February 23, 2006

It’s finally here. Comic Con is in New York City for the first time. It starts tomorrow and runs through February 26th, and we have a booth! We will be giving away a catalog there, and Charles Burns, Kim Deitch and Jessica Abel are all on panels. Stop by and say hi if you’re around. If not, tune into this page for regular updates from our own Pamela Mullin.

Here’s her first installment:

Well, it’s begun. Comic Con NY takes over the Javits Center this weekend. Today Katie, another Pantheon staff member, and I arrived around 1pm to set up. We made it through the exhibitor’s line pretty smoothly and then we walked down the escalator. What a production! The temperature felt as if it had dropped and there were forklifts being driven around with large objects balancing on them and palettes with boxes piled high everywhere. When we arrived at our booth, or what was to be our booth none of our colleagues were around. So, we checked out our location which I must say is quite ideal and made sure all our boxes arrived. Since we couldn’t do anything else until the Skyline booth was erected we left.

I sat in on the ICV2 panel presented by Milton Griepp, which was in a much warmer room, and waited for the panel on “Graphic Novels: The New Literature?” which Dan Frank our editorial director was participating in. Finally, it began and with Calvin Reid of PW moderating there was some good conversation. Of course they hit on the question graphic novel or comic? In fact, I saw a section in the ICV2 flyer that clumped publishers such a Pantheon in a section titled Fiction or Reality rather than Non-fiction since the graphic novel is not always a novel. We’ve come to the conclusion yet again that there is no secret to the success of publishing of graphic art with words.

“Call it a medium, call it a language… . they have a power than no other media have” said Frank, and he acknowledged that “we treat each as a book” just like we do everything else we publish.
—PM

P.S. Dan Clowes’ Art School Confidential will be screened at 7pm on 2/25! Be sure to check out the official website, and here’s the trailer: