The elevator pitch is an idea that's been circulating in business for a number of years now. I usually hear it referenced with regards to self-promotion (trying to get a job, schmoozing with the company president, etc.) but it's also applicable to business ideas and projects. The basic notion is that you should have a short speech prepared about yourself (or your project as the case may be) that can be delivered on cue if you happen to run into a person of significance that might be able to assist you. The "elevator" portion stems from the idea that your speech should be short enough to deliver on an elevator ride -- somewhere between 30 and 90 seconds.

It's generally suggested that you sit down and write this pitch out beforehand. Figure out all the high points that are absolutely critical, and get them down in a linear, easy-to-understand narrative. Make your selling point(s) and differentiator(s) as clear and concise as possible. Then practice reading that aloud over and over again until you have it down cold. Commit it to memory and give yourself periodic refreshers. You should be able to launch into your elevator pitch at any time. Because you never know when you might bump into someone who could help you. Possibly even in an elevator.

The reason why I bring this up is because I'm sitting here watching Rich Johnston's videos as he's going up and down the Artists' Alley at Comic-Con International. He walks up to each booth and asks people to tell him what they're selling or what their comic is about. And a HUGE majority of these creators are totally floundering.

"Yeah, I do this comic. And it's a webcomic. But I'm also printing them up, and selling those here. And it's about these guys who do stuff. Mostly in space, but sometimes on alien planets. And there's lots of laser fights and spaceships. Oh, and it's called..."

Some people seemed to get that enough and say something like, "I do a webcomic called X. It's a cross between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Wars. You can find it at MyWebSite.com."

Now I know a lot of people don't like the "it's a cross between" analogies because they think it shortchanges their work, and makes it seem derivative. But if I'm going through an Artists' Alley and you aren't able to capture my attention fairly quickly, I'm going to move on to the next guy. I can probably tell from your promo art some basic information about the genre, so give me something else to clue in on.

An elevator pitch doesn't HAVE to include "it's a cross between" analogy, but it does need to get the point across very quickly. It needs to convey the high points. It needs to grab someone's attention. It needs to be something that is concise enough to stick in someone's brain. And, IF it manages to include a catchy name and/or URL, so much the better!

Regardless of how great and riveting your comic may be, you still need to get me to pick it up first. I've said it before, but the world's best comic ain't worth bunk if no one knows it!

I got my dog not quite a decade ago from the local vets office, who took in strays and whatnot. My then-wife and I spent a while trying to come up with a suitable name for him and, not surprisingly, I went back to comics for my inspiration. Kirby and Ditko were high on my initial list, but both got vetoed pretty quickly. I did compile a list of cartoon/comic dog names (Snoopy, Krypto, Huckleberry, etc.) but nothing really struck me. I started branching out the list to include character names of non-dogs (Garfield, Fritz, Gleek, etc.) and wasn't coming up with much either.

But we happened to have just started buying the Foxtrot collections of comic strips. And there on page eight of Eight Yards, Down and Out was that collection's first appearance of the character who we realized the dog must be named after...
Since reading this very strip, my dog has gone by the name Quincy. I think it was the combination of the iguana's totally non-sequitir appearance and his look of idle indifference that really were the selling points.

Most people assume he's named after the Jack Klugman character, but no. He's named after a fictional iguana from a newspaper comic strip.

Quincy says "boo."

This time of year is always a bit awkward for me. Because every year, around this time, the biggest gathering of comic book fans and professionals descends on San Diego while I'm sitting at home here in Ohio. It's a choice on my part. I've never felt I could justify the expense of going out there for a week. Technically, I probably could afford it right now, but that's just an awful lot of money which I think would be better put to use getting me out of debt.

So this year, as so many before, I'm staying home.

I'd been hearing about the show since at least the 1980s, but it wasn't until about fifteen years ago that I got my first "real" glimpse of it. Some exhibitor -- and I can't remember who; Wizard maybe? -- put a webcam on their booth table and streamed a live feed throughout the con. Of course, this was the mid-1990s, so there was no audio and it only snapped a picture once every ten seconds or so. But that was the first time I got a sense of the excitement of being there, as opposed to seeing a handful of still shots in magazines a month or two later.

