Emerald City Comic Con announced that in 2027, their show will use only digital badges instead of more traditional physical ones. As noted at The Beat's coverage of this, there has been some pushback from potential con-goers: "What if my phone dies, what if there is no service, what if I don’t OWN A MOBILE PHONE." All of which are valid concerns. The show claims it will have provisions for that last concern, but I don't see how any provision could be a practical one since you can't prove you don't have a phone and a convention would therefore need to rely on an individual being truthful about it, therefore meaning you'd also need to have some kind of physical badge system in place anyway. So you'd need to run a system where anyone who just wants a physical badge can get one. Which puts us back to where we are now anyway.

The main reason why a show might set up a digital badge system is financial. As noted in that Beat article, some shows express the concern about individuals swapping badges. A show would then theoretically miss out on a sale if a person bought a one-day ticket, used it for half a day and then gave it to someone else who used it for the other half of the day. I'm sure this does happen, but in the first place, the people who do act as that 'second ride' for an existing ticket were never going to spend money on a ticket so we're not talking about 'lost' revenue here. And in the second place, the shows that are big enough where that might be a concern are primarily attended by fans who spend a significant portion of the day at the show in the first place, so there's minimal opportunity to swap anyways. I think this idea is a minimal problem at worst and more likely a phantom one for most shows that have this concern. Again we're not talking about lost revenue here, despite the concern; we're talking about trying to extract as much money as possible out of the fandom as cynically as we can.

The other financial incentive is in the badge creation and distribution process. A digital badge sysetm would obviously cut down the costs of manufacturing badges since there'd obviously be nothing to actually manufacture, but it would also cut down on distribution costs. A show wouldn't have the costs of physically mailing badges, and they wouldn't need to hire as many people to work at the convention itself to pass out badges for anyone who doesn't have it mailed to them. Anyone who's been to a larger show has seen the couple dozen people they have just to handle badges; this would effectively get cut down to one guy standing at the entrance checking your phone.

Towards the end of that Beat piece, Heidi mentions, "I’m sure people won’t like it at first, but soon they will forget that there ever was a thing such as attendee badges." I don't think this is quite right. Yes, people won't like it at first and complaints will dwindle over time. But only part of that dwindling levels of complaints will be people 'forgetting' badges were a thing. The other part is that anyone who can't participate in the system will essentially just be excluded from it. They won't complain about problems with the show because they simply weren't able to attend in the first place. It will seem as if people have stopped complaining when, in fact, the ones with the issues will be shut out of the conversation entirely and go unheard. Conventions will basically be forcing their loudest audience to self-select out of the system so they won't be able to offer feedback. That's why complaints will die down before too long.

Yes, there are benefits to digital badges beyond the cost savings to convention organizers. I am 100% on board with not creating a crap-ton more plastic that will largely wind up in a landfill. But eliminating a physical option entirely is going to force out a notable segment of the population. Having an "accomodation" method won't be sufficient and will not work at a larger scale. A digital option is great, but it needs to run in tandem with a physical option in order to not alienate a significant audience.

Do you know G.B. Love? Let me borrow this snippet of his bio from the Inter-Fan website...

G.B. Love was the driving force of comics fandom in South Florida and one of the main forces of comics fandom in its infancy.

G.B. published The Rocket's Blast, a comics fanzine, in the early 1960s, which later merged with another fanzine to become The Rocket's Blast ComiCollector, known to most simply as the RBCC. The RBCC was an expensive ($5) magazine-size publication with fan (and future pro) art and articles and tons of ads from comics fans and dealers. It was one of the first and largest forums for fans to buy and sell comics through the mail. This was in the days before comic stores and before The Buyer's Guide (later known as Comic Buyer's Guide) existed. Often, the only way for fans to get back issues was through ads in RBCC. The RBCC also showcased fan art and many whose work appeared within its pages often went on to professional comics careers. The RBCC was also an educational forum, with rich articles devoted to comics and creators long absent from the newsstands, such as EC Comics.

If that were all that G.B. Love had done, he would definitely have earned his place in the annals of comics fandom, but he was also active on the local level. He organized the first comic book conventions in South Florida, beginning in the late 1960s in the unairconditioned Fireman's Hall in Coral Gables, and later at various American Legion Halls in Coconut Grove.

Now bear with me as I run down a quick timeline...

