Broken Frontier

Convention Season is upon us, a time comic fans everywhere look forward to each summer. Todd reminisces some of his recent con appearances and what he likes about the con circuit. And then there's something about video games...

This installment of McFarlane's Mark was produced by Sam Moyerman and Frederik Hautain.

BROKEN FRONTIER: With convention season now upon us, I wanted to take some time to talk about your feelings on conventions.  Which ones you will be hitting this year?  Any particular memories standing out from past cons?  And what your feelings are on how the convention season has grown exponentially in recent years?

TODD MCFARLANE: Well, I just got finished up at the Phoenix Con.  Even though it’s near where I live I can’t always make it there because of my schedule and travelling.  That was good for 2 reasons.  1, Greg Capullo came into town for it and it had been a while since I saw Greg.  He lives on the east coast and I’m on the west coast so with our schedules we don’t get a chance to see each other too often.  We chat from time to time but don’t get to see each other that often.

The other thing is that Stan Lee came into town that weekend too.  So I had a chance to hang out with Stan there and also at the Iron Man 2 premier in Las Vegas.  It’s always great to see Stan; he’s basically the Godfather of the industry, someone we all aspire to be.  The other part of seeing him is that he’s getting older now so your reverence goes up for them.  He easily falls into the “Living Legend” category.

This year I’m also heading to San Diego for a couple days, possibly Chicago, and maybe New York.

BF: Do you get over to the East Coast a lot?  I don’t normally see your name on guest lists for our shows over here.

MCFARLANE: I do, but not as often for conventions anymore.  That does remind me though I am coming in for the Baltimore show.  Usually with my schedule going 24/7 I have to limit the amount of conventions I can get to.  I travel a fair amount but it doesn’t always mean I’ll be able to get somewhere for a show.

When I was younger and wasn’t married and didn’t have 3 kids I could do a lot more shows.  But now that I have the family and the business to run it bites into the time I used to be able to do whatever I wanted with when I was a bachelor.

BF: That’s funny because one of my first convention memories is from a show in Philly back in, I’m estimating, 1993.  It was the first show I had ever gone to so I had no idea how they worked.  So my father ended up dropping me off 2 hours before the show closed up shop for the weekend and I managed to sneak into the convention but was really upset because you were the Guest of Honor but were done signing for the day.  At 13 years old that seemed to really upset me.

MCFARLANE: I’ve only been there once I think.  So that was a long time ago.

BF: Yeah, it was back when you and Peter David had your debate.

MCFARLANE: Oh yeah, we did our goofy little back and forth.  It was really fun.

BF: So what do you really like to do at conventions when you go?  Do you go to meet and talk to other creators and network or is it more about meeting the fans and collectors?  Do you still get mobbed by people when you go to them?

MCFARLANE: The best thing at conventions is to interact with the fans.  Just to thank them for all the support they give.  These shows are for them.  But there is a, it’s interesting in how they’ve changed over the years, but they used to be real more “comic-centric” than they are now.  So you’re not meeting as much with your peers anymore.  Something like San Diego has gotten so big now and it’s great for business but for me the fun factor has been dramatically reduced. 

It used to be at San Diego where everyone was at 1 or 2 hotels and you readily ran into people accidentally.  That was a fairly easy way to build camaraderie and meet people.  In the last few years at San Diego that method is impossible to do.  You literally have to set times and dates to meet up with people.  Your entire time there needs to be scheduled; you never accidentally run into people there anymore.  I’ll get home from San Diego and get an email or talk to someone and they’ll mention that they just got back from there too.  It’s a little shocking because we’re both there for 4 days at the show and don’t ever cross paths.  And none of the people you end up talking to even realize who else is there.  That used to happen a lot more readily.  With Hollywood becoming so big there it’s more a pop culture convention than anything else.  Realistically they could drop the word “Comic” from the title and just make it the San Diego Con.

It’s good for that stuff – toys, Hollywood, and video games.  But the pureness of just getting to get to hang out with comic book people when all the fans are there for comic book reasons, San Diego isn’t the place for that anymore.

BF:  Do those “comic-centric” conventions even exist anymore?  Has it evolved to such a point where it’s impossible for those to exist?

MCFARLANE: You mean just a straight “Comic Convention”?  It’s definitely getting harder for a few reasons.

You could do a big comic convention early in the 90’s because there were so many people collecting comics.  So you could do the big show with only comic book people and get a huge crowd.  But now that sales have diminished and there aren’t as many people going into the stores it’s gotten real tough to just do a strictly comic book show and make it something more than a glorified swap meet.  I would say that Chicago still has a lot of comic book influence to it from what I hear, although they are definitely starting to bring in guests from TV shows and from other media in an attempt to emulate San Diego in that regard.

BF:  It’s funny because Philly is this weekend so I’m going to head there for the show.

MCFARLANE: Oh yeah?  How is that?  Is it more comic centric or has it gone more pop culture?