Then, I think it was four years ago, the G4 network started doing programming from the show. The first one was a half hour program following three groups who were attending the show. They were just given cameras and told to film what they could and provide some commentary from time to time. It, obviously, aired after the event. As the groups were all exhibitors in some capacity, they had extra long hours and there was a lot of "this is exhausting" scenes in the final edit.

It was the year afterwards when G4 sent an actual reporter to the show, and I think they devoted an hour to the program. This, too, was edited after the show and aired as a summary. It was a little more even-handed in nature as I recall, but you definitely got a sense of the excitement level. There was definitely a lot of energy there. But, by then, CCI was as much about things OTHER than comics as it was about comics themselves.

The year after that was when G4 sent their Attack of the Show crew down for a live broadcast. It was very media-focused at that point and comics were almost an afterthought.

I think I caught Mark Evanier saying a few years back that it's still a good comic book convention, but it's just that there also happens to be a movie and pop culture convention going on at the same time. That if you just care about comics, then you can have a perfectly awesome time focusing on comics and completely ignore all the other stuff, and you STILL won't have enough time to see what you want to see.

So here's where my ambivalence comes from. I could really do without most everything except the comics portion of the show. If I stumbled into the Star Wars panel, hey, that's cool, but my prime interests are going to focus on the comics. So there's a lot at the show that I could handily avoid, thereby increasing the odds that I could see most everything I'd like to. And, from everything I've seen and heard, there's always lots of cool stuff to take in.

On the other hand...
That's a LOT of frickin' people! I'm not so sure I want to be dropped into that!

Plus, did I mention how expensive it is?

Don't get me wrong. I think it looks like the vast majority of people have an incredible time, and I'm sure I would too. I just don't think I'd get enough out of it to warrant the expense.

But these past few years, when I see the videos and Twitter is ablaze with notes about everyone having a great time and the photos are flying past faster than that first streaming feed I saw all those years ago... I'll admit that I feel pretty jealous of all the people who ARE in San Diego having fun. I would love to be attending panels and hearing comic news unfiltered through anyone else. I would love to pick up one of those exclusive Galactus figures. I would've loved to have seen Michael Cera surprise everyone when he walked out in a Captain America uniform. I would love to have seen Stan Lee take his place on Odin's throne...
I don't doubt that I get a lot of out attending CCI. But while comics are extremely important to me, I'd rather spend my money on the comics themselves. I mean, sure, the guy who's selling con exclusives on eBay right now is gouging people by charging at least double what he paid for the items, but it's still cheaper than a plane ticket out there. What would I rather put my money towards? A hotel and overpriced food for a week, or the same amount of money spent on graphic novels at Amazon? I'm not getting the "con experience" but I'm getting more of what I'm most interested in: comics.

That said, it's still hard to not want to be out there right now.

I recently pulled out my old Sega Genesis and fired up Flashback: The Quest for Identity. I remembered it being a great game, and I was pleased to see how well it holds up. It had a really good storyline, some excellent design work, and the graphics still look pretty decent considering it came out almost 20 years ago.

But what surprised me was that the manual included an original 14-page comic that acted as a prelude to the game itself. It was evidently contracted by Delphine Software to Marvel Comics. It was written by James Moore, drawn by Mike Harris and Frank Percy, and lettered by Rick Parker. I can't find any credits for the cover art, but it doesn't look like the work of Harris and/or Percy to me.

I noticed several bits about the comic that strike me as interesting. First, the game itself centers around the hero, Conrad, who wakes up on a jungle planet with no memory of who he is or how he got there. As the gamer, your first job is to figure out who Conrad is and why so many people are trying to kill him. The comic, chronologically set before the game, largely answers that question. I don't think that takes away from the game play per se -- the comic can only relay so much in 14 pages after all -- but it's curious that it would be explained right off the bat.

Second, the comic provides Conrad with Sonya, a love interest who mysteriously vanishes (presumably captured) near the end of the comic. There's also mention of a friend Ian who left suddenly just before the comic takes place. In the game, Ian makes an appearance and helps Conrad out. There is, however, no mention of Sonya in the game; in fact, there's hardly any mention of women in the game at all, and the couple that do appear are older, overweight and appear in the briefest of cameos. I can somewhat understand where that might've come from within the game, but why then introduce a totally new character for this comic? The only answer I could hazard a guess at might be that the cover art was done with a rather generic blond thrown in, and Moore wanted or was asked to explain her appearance on the cover art through the comic. (Since the image itself would otherwise be quite at odds with the dearth of females in the actual game.)

