International Comic Arts Forum: The source of the next few posts

A couple of weeks have gone by, but even so I am having a hard time getting my thoughts organized about the Forum. There was so much there that resonated with me, and some of it sent my mind off on tangents that no one there spoke about directly, but that were still inspired by it, and then some of the thought processes are more direct.

However, one thing that I am fairly comfortable assuming is that my regular readers will not really know what International Comic Arts Forum means. I only learned of it in March, I think. It was pretty much luck that I even found out then. One of the twins (not my sisters; this will be explained) was answering a question about his schedule, via Twitter, and he mentioned being in Portland in May. Stumptown was April; Rose City is September, and I think that other, new one, was February, so what was this? I asked and he gave this link:

http://www.internationalcomicartsforum.org/index.html

And I was like, wow, there is even more stuff in Portland than I realized! And I could go to that! And then it looked like it would overlap with the Italy trip, so I thought I would miss it, and then I had it scheduled so that I would get back the night before, but I had the next two days off. But then, between exhaustion, missing luggage, and technical issues, I ended up missing Thursday completely, and only catching about half of Friday and Saturday, but it was still really cool.

(No, I am probably not done being a fangirl yet.)

The forum itself is yearly, but held at different locations, which is probably why I had never heard of it before. I might have learned about it even without seeing the tweet, because there was an ad for it in the Stumptown Comics Fest program, but I might not have gotten back Wednesday night if I had not seen it before then.

(We had to be in Vicenza on May 21st either way. I think we picked good days based on that, but if other flights might not have lost our luggage, that could have been nice.)

Just to give an overview, the talks and panels were fairly evenly mixed between the more academic and the more creator led. I admit to having a harder time staying awake in the more academic ones (for which I still blame the exhaustion), but even so, there was not a single presentation that did not give me food for that, or other ideas for things to read. There were many that I wanted to attend and did not make it, and I still wonder if I should have chosen Academic Panel #9 instead of #10. 10 was not what I expected, but still valuable. 9 sounded really interesting, but I chose 10 over it because of my expectations. I think you see the problem.

Anyway, here is what I did attend:

Panel Discussion: Beyond Auteurism -- Creativity and Collaboration in Comics, with Gabriel Bá, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Matt Fraction, Charles Hatfield, and