Fifth Degree: C2E2 Retailer Summit
Josh Crawley
by Josh Crawley
While many people may have heard about the new Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo (C2E2), many people didn’t know there was a retailer summit beforehand. What is a retailer summit, you ask? Direct Market retailers (basically non-newsstand comic book sellers) get together and listen to publishers and go to retailer workshops that hopefully help us to help you better. They’re also a lot better when they coincide with a convention open to the public, but more on that later.
Wednesday evening after work I went down to Chicago (Brook drove me down due to my car having some issues that makes it not-too ideal for long travel). The retailer summit was being held primarily at the Sheraton Towers in downtown Chicago, so that’s where I got my room. The events kicked off with beer & wine paid for by Dark Horse at a meet & greet with Publisher Mike Richardson and the infamous Jim Shooter. I didn’t actually meet nor greet either of them, but after paying $11.99 (yes, really!) for a gin & tonic (since I didn’t know about the free drinks) I met up with my pal Zack. I met Zack back in August at Wizard World presents Chicago Comic Con. He writes some great comics (check out http://www.mysterysolvedcomic.com/!) and works for a retailer out of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Zack then introduced me to his bosses, husband & wife superduo Cameron and Christina. After finishing our drinks, we were all welcome to view a preview of the new Kick-Ass movie. That pretty much put the cap on Wednesday night, since Thursday was chock-full of stuff-to-do!
And in general rebellious fashion, I did not check my new phone at the theater. I can turn it off, thank-you-very-much.
Thursday was a day full of listening to publishers plans, eating, a workshop (I went to the one aimed at making stores more kid friendly), and numerous focus groups with publishers that were usually question-and-answer sessions, though sometimes publishing plans and Q&A had to be dropped for time. One publisher’s focus group was aimed just at retailers who don’t have websites, nor access to the distributor’s website, it seemed. It would have been more productive buying an over-priced drink instead of wasting that time, but I didn’t feel like buying an over-priced drink. Having attended all the groups and meals, I’d spent 8 a.m. until 9 p.m. working. After that, I rode with my friends (Ben Tiede had shown up by then, as well as a couple other people whose names I forgot; sorry!) to a party at Challengers Comics + Conversation. It was great being able to walk into a comic book store, walk to the far side of the store, and pull an ice-cold Miller Lite out of a giant cooler and hang out with great friends like Will Pfeifer. Chris Neseman had wanted us to go drink a few more places, but as happens sometimes, plans didn’t pan out.
After heading back to the hotel, I bumped into Christopher Shy, and he introduced me to Leah (who I share some other mutual friends with). I had planned on drinking a little bit more, but ended up heading back to my room and not being able to find anything good on the hotel room cable.
When I woke up the next morning, I checked out, got my breakfast, and took the shuttle to the McCormick convention center. One of the perks of these summits is that we usually get free entrance to the “adjoining” convention. Also nice is that we got to get in for the three professional hours preceding the shows opening to the general public. I took the time to help my friends set up their tables in artist alley (Steve Bryant, Jim & Mike Heffron), and I also grabbed a few minutes to meet Phil Hester face-to-face after months of emails and tweets back and forth. He was sharing a table with his often-times inker Ande Parks, who’s also a really cool guy, too. I’d like to drink with Ande sometime (I seem to recall Phil saying he doesn’t drink; I could be wrong).
I missed some signing times I wanted to make with people on Friday during the second retailer workshop I went to, and that would be my one complaint: don’t hold workshops during the convention. It kills networking time. Anyway, after that workshop, I eventually made it back to the Top Cow booth for about the third time, where I got to meet Ron Marz face-to-face after months of tweets back and forth. I also got to meet Nelson Blake II, who’s also really great. We chatted for a bit, and sadly, I wasn’t able to hang out with them afterward as I had to head back to Madison immediately after the con floor closed Friday evening. In all fairness, it was for some friends’ wedding on Saturday, so it wasn’t as sad as I may have made it seem.
(Oh, and right before making my way to the Top Cow booth, I stopped by Tim Seeley and Daniel Leister‘s artist alley table. I got a Zartan sketch from Tim for my roommate.)
And that’s about the extent of a retailer summit. For the rest of the C2E2 convention, I kept checking my Twitter account for announcements and general tomfoolery.
While most people can’t go to a retailer summit, the C2E2 show was a great Chicago convention in Chicago you can go to, and I look forward to spending more time with friends new and old next year (and maybe I’ll see you there), especially since I know some of them owe me some drinks!
Josh Crawley is the tenured Master of Disaster of Westfield Comics, not to be confused with Josh Crawley, the keyboardist for Everclear.
http://www.twitter.com/joshcrawley
Westfield Comics
ATTN: JOSH
7475 Mineral Point Rd STE 22
Madison WI 53717
March 24th, 2011 at 2:11 pm
[...] it. As I may make a few comparisons to my retailer summit experiences last year, it may not hurt to reread the column I wrote about that first. I’ll have more about C2E2 in the coming [...]