As a minor point of curiosity, a few speech balloons unnecessarily break out of the confines of the panel borders on pages six, seven and nine. All of them could easily have fit within the panel borders, and would've then been more consistent with the rest of the comic. Similarly, the gutters begin to disappear on the last two pages and we're provided with one action panel -- the only one in the comic -- in which the art breaks the boundaries of the panel border. None of these are a huge deal, but it does seem a little incongruousness with the rest of the comic. The only possible explanation I can think of is a looming deadline that caused the last pages to be whipped out more quickly than the others.

Anyway, here's the comic if you're actually interested...

Earlier today, Ron Perazza noted that there will be QR codes on display at the DC booth and it might not be a bad idea to bring a scanner. To which, I expect, a lot of people will say, "Whahuh?" Whereas I say, "About damn time!"

QR ("Quick Response") codes are pretty similar to the more familiar (in the U.S.) bar code. They look something like this...
The square format allows for more information than a simple bar code, and thus people are able to encode something more complex than a string of numbers. The above code, for example, is the URL for ComicBookFanthropology.com. Now, here's the clever bit: with the proper software on your cell phone, you can take a photo of a QR code from most any angle and it will be able to read/translate the code back into something readable. Furthermore, if the code in question is a URL, it will automatically link you to that web site! If it's a phone number, it will automatically dial it for you!

Think about that. You're walking along the street and see one of these codes on a billboard or the side of a bus or on a t-shirt or something. You snap a picture with your phone, and you're linked over to a coupon for 10% off your next meal at a nearby restaurant. Or a special offer from the movie theater. Or a unique comic only available to CCI attendees. It's a web link that works in a real world environment.

Now I said, "About damn time!" earlier and that's because this has been big in Japan for years! I've been itching to see it gain more acceptance/use here in the U.S. for at least the past 2 or 3 years, and even got into an argument with one of my former band mates two years ago when I wanted to include a QR code as a prop on stage. (He never quite got the idea, and dismissed it out-of-hand.) Why this hasn't caught on yet in the States, I have no clue.

I have yet to actually find a QR reader for my phone so I haven't been able to activate any codes to see how seamlessly they work. (I use an LG Dare if anyone happens to know of an existing QR reader for it, or wants to program one.) But I'm eager to hear how well this is used and to what extent at CCI and I'd appreciate anyone able to attend the show commenting on the experience. Many QR readers for different phones can be found here.

Hopefully, some folks will find the QR codes at CCI interesting and useful, and can help to propagate their more widespread use.

So you're attending one of those super-cool midnight Scott Pilgrim release parties tonight. (And I'm jealous!) You're all up in the excitement around the movie. How do you show your love of Bryan Lee O'Malley's great work to everyone around you? You don your favorite Scott Pilgrim t-shirt, of course! Conveniently, Mighty Fine has some slick-looking Scott Pilgrim t-shirts available! Here's a quick sampling...They also have some Hello Kitty wear and the absolutely coolest frickin' MODOK t-shirt ever!
So show Mighty Fine some love, and then show Scott Pilgrim some love!

Now, if we can only get them to make t-shirts based on that avatar creator!

I haven't quite been able to figure out the relative popularity of Olivia Munn among the "geek" set. It's not that I dislike her, but I just don't see why she warrants more than a passing glance of attention. I don't think she's particularly attractive, she doesn't strike me as smart or funny or witty; and she doesn't seem to have a genuine interest in "geek" stuff other than how she might be able to tap into it to further her career. None of which I hold against her, but I'm just surprised that she evidently doesn't come across the same way to more people. I sat through this clip of her from a recent appearance on The Daily Show to see if it would help shed some light on things...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - The Misadventures of Olivia Munn
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

But here again, she comes across (to me) as dull, insincere, unfunny and disingenuous. Her "geek cred" according to the piece is trying to update a computer (which, here in the 21st century, is fairly common), changing outfits repeatedly at Comic-Con (which I know she did because she was being paid to for her day job over at G4), and buying a moderately pricey comic book (which I suspect was also a direct result of her being co-host of Attach of the Show). She comes across to me as the high school cheerleader who's prime motivation is to be liked by everyone and is now trying desperately to fit in with a culture of "geekdom" that she got thrust into when she took her job with G4. She was, after all, pursuing a career in acting when she landed the gig and was not following an interest in technology, video games, comics, or anything else along those lines.

