutter

If a Day Two, is a Saturday, it will likely be the busiest day of the con. This means big crowds all day. They open early but that doesn’t mean getting there exactly as they open will be the best. They generally open in the morning but probably a little after the quoted time due to scheduling and other sorts of preparation. I’d recommend, if you don’t have an early entrance pass, thirty minutes to an hour after they open will mean easy and relaxed entrances. Day twos are busy, so if you want a commission try to be there early, and if you aren’t, be prepared to wait to meet any of your favorite big name creators. Also be very aware of their schedules, usually posted on a personal website, which outlines when they’ll actually be at their table, so you don’t wander by 80 times wondering why they aren’t back yet. Day Twos (especially if they are Saturdays) usually mean a lot of programming, panels etc., so be aware of when large rooms open and close so you don’t get caught in huge throngs of people.

Panels: There are usually more panels on Day Two/Saturdays as earlier openings and later closings means more time to having events. For me and the BF, we attended the Spotlight on: Matt Fraction panel and the Sex Criminals Panel. The Sex Criminals panel was a Sex Criminals version of the Bitch Planet panel and hilarious. Spotlight panels are different than creation-based panels as it will have only up to two people, a moderator and the spotlit person. These are great chance for attendees to get to know an individual creator better, inquire about their ongoing projects, and ask them about their process. I do have a request though: Please don’t ask about getting around writers/artists block. I have heard this question asked at almost every spotlight panel and the answers do not vary much between individual creators. Their advice usually is: keep writing/drawing/creating even if it is crap, change projects for a time, and go do something to get inspired.

Individual meetings: Personally, this was a great day for individual meetings. The cosplay I wore was from a great comic called Shutter that finished this year and both the artist and writer were there. It can be kind of weird to go up to people you have never met and be like “HEY I DRESSED LIKE YOUR CREATION” but it’s really great. Both Leila Del Duca and Joe Keatinge were awesome to meet in person and loved my cosplay, which was super humbling. Also while I was in costume, the amazing Kelly Sue said she loved my earrings (made out of pipe cleaners and attached to another set of earrings), which was hilarious. I also got my ODY-C tights signed by Matt Fraction, which was great. The pen slipped so he wrote “It’s me I swear” on them as well.

Shopping: I broke my own rule and bought a bunch of stuff on Saturday. I picked up a Bitch Planet Eleanor pin that will join my previous Bitch Planet Pin and a new print from Valentine De Landro that reads “THEY ARE ALL MY SISTERS”. I picked up the Legend of Korra graphic novel and got to meet the artist, Irene Koh, and Kris Anka current artist on Runaways who was manning Jen Bartel’s booth. I also picked up Jen Bartel’s and Irene Koh’s collaboration of Korrasami. I stopped by Chris Sebela’s table to pick up Coffee Shop Dogs and Leila Del Duca’s Afar when I saw her in my cosplay.

Day Three: Sunday Cosplay: None, but I did combine my “We are not things” shirt with my ODY-C tights

Day Threes/last days are also usually pretty chill. However, it’s not the best time to get things signed, especially from big names, because that's when everyone remembers who they forgot to talk to, aka It's Crunch Time. There are smaller crowds and sales at vendor/store booths, as they don’t want to carry product home with them. This means that if you want a bunch of back issues or some last-minute con-exclusives this is a good time to go and haggle for the thing you’ve had your eye on.

Panels: Day three was the panel I moderated on Adaptation versus Appropriation. The panel was great and I am so thankful to have gotten the chance to moderate a panel with the awesome Tristan J. Tarwater, Yoshi Yoshitani, and Marissa Louise. My panel also represents a third kind of panel, which is centered on a particular topic of discussion. These usually involve collecting a group of creators to talk about a particular topic with the aim of providing advice to other creators or to comment on the state of a particular issue in comics. It was a great experience and I was happy to see how many people were interested to see us all speak. The other panel I attended was the Bitch Planet games panel, which focuses on confidence and community building games. As far as I'm aware it's unique-to-Bitch-Planet, kinetic, and fun.

Individual meetings: Getting to chat with Yoshi, Tristan, and Marissa before the panel was great. Also watching the room fill up was crazy and amazing. I also got to meet Ibrahim Moustafa who is an awesome artist. I also stopped by to say hello to a high school friend of mine, Hollie Mengert, who I re-met at GeekGirlCon the previous year. I also said hello to the Jayme Twins who are doing amazing work with their Darkroom Series that is fanart combined with old photographic styles. I loved their work at GeekGirlCon and they contacted me for some information about old-school archaeology to make their works feel more appropriate to the times they were referencing.