• 1939 - Love was born
• 1961 - Love launched The Rocket's Blast
• 1962 - Love launched Fighting Hero Comics
• 1964 - The Rocket's Blast merged with The Comicollector
• 1965 - Love launched Fantastic Exploits
• 1967 - RCBB went to photo-offset printing, so Love no longer had to collate and staple each issue himself
• 1968/69 - Love organized the first comic convention in South Florida
• 1971 - Love launched The Golden Age Collector
• 1974 - Love moved to Houston and launched Trek: The Magazine for Star Trek Fans
• 1974/75 - Love helped organize Houstoncons
• 1980 - Love began editting Trek: The Best of Trek books
• 1990 - The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed
• 2000 - Love was seriously injured in a car accident
• 2001 - Love died at age 61

You'll note that the I've included passage of the ADA in this list. Why is it relevent? Because Love had cerebal palsy. The fanzines, magazines and books he published, the conventions he organized and worked at, everything he is remembered for in fandom happened before passage of the ADA. It's worth noting, too, that his case of cerebal palsy was pretty extreme. His friend Earl Blair later said: "Walking was difficult as was merely picking up or handling a pencil... a Coke can... or just about any object. His speech was difficult and most folks would find nearly unintelligible." Keith Sillman mentioned that Love "couldn't really use his fingers, but he would sit at the admissions table and grasp the dollar bills with his gnarled hands. When he spoke, his speech was so badly affected that it often sounded more like seal utterances."

Yet, by all accounts, he was a very successful writer/editor/publisher. In a time well before people with disabilities had a collective voice. When "handicapped" was a derogatory term. You might recall that even into the early 1990s, In Living Color felt comforable enough to regularly try to get laughs with Damon Wayans' Handi-Man character.

In more recent years, some cons have gone out of their way to ensure people with all sorts of disabilities are being treated well. So things are better, right?

Well, that's hard to say. While we (or at least I) don't really hear any stories about bad experiences from people with disabilities, that could well be because they're superceded by sexual harassment of women. Or discrimination against racial minorities. Or any of the other issues that caused me to start an -isms column in the first place. I'd like to think things in comics fandom are better than they were in general -- I tend to view the past with whatever the opposite of rose-colored glasses are -- but the sparks of progress are frequently countered by increased reports of people being asshats.

Love faced a challenging life and managed to succeed far beyond anyone's expectations. But that was in spite of the society he lived in, not because of it. After all, how many other examples like his can you point to in fandom. And while there still aren't people with disabilities crowding out others on the convention floor, I can see a greater number of them in attendance than even ten years ago. So that has to be some kind of progress... right?

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Familiarizing Myself with My Collection
https://ift.tt/ryJQ1u4

Kleefeld on Comics: Filmation's Flash Gordon
https://ift.tt/TvCW2OM

Kleefeld on Comics: Them Days Is Gone Forever
https://ift.tt/mCTdufH

Kleefeld on Comics: Do the Right Thing
https://ift.tt/Th3bWYq

Kleefeld on Comics: Animal Crackers Who?
https://ift.tt/5jI8T9P

I don't think I've read Animal Crackers since the late 1980s. It ran in The Plain Dealer, which my parents got, and I'd read Bollen's strip along with whatever else was on the page. I don't especially recall any strips in particular, but it just kind of rolled in the background with Hagar the Horrible and Beetle Bailey. I was more interested in Garfield when I was younger, and Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side once those strips debuted.

I did, however, have a small, heart-shaped box with a relief of Lyle Lion under the phrase, "Love is the answer." Lyle was shown asking, "What was the question?" I got it as a Valentine's Day gift from my parents one year. I have no idea what happened to it -- it probably got thrown out around the time I went to college -- but it was on my desk in my bedroom for probably around a decade. And so that box stands out as a stronger memory of the strip to me than any of the actual strips themselves.

When I heard of Roger Bollen's passing a few years back, my first thought was, "He was still alive?" Then, having read some pieces that noted he passed the strip on to Fred Wagner in the 1990s who then passed it on to Mike Osbun when he died in 2016, I thought, "The strip's still published?" I have thought about the strip periodically since I last actually read it, but I never mustered enough interest to see if it was still around.

I don't say that as a means to knock Bollen's or Wagner's or Osbun's work. (Hell, I've never even read Wagner's or Osbun's versions!) But it strikes me as everything problematic with newspaper strips relative to webcomics.

First, the strip is almost entirely reliant on Tribune Content Agency for marketing and general promotion. But they're dropped or cancelled most of their strips and, they're down to only sixteen, most of which are legacy strips like Dick Tracy and Gasoline Alley. They see to put more of their focus on other newspaper filler like horoscopes, advice columns, and card games. (Including TWO different columns on Bridge. Do people still play Bridge? I can't recall the last time I heard someone even mention Bridge!) As far as I can tell, Animal Crackers hasn't gotten into a book since 1982.

Related to that are licensing deals. As I mentioned, I did have that small box, but with a cast of anthropomorphic animals, you'd think it'd be easier to sell plush dolls and such. I think there are more licensing deals with Andy Capp right now than Animal Crackers. Now, to be fair, that may have been some kind of issue with Bollen himself -- Bill Watterson famously refused to let his creations be turned into stuffed animals. But that there have been at least some licensed pieces over the years, it would seem that's not the case.

