Manchoy is currently looking to help publish your comic works. If you have a current project that you are looking to promote please send us an email at joe@manchovy.com and tell us about it. We will be down at Comic-Con over the weekend looking for new talent. We have set up a few appointments but may be available to review additional portfolios.
We are looking for both panel style strips and book format styles.

You must own the rights to all materials (story and images) to be considered.

We look forward to this next step in the World o’ Manchovy!

Colman, Joe and Waldo

With tickets going at $1,600 a pair on EBay last night’s Buffy and the Vampire panel at Paleyfest was THE events of the fest. Even the Rep from the Paley Center joked she wasn’t sure she was going to get a ticket. It was tough draw to get tickets even for the members this year. I have been going to these on and off for the last five years and was pretty damn lucky - through the power that is TQ! to score not only tickets but a space front row center. The lines outside went around the Arclight and into the parking lot, but we were cozy in the little alcove (am I using the term right - alcove?) planning the seating chart for the lucky first 15 people in line. We got a little anxious when the press tried to nose there way in but everything went very smoothly. We got in with little hassle

One set of fans in the stand-by line waited from 9:00 PM the night before for ticket cancellations, when they did get in they were greeted by the house with cheers.

The night started off with Marti Noxin introducing the screening. Joss wasn’t in the house yet, he was finishing up a shoot on new project – “Mr Horrible’s Singing Blog” or something like that (Nathon Fillion and others Joss regulars are in the new project), which was fitting because they screened the Buffy Musical “Once More With Feeling”. There wasn’t a lot of sing-a-long but the audience applauded at the end of every musical number. It was just like live theatre. One of the great things about the Paleyfest is seeing an episode like this in a big crowd of fans reacting to every scene. The sound was great but the video image was a little grainy blown up that huge – but no one seemed to care.

Tim Rausch from TV Guide was the evening’s moderator. He talked about how difficult it was at the start of Buffy (1997) to describe it to people – and maybe his best line that night was coining it Beverly Hills 9210-666.

Not all of the advertised guests were there but we did get Joss Whedon, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicholas Brendon, Emma Caufield, Amber Benson, Seth Green, Marti Noxin, Charisma Carpenter, James Marsters, Michelle Trachenberg, and David Greenwalt. And there were more cast and crew members in the audience including Jane Espenson and Tom Lenk. The women of Buffy looked great. Charisma was stunning and quickly recovered from her near Janet Jackson costume failure, though there are a few pictures I might not end up sending around.

No big revelations except that Gellar had just found out that night about her same sex romance in the season eight comics. Unlike the Chuck panel, the cast here were not high on the geek scale – well maybe with the exception of Seth Green. Joss was asked if he would consider doing a stand alone Buffy movie or Broadway musical and he was ready if the “stars” all aligned. When the panel was asked if they would all come along only a few - Charisma and Sarah - weren’t popping their hands up. michelle is going to end up with a recuring guest role on Gossip Girls soon. James Marsters had to be reminded by the fans all of his recent projects Smallville, Torchwood, his band.

One of the audience questions was about what were the cast’s favorite movies and what was on their Ipods. This took up a lot of time and pissed some people off but it gave us a slightly different take than the normal questions. The signing frenzy at the end went as expected. The crowds swarmed, security stood in place, and the cast did what they could to get to a huge number of fans.

A few shots from the Chuck night at Paleyfest.

A number of friends are seeing some well earned space in the comics shelves these days. Make sure to check out Mark Smith’s Pop Gun Volume one with a extended story by Adrian Dominguez, Ellie Saves the World. And Erik Martinez should have a story in Volume two.

And I just read that Kazu Kibuishi’s graphic novel for Scholastic Books (Jeff Smith’s Company) has been picked up for a live action film.

Check out Bolt City for the details!

Mid winter comes and a young man’s thoughts turn to one thing - hotel reservation day for the Con. Sure enough this year February 6th at 9:00 AM computers across the state logged into the Travel Planners interface only to be locked out right away. It was a tougher than Zeppelin tickets and just about as expensive after all is said and done. Last year I had four computers set up in offices at work. I spent twenty minutes dashing from room to room trying to get through. Sometimes I would get as far as the reservations stage before being logged out - most times I didn’t even get that far. This time I blocked of my appointment times so no one could get through to me but in the end it was all for naught - no room at the Con for me or anyone I knew in this town. There are 6,100 rooms available for the taking on Black Wednesday (for 100,000 attendees) and when they are gone you are either on the waiting list or hoping the skeevy hotel up by the freeway is going to be OK. (Why does the desk clerk keep asking how many hours we want the room for??? Dude did we do acid or are the sheets moving on their own???).

It’s clear I am not alone in this and there has been a lot of talk about the growth of the Con. There is an official blog for comments to the organizers here. I know from moderating just this sight that they are filtering this thing like crazy. It’s been pretty tame - and pretty civil all things considered. If you’ve got time check it out and add to it.

I guess it’s great that more people are attending but is it really? I mean I’ve been doing this for maybe ten years and each time I go I look at the mess and wonder if it is worth it. Last year we all had to adjust to adding an extra two hours to any estimate of how early we had to show up for something - which means being about four hours early. We gave up on two screenings and we were literally the last few people into two events. We’ve been pretty lucky at this but we are old hands at this now so the idea of wanting to see Jack Black and Tenacious D sing meant we would show up at 7:00 in the morning and spend the entire day in the same seats to make sure you were there when they hit stage. Seeing them sing the cover of Flash was wild but that was 13 hours later. My butt cheeks were asleep and I was jonesing for anything that looked like real food. But when you get into the Gas Lamp district on a Saturday night at 7:30 you give up on getting into a restaurant real quick.

The Con has now become much less about comics and more about pop-culture and that’s cool. My interests have shifted too, but it has really got to do some serious rethinking if it wants to hold on to loyal supporters of the event. The blog mentioned above talks about dumping Travel Planners. I have no idea who else is set up for this sort of thing but it is clear that Travel Planners has not been set up for the event for the last four years. But the Con management doesn’t seem to be doing anything about that. Are they taking any responsibility for that? And the crowds. I was glad to see the tickets sold out last year and I thought perhaps the crowds would be smaller but it wasn’t the case. Preview night is a total waste of time except for picking up your badge. The crowds there are rabid and just looking for the “exclusives”. It’s not fun at all.

I think the Con should be looking at setting a much lower ceiling on the crowd size. Make this event more comfortable for us rather than grossly uncomfortable and unpleasant. I know they want “new wallets” but they grew on the supporters that built this thing. Soon the Con could be facing the same fate of the Comic Book industry and suffer by ignoring their long term audience by fixating on the short termers. But that’s just my opinion.

Einstein long ago put it so well: “The definition of insanity is: Doing the same thing and expecting different result.” But I am just not sure who are the insane and who watches them.