John Campbell Talks About Convention People

Here's an excerpt from an interview with John Campbell, who does Pictures for Sad Children. It contains insightful comments that you will spot without any bolding or underlining by me. You'd never expect it, but it seems like cons are a good place to discern whether an artist has a soul or not.



Scene Point Blank: You were at the Toronto Comicbook Festival over the weekend. Can you tell me a little about that experience?

John Campbell: It was a public library full of tables and people behind the tables "selling" comic books, or else possibly "trying to make back half the money they spent making all these comics." Some of the people were visibly furtive and uncomfortable with "selling themselves" while others were, I would say "too comfortable" or I guess "so comfortable as to make me uncomfortable." While a few were "just right" i.e. "somewhat uncomfortable but resigned to the spiraling cognitive dissonance required for the situation..."

Scene Point Blank: I had a chance to watch you interact with some of your fans over the weekend. How has it been to get to meet some of them in person? How have the conversations been?

John Campbell: It is good to meet readers, it is easy to lose my bearings on the internet and no longer be able to imagine that anyone online is a real actual human being with blood and eyeballs. I would give the conversations a C+, a little too much stammering on both sides, see me after class.