Shopping: Although there were great sales, I didn’t take advantage of them. I grabbed the last print copy of Ibrahim Moustafa’s Jaeger , which was a necessary purchase because Nazi-hunting obviously. I grabbed a set of connected enamel pins that Yoshi had done based on the Three Wise Monkeys pictoral maxim, I opted for the See the Evil set. Personally, enamel pins are some of the best things to get at cons as there’s no shipping cost and people come up with such amazing designs that you can rock a pin with any outfit. The last thing I did was pick up a new Rose City meets Stranger Things trucker hat (as seen in the above photo) with a Hellboy t-shirt (as seen in the photo below) from the con exclusives booth. It was the last day, and I got the last hat, so I haggled a bit from the volunteer behind the booth.

Overall, RCCC is a great con for level of any attendee. While I don’t take advantage of everything it has to offer, there’s a huge diversity of things to do, buy, and people to meet. I recommend attending if you’re in Portland when it’s going on and on top of all its other goodness, they have banned Nazi-related costumes for some really good reasons. I saw a set of those cosplays and in today’s world we need more Jaegers and fewer Nazi Hello Kitties. Next blog I’ll go into more detail about Conmunity engagement, what I mean by the term and who is being engaged.

Comics recommendations

So a few blogs ago, I wrote about how to get into comics. Tips, strategies, etc. Now I’m writing about the comics I suggest whenever people ask me about what series to start with. I try to be genre and publisher diverse, though the only thing from DC I recommend is Bombshells but it's not on this list. It's good but it's not the first thing I recommend Anyways, my recommendations are:

- Bitch Planet

- Giant Days

- Monstress

- Ms. Marvel

- ODY-C

Now go read them.
























Just kidding! So all of these are currently ongoing series. This means that they will have new issues coming out. You will have to wait longest for ODY-C because it is currently on hiatus and Matt Fraction has promised us 12 more issues. Why exactly twelve? Well I’ll tell you in a second, or an hour, or you can skip down to the ODY-C segment at the end. I chose ongoing-series in case anyone out there is interested in starting a pull list. Because these are established series, I recommend grabbing the first trades and then picking up floppies after that.

Also, all of these should be available at your local library or local comic book shop as they are not obscure titles. I picked rather widely published books, aka from the major comics publishers, because of that accessibility and, depending on your familiarity with comics, it can be hard to decide what in the “indie” world, Kickstarters or zines, interests you. If you already know, great! I also chose to exclude webcomics because in many cases people are already familiar with the medium because of memes, xkcd, and Penny Arcade. This means that when people ask me for comics recommendations they mean stuff from the floppies -> trade paperback pipeline.

The above are not meant to be read as a “best to less best” list. Each of the titles rotates to bottom of my reading list, for savoring until the end. These are also all things I currently read and collect (except for Monstress on which I am behind and my partner Mychal called dibs on for collecting but I recommend regardless).

Bitch Planet

writer: Kelly Sue DeConnick | artists: Valentine De Landro and Robert Wilson IV | colorist: Kelly Fitzpatrick | letterer: Clayton Cowles | logo and cover designer: Rian Hughes | editor: Lauren Sankovitch | backmatter and design consultant: Laurenn McCubbin | stylist and research assistant: Dani V

Synopsis: Non-compliant women are arrested and sent to a prison planet. What makes you non-compliant? Basically anything a man takes offense with.

Why do I love this book recommend it: Now more than ever we need books like this. Science fiction like Bitch Planet regularly exposes and critiques the faults in our society allowing us to discuss them in a safe space. Additionally, the creators do an extremely thorough job with their research, taking the time to bring all sorts of intersectional feminist issues to bear in technicolor. This is not a book we want, its one we need.

Giant Days

writers: John Allison | illustrators: Lissa Treiman and Max Sarin | colorist: Whitney Cogar | letterer: Jim Campbell

Synopsis: Three first year university students become fast friends.

Why do I love this book recommend it: Its funny and exceptionally down to earth. The characters are people you know. You might not have been friends with them but you know them. It’s not gritty but doesn’t flippantly deal with serious issues. One of the character is training to be an archaeologists too, which doesn’t hurt. I also occasionally forget that it’s set in the UK because the situations have so much applicability to anyone attending university.

Monstress

writer: Marjorie M. Liu | artist: Sana Takeda | lettering and design: Rus Wooton | editor: Jennifer M. Smith | editorial assistant: Ceri Riley

Synopsis: This high fantasy world where an ongoing tension between two kingdoms threatens their world.

Why do I love this book recommend it: Mychal first saw this so got dibs on collecting the individual issues but honestly it’s just an amazing work. There is a great discussion of the issue and variation of being mixed-race, though in fantasy rather than in reality. The art is fantastic and creates a fully immersive world that draws from Asian fantasy genres and designs that people familiar with Manga will find familiar but rests more easily on a balance between a blend of Asian and European aesthetics.

Ms. Marvel

writer: G. Willow Wilson | editor: Sana Amanat | artists: Adrian Alphona, Sara Pichelli, Jacob Wyatt, Takeshi Miyazawa

Synopsis: Comics superfan gets what they’ve always wanted: superpowers. Now what do you with those in Jersey City?

Why do I love this book recommend it: It’s got enough interactions with other superheroes to make their well developed appearances meaningful and has avoided since it started most crossovers. Its full of great references and heartfelt discussions about relationships and identity. It got all the superhero punching you could want and new villains that fit with our modern world and modern problems balanced expertly with genuine interpersonal moments that keep you coming back.

ODY-C

writer: Matt Fraction | artist: Christian Ward |

Synopsis: It’s the Grecian epic The Odyssey but in space and also, Zeus burned all men in existence to death and created Sebex so that women could procreate sans the dudebros.

Why do I love this book recommend it: I love this comic so much I wear the first cover as tights. And well, I recommend it because it’s freaking awesome. Every issue is a psychedelic Grecian inspired righting of a historical wrong and it’s written in hexameter and Limerick as an ode original Homeric presentation styles. It’s a dense worthwhile book and is really the only version of the ODY-C I want to recommend to people, as it has keeps the core of the story without being horrible to women. There will be 12 more issues to round out the cycle following the chapters in the Homeric form. Also the first issue had an 18 page opening spread.

My hope is that based on this recommendation list one of these will be something that you enjoy. I try to give a breadth of genre to deconstruct one of the most common comics myths. Aka it has never been, and never will be, just superheroes. Any time you think that, remember Sunday comics, political cartoons, manga, and Archie. Reading broadly genre-wise in comics is also key to finding what you want to read in a particular moment. Sometimes a book doesn’t work for you, and that’s fine, but there’s lots to read comics-wise so I guarantee there’s something for you.

Whitewashing is not a solution to stereotype

In the last year, we’ve seen many whitewashing efforts by Hollywood and none of them have escaped major criticism. As more whitewashed products come out, *cough* Death Note *cough*, the more it seems that in an attempt to avoid stereotypes showrunners have chosen to whitewash characters.

What is whitewashing?

Well it’s a when a Caucasian actor is put in the role of a character that was initially written for a person of another race. Recently the focus has been on Asian and Asian American characters. See the t-shirt “Scarlett & Tilda & Emma & Matt” above on Lewis Tan who should have been Iron Fist. The irony is, that in attempting to resolve stereotypes they have created bigger problems by taking away opportunities for actors of color and then not doing enough to build a real character.

One example is, in an attempt to get away from “the only Asians in this are ninjas problem” (which, guess what, in Daredevil Season 2 DEFINITELY ALL THE NINJAS WERE ASIAN), Marvel (who I will pick on because I love them and want them to do better) has removed any trace of actual Asianness from the people from their products. In addition, they have actually reinforced those same stereotypes (and added new ones) by giving major roles for Asian people (the Ancient One) to white people and then only leaving the lackeys to actually be Asian (yay!). Additionally, in Privilege in Action (aka Iron Fist) they only reference the fictional K’un Lun and never the real Kunlun (a Tibetan Mountain Range where there are probably real Asian Monks). Yay! So even the idea of a real Asian philosophical tradition that belongs to Humans who live on earth, is actually magical and 100% does not exist on this plane. Yay. Literally real Asians, from real human cultures, that have meaning and history and inform the character’s choices do not exist in the Marvel universe. The closest Asian-Americans get to a character who is Asian and uses that in their character is Colleen Wing, who has to suffer in the hands of truly terrible writing and will drop things like the “bushido code” when in the show that has no real impact to her motivations.

