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As an experiment, it was a valiant one, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes you need to try things just to make sure they’re not good ideas… But I always found the Expo-first-then-Convention later set-up to be more useful. As a guy interested in all aspects of the comic book creating-producing-pur chasing experience, it was more useful for me personally to ease into the show discussing nuts-and-bolts with like-minded cats first, and then div ing head-first into the convention proper. This year, although we meant no insult to retailers as a group, we had to leave the show at the end of the fan-based portion and get back to produc ing comics. Even moreso when I read the text of Joe Quesada’s keynote speech to the assembled retailers in attendance at his introduction. Based on more than a few discussions with smart retailers in attendance, I’ve come to the con clusion that Joe Quesada must have been dropped on his head. If you’re reading this column, you’re more than acquainted with the ins and outs of the Quesada speech, the restrained and classy DC response, and the backs-and-forths of all the folks in-between. Can you imagine any industry in the rest of the world where one of the top executives from one of the largest companies in that industry would address an assemblage of his company’s customers and tell them that they are full of "low self-esteem" because they vend the product that you pro duce? Joe Quesada, can you believe it, the honest-to-god-editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, said absolutely that very thing to an group of comic book retailers, as the keynote address of an expo celebrating the actual comic book industry. Does anyone else get the feeling from Marvel corporate of the somewhat loose girl we all knew in high school who bolstered her own low self-esteem by doing anything she could to get the attention of the popular boys in school? Joe Quesada’s in the back seat of a rented limo on prom night with the starting quarterback of the school football team, doing anything he can to get attention… Personally, I regretted that more than a little. So, I’ll just leave you to ponder this incisive question:

…and is going to garner about as much respect come Monday morning as Little Susie will.

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