Then there's the name itself. It was actually the third newspaper strip to use the name "Animal Crackers" and it's in such common useage thanks to both the cookies and the Marx Brothers film (which both predate the strip by several decades) that internet searches on the comic strip are more difficult than other comics. Even if you know precisely the name of the strip, you have to manually filter out loads of unrelated information if you're trying to get to something about Bollen's strip. This obviously was not an issue or concern when Bollen first launched his strip in 1967, but it can be insanely problematic today. Even the Wikipedia entry for the actual strip not only notes the two predecessors, but the image is from one of those as well with no visual reference to Bollen's or Wagner's or Osbun's work.

Animal Crackers was never a bad comic to my recollection. Very much on par with much of what was in the funny pages throughout the 1970s and '80s. But several factors unrelated to the strip's actual contents have kept it stuck as a vague memory from 30+ years ago, instead of a part of the contemporary comics scene. Which is unfortunate. But it's also why I think the traditional newspaper syndicate model needs to change in order to be relevant in the 21st century.

When I was a teenager, I saw the movie Nothing in Common with Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason. I don't remember exactly when I first saw it -- sometime after it had started showing up regularly on cable, so probably when I was in the back half of high school when I was starting to give serious consideration to a career. The movie mostly revolves around Hanks' character reconciling and getting along with his retiring and recently divorced father, played by Gleason. But the backdrop of it has Hanks as goofy, wise-cracking executive at an ad agency. He got to be creative and have fun all day, and he got paid some big money. That sounded like a fantastic job to me! It by no means was a primary motivator, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't in the back of my mind when I went to school to get a degree in graphic design.

My first few graphic design jobs out of school were not for agencies, however, but companies' in-house design departments. Those weren't nearly as cool, but I'd understood that agency jobs aren't as common and generally required a high level of expertise that I hadn't quite mastered yet. Nonetheless, every time I went job hunting, I'd send my resume and portfolio samples off to various agencies. And eventually, about five years after graduating, I got in. An actual agency gig.

I was excited. It looked like it had that same free-spirited atmosphere that I saw in Nothing in Common. One of the co-owners had a giant Three Stooges print hanging in his office, and there were two Razor scooters that employees could use to zip from one side of the office to the other. Plenty of the creative work hung around the studios, some of it actual projects they were paid for, some of it just personal stuff people did for fun. It seemed like what I'd been looking for in an employer since high school.

From the fact that I'm telling you all this, I'm sure you no doubt expect the "But..." that's inevitably coming.

It turned out to be a very uncomfortable job. Partially because the job I was apparently hired for didn't exactly mesh with the job I was told I was hired for, but also because the atmosphere itself was very uncomfortable for me (and I suspect others too). It was uncomfortable because it very much felt like a stereotypical frat house. There was a very strong sense of a dude-bro culture (well before "dude-bro" was an actual term) and it wasn't uncommon for jokes to go around that were more... explicit than is warranted in a corporate office with many having a misogynistic leaning. As far as I know, there was no overt sexual harassment that took place there (reported or not) -- as far as I saw/heard, those jokes only seemed to crop up when no women were present -- but for as uncomfortable as it made me feel as someone who was decidedly not on the butt end of those jokes, I can't help but believe that every woman there cringed every time they thought about dealing with those attitudes in the office.

After about a year, I was let go, along with about half a dozen others. All of whom happened to have worked on a project that one of the owners micro-managed to the point of it failing. I haven't worked at an agency in the two decades since then. If agency life was like that, I will absolutely pass.

I tell this story in relation to the announcement of Warren Ellis' return to comics after word of his... problematic behavior to female "proteges" five years ago. I'm wondering how many women were pushed out of comics because of that kind of thing. Beyond the stories of overt sexual harassment. Not to diminish those, certainly, but the number of times women just felt deeply uncomfortable working in a misogynistic, dude-bro climate like I did undoubtedly exceeds the number of explicit acts of harassment. How many women got a taste of that culture and said, "No, thanks"?

My point is that many of the stories we tend to hear about are the worst of the worst. And they need to be treated as such. But just because women aren't being groped on a daily basis doesn't mean that the environment isn't toxic. And even if you're an asshole and don't care about women as people, does it even make sense from a business perspective to actively turn away talented individuals just because you think you're better than them? That seems to me a recipe for problems. If you allow this bullshit to continue, much less encourage it, you're going to be outed at some point, and your business is going to suffer. Like I said, even if you're an asshole with no moral compunctions (and that moral dimension is indeed the way you should be looking at this) it's just bad business.