Whitewashing is in many ways worse than stereotypes because you are taking the already marginal representation of those of Asian descent in American Media away from the people that was written for. It also demonstrates that you have not taken care to understand what was actually wrong with the stereotype that property was based on because you are actually removing the Asianness from it. “But we’re changing the context” In many cases, they don’t actually change the context enough for that to be true. For example, the Ancient One was initially old Tibetan man and the way that he’s portrayed in many comics is stereotyped. However, that does not erase the fact that many martial arts masters and founders, at least the ones that they are always referencing in these works, were Asian. Current masters are diverse, and many are white, but they respect the origins of these works by acknowledging the Asian heritage that they owe their existence to. They say that the Ancient one in Doctor Strange is Celtic. Ok Fine. Why is she in Nepal then? Why is there not a center of power in a Celtic Nation? If she’s going to be Celtic then she actually has to be Celtic and that has to have some sort of impact on the character you are creating. Instead of dispelling the stereotype of an old Asian man teaching a white guy mystic arts, it replaces him with someone who makes the story disjoined and doesn’t dispel any stereotypes it instead just relies on different ones.

Being so caught up in the idea of “fixing” the problems of source material, which in many cases is fundamentally and obviously flawed, has actually in some cases made the original incarnations look better than the modern ones because you know there were inherent problems with racism and sexism when they were written. While now, people claim that those don’t exist. In addition, it’s also clear that the stereotypes that those characters came from were based on actual things, at least in relation to Asian characters. Stereotypes in the least contextual sense are a way to essentalize cultures and people to be easily absorbed or understood by others that don't understand cultural complexities. However, forty years (more or less) later this no longer is an acceptable position to tell a story from. We have stereotypes already and since then we have had plenty of time to learn about other people and fill characters in with real details and actual knowledge that preserve the meat of the character and their stories without conforming them to one-dimensional token diversity heads.

And it’s clear that actually MARVEL KNOWS THIS. No seriously I’m 100% certain these companies know what they are doing Why? Because we have well adapted version of Luke Cage and Black Panther coming to consumers. These two characters have had immense changes that have transformed them from two extreme stereotypes of black men to authentic realizations of black identity.

The heart the whitewashing problem is that it demonstrates weakness, laziness, and poor construction on behalf of the script. As Clara Mae wrote in regards to Mantis, stereotypes aren’t bad if you use them to impact the character and if the development of those skills become specific to their context. Mantis is another Asian-descent character in the Marvel universe who relies on Martial Arts for some of her skills, except in the movie where she has become another Madame Butterfly rather than a Turandot. However, as Mae outlines, in the comics, her martial arts skills inform Mantis’ character. The training influences how she makes choices and impacts what she does.

This is important because as much as we can experience Asian cultures through Korean dramas, food, and video games, many people, myself included, grew up and helped to bring those Asian cultural products into the mainstream. I remember wanting to read more volumes of a Manga and finding out that the publisher decided not to translate the rest of a series so I was shit out of luck. While these are all things that anyone interested in Asian culture experienced it does not mean that we all experienced the hardship equally. Especially because many of the things I listed are products, and not cultural behaviors. Behavior is important, not something easy to "correct" by eliminating stereotype, because it ends up divorcing the real, though sometimes mythologized, experience of Asian Americans from the rest of the United States. While we have an abundance of Asian products available to us, even so accessible we are able to whitewash them, we don’t have the same number of real Asian and Asian American stories. While mainstream white culture is aware of many of those “stereotypes,” they are also stereotypes because it is what people experienced. Removing those and there by eliminating the unique experiences of the Asian and Asian American communities continues to alienate us within our own nations and should not be covered over but instead addressed.

It honestly should be obvious by now to people who make films like this that whitewashing is not acceptable but it continues to happen. Even as recently as this month, the movie reboot for the Hellboy Franchise had cast Ed Skrein (aka FRANCIS) as an Asian American character. Thankfully, Ed, NOT THE PRODUCTION COMPANY, decided that was a bad choice and to step down. Thanks for doing the right thing, now tell your friends. So rather than replace/rebrand, writers and showrunners need to engage with the stereotypes of their characters and understand them. Rather than see stereotypes as inherently negative (although some are) view them as seeds to grow from. We now know enough about cultures around the world or can hire writers that do (for fuck’s sake you can get one Asian writer on your goddamned staff) and leverage on their experiences where you can or, you know, research the lives of the people you are depicting, to inform the characters you are writing. Stereotype should not be ignored because in many cases that’s what drew early diverse comic book readers to those characters and to keep us as adults, we want the depth that those characters deserve.