BF: Well, it’s an interesting show.  I think one of the things that have happened in years past is that when NYCC showed up it took a lot of the wind out of the sails of the Philly show.  There was a push to make it bigger something like 7 years ago when Philly was a huge show.  This was when Batman Begins was coming out and they had a special screening plus DC just signed the Kubert Brothers and announced it there.  That was the biggest year for the show but since then it’s just gotten smaller and smaller.  So it’s interesting in that you do get more interaction with everybody but it’s a small crowd and just going over the guest list you see more and more pop culture people who will be there and the comic book guests there are smaller and it’s pretty much the same ones every year.

In a sense it does become what you mentioned and that’s a glorified swap meet.  Part of the fun for all the fans was going and hearing all the announcements, but now they save them up for San Diego, Chicago, and NYCC.  So that makes it tough but it’s still a fun little show.

It’s nice because you get more time with creators and that’s one of the things that I wanted to ask you about.  Do you still generate a big crowd of people at these shows?  I know this year you’re mostly hitting the big ones but you hit rock star status in the industry and used to get a lot of fans around you all the time.  Is that still the case?

MCFARLANE: Nope.  It has tempered itself dramatically.  San Diego is now pop culture and you can tell it shifted because those of us that are the rock stars of the industry can almost walk around the convention anonymously until we get to our booths where the people are waiting for you.  Before, when it was all comic people, anywhere you went at the show you were dealing with people who knew you and knew the industry.  Now you walk by these huge crowds where people are lined up to see Angelina Jolie or something from Twilight.  So they’re there for different reasons and comics aren’t even on their radar.

It’s actually something about the shows now that I like.  I don’t have to be “on” all the time.

BF: Now do you go around looking for stuff to buy too?

MCFARLANE:  I used to.  I try to limit my time at shows now, so I go and sign as many autographs as possible and then get out of there.  If I have any extra time I’ll head into artist alley and do some scouting for a diamond in the rough.

BF: But no “Holy Grail” book that you keep looking for at conventions?

MCFARLANE: No, usually when I buy books they’re books that I had when I was younger and I end up buying them over and over because I keep misplacing them.  But nothing really crazy out there that I want.  I’m way more anxious trying to sign hot artists than buy a book.

BF: Are you guys prepping any announcements for these conventions?  Anything you could tease the fans with?

MCFARLANE: We’re setting something up for San Diego but our bigger stuff for there is for some video game stuff I’ve been working on.  Depending on how things go at a meeting I’m going to very soon will determine whether I make the announcement at San Diego or bump it to a later convention.

If we continue moving forward our plan is San Diego to show unveil some video footage from the game.  I’m directing a commercial for the game right now.  I was in L.A. last week doing the motion capture for that and this week I’m going to do some of the editing for the commercial.  So if the meeting goes as planned we will debut the footage at San Diego.

BF: Were you in the motion capture suit?

MCFARLANE: No [laughs], but I worked with actors and told them “If I were as well built and good looking as you this is how I’d do it.”  They were all really quick studies.  I’m just trying to get a lot of melodrama, looking for the same things I do when I do comics – big acting, big action.  There has to be some overacting there, I’d keep relating it to Broadway.  “Assume you’re on Broadway and there are 200 some people out there watching you 100 rows back.  They need to see the emotion too.  If they can’t get it then you aren’t acting well enough.”  They got into the groove of it pretty quick.

BF: Is this a Spawn game you’re working on?

MCFARLANE: No, this one is a console RPG game and the next one is an MMO.  We’ve been working on it for almost 3 years now; it’s an MMO game with Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios.  It takes a long time.

BF: Do you find that games take the longest?

MCFARLANE: Well, it’s sort of like doing a big animated movie.  It takes a long long time.   Many of these games are a few years in the making and this one is no different.  Obviously comic books you can get through pretty quick.  Even movies you can make pretty quickly; there’s a good amount of developing, but once you decide you’re making it the process moves fairly quick.  But there’s no true short cut to making video games.  You have to make everything from scratch and there’s a huge economic cost to it.

BF: Do you still play video games at all to keep up with the medium and what has been done with them?

MCFARLANE: I’m not a giant gamer myself but I employ a lot of people who are so I watch a lot of game playing and study them if you will.  It may be the same as me watching movies – I’m not an actor but I have a pretty keen eye and can tell if a movie is good and compare it to others.  Just doing the art directing on them I try to apply some of the things I know from comics since I think they’ll also work in the video game world.  Playability, the fun factor, the wow factor, some cool visual stuff – things like that.

BF: Do you agree with Roger Ebert’s edict that video games can’t be art?

MCFARLANE: That would depend on your definition of art.  Art to me is something that you look at that makes you react to it.  Whether it’s evocative or repulsive it elicits a reaction.  And in some instances there is an entertainment factor to it.  So I’d have to ask him his definition of art, because using his definition he’s probably right.  Using my definition, art is the method of creating something from nothing.  Video games are creating a world from scratch so how can there not be anything artistic about it?