Speaking of which, that ad agency I was telling you about? They were later bought out for their client list. The agency was less than half the size than when I worked there. The original owners were initially promised leadership positions in the larger company, but were pushed out soon after. You reap what you sow.

A little while back, I was digging around for information on the old Everett True comic strip and stumbled across Barnacle Press where they're housing a huge number of old comic strips. Scanned at pretty decent resolution and cleaned up (a bit) for all the world to see. Obviously, it's all public domain stuff but there's famous works like Barney Google and Katzenjammer Kids to more obscure titles like Diana Dillpickles and Soosie the Shopper (which apparently only lasted a couple months). Lots of great comics to find and enjoy there, although it doesn't seem to have been updated in a few years.

In any event, in looking through their archives, I came across this... The brainchild of Al Posen, Them Days Is Gone Forever ran from 1922 until 1925 (sort of). The strip sounds excessively complicated on first glance, but Posen did put some restraints on himself, in theory, to make things more productive. The melody running across the top of the strip was identical every day. So he wasn't creating new music all the time; in fact, the rhythm essentially forced the wording structure of the language in each panel. And the last panel always featured one or some of the characters singing "Them days is gone forever!" There weren't any recurring characters or ongoing plotlines, though, so Posen just had to come up with short vinettes in which people compare the past to the present. Usually mournfully.

He changed the strip in April 1924 to The Jingle Belles to change things up a bit, but that didn't go over very well and he changed it back six months later. That didn't go over so well either, and it was axed completely in early 1925. Although United Feature Syndicate continued to sell it as reprints for several more years.

I believe I've mentioned previously how I spent many of my Saturday mornings as a kid glued to the television watching cartoons, and how most of those were themed around comics or superheroes. There were a few years when that included a Flash Gordon cartoon, that looked exciting and different from just about everything else on TV at the time. It also infuriated me to no end.

The show was put together by Filmation after seeing the immense success of Star Wars. It was for Saturday mornings, though, so they did quite a lot to cut costs. Reusing generic footage, animating characters as silhouettes, that kind of thing. I recall it being noticeable as a kid, but not nearly to the extent that it was on later Filmation projects like He-Man. And they did something that no other American cartoon was doing at the time -- there was one story for the whole season. Each episode was merely a chapter in a broader story, and the credits always started running just as you were really getting into it.

I thought that was fantastic. It seemed a lot more adult than the short, fifteen-minute adventures the Super Friends were getting into. The serial nature, while still fairly simplistic, meant that you had to follow for an extended period. There never seemed to be any condescension towards the audience, and the writers let the action unfold more naturally without a lot of unnecessary exposition.

So why did the show infuriate me?

Because the network never aired the episodes in order. At least not by the time I discovered it. It was very apparent, too, because the title of each episode was given up front with the chapter number.

When I first caught the show, I thought my problem was just getting to watch it every week. It came on at 11:30, I think, and I'd often get called away for lunch before it was over. Sometimes just as it was about to start. But I made a stead-fast determination once to pay close attention and ensure I at least kept track of the chapter numbers and titles for a few weeks, even if I couldn't see the whole episode. Sure enough, it jumped from 6 to 9 to 15 to 3 to...

Oh, there was usually a quick summary of what happened on the previous episode at the start of each one, so it wouldn't take that much to follow along out of order, but I was so irked at that they weren't showing them in order in the first place, I didn't really bother to sort it out. I think I ultimately only watched a handful of episodes in total.

Some decades later, I find the whole series is available for free on YouTube. I have to say that it really was an incredibly well-done series. It's not hard to spot the cost-cutting (not only re-using the rotoscoping from character to character, but I recall some of it being used in Filmation's Tarzan cartoon as well) but much of it was done very creatively to for dramatic effect. The spaceships in particular are fantastic.

(I've since learned that the spaceships were done by creating actual models of the ships, and painting them white with black outlines drawn right along the model's edges. These were then filmed normally against a white background. The frames of the film were then printed onto the animation cells and colored by hand. The effect is that the ship looks like traditional, flat animation, but the changing perspectives and rotations are done much more smoothly than any hand-drawn attempt. Here again, sequences are often reused, but they're creatively cut or jointed with other animations that it's not quite as blatant.)

More significantly, the story holds up very well. It does have a number of those pulp-y plot coincidences -- owing a great deal to creator Alex Raymond's original stories -- but there's some interesting things going on. Character morals are rarely black and white, and the dynamics among them relatively nuanced, especially for a Saturday morning cartoon.

I was happy to find it online to see if it held up as well as my imagination remembered it, and I was even more happy to see that my recollection wasn't even doing the show justice. It's well worth taking a look if you haven't seen it recently.