Munn, however, is NOT the point of this post!

No, I only bring her up because she strikes me, in some respects, as endemic of a culture shift. (I'm obviously looking at this from a U.S.-centric point of view, but I can see bits of this elsewhere in the democracies of the world as well.) There seems to be growing recognition that traditionally "geek" interests and ideologies are becoming more and more mainstream. An obvious example would be the growing reliance on comic books as the creative wellspring for Hollywood movies. But there's also a much wider variety of "niche" magazines that would once have been considered too esoteric for anything resembling mainstream promotion taking up plenty of shelf space in grocery stores and libraries. There's also any number of TV shows paying tribute to "geekery" from Big Bang Theory to The Tester.

Fifty or a hundred years ago, a person's most likely job prospects revolved around physical labor of some sort -- farming, factory work, etc. We're in a period of flux right now, as we're still moving towards more of an information economy, but those jobs requiring physical labor are increasingly uncommon in favor of jobs centered around more mental tasks. Even the act of designing a poster has been largely removed of the physical labor of cutting and painting and gluing, all of which have been replaced with point-and-click. Now people can bemoan the "loss of spontaneity" or what have you, but the digitization of these processes have made the creation and production processes much less labor intensive, and far more cerebral.

I think that part of why we largely grew up in a culture that looked down on geekery is that it was a culture that prized physical over mental prowess. The current school system was designed with that in mind and more attention is given to rote memorization and responding to bells in a Pavlovian manner (both skills prized among factory workers) and less to active learning or creativity. It was a system designed for turning your brain off and letting your body do the work.

But as we're moving into a society which relies less and less on that type of mentality, those who did still manage to retain their ability to think despite their anachronistic schooling began wielding more power. They were able to start taking their interests out to the public and finding support. Emotional and financial. You have people who grew up watching Transformers as kids now running Hollywood, and can exercise their interest in a series of big-budget movies about them. You have Comic-Con International attracting huge numbers of people from ever-widening circles.

It's okay to be a geek now because everyone's lives are less reliant on physical labor than they used to be. The physical prowess it took to play football or cheerlead a team are not nearly the necessity that they once were and, as a consequence, those who can't/don't participate (well or at all) have less reason to be ridiculed.

(I'm speaking here, by the way, of the real world. Given the increasingly out-dated principles schools still use, I suspect this hasn't fully permeated into high schools and smart kids are still routinely crammed into their lockers by jocks. But I don't actually know anyone in high school right now, so that's something of a guess on my part.)

But this leaves us in a culture of flux. We're still teaching this antiquated thought process, but nearly everything else around kids tells them that society is not really like that beyond the school yard. Which means that you have people experiencing a form of culture shock once they leave high school, and are left trying to adapt their previously successful coping strategies to a different type of environment. People who try to play off the more cerebral "geek factor" by paying lip service to it, despite not actually having cultivated an interest in anything geeky themselves.

To be fair, some people, when encountering for the first time real world geeks with power and influence, learn to appreciate them. I think many of the original Star Trek actors have expressed notions along these lines over the years, and that's one of the messages behind Galaxy Quest. The geek kids are the ones who are relied on to save the day, and the ego-centric, old guard "oh, look, he's torn his shirt off... again" captain recognizes their importance and power.
The problem here is that I don't think many people have a solid grasp that this transition is happening (or, in some smaller circles, has happened). I think there's some recognition there, in that iPhones and Iron Man and Lord of the Rings are now more objects of popular culture as opposed to the outsider culture they might've been a decade or two ago, but I don't think most people have much in the way of understanding that shift. I think there are a number of people out there who get that, to be a part of pop culture, they need to cater to "geeks" but I don't think they appreciate why.

At least, not yet. That's part of the problem with being flux: it's hard to see what is even changing, much less why.

But, in the impending shadow of Comic-Con, I think it's worth noting that "geek prom" is more mainstream than many of its attendees realize. I think Comic-Con has taken on the trade show equivalent of going to Disney World; it's just a cool vacation opportunity where there maybe aren't as many cool rides but plenty of people in costumes, lots of fun, and a number of meals that are more expensive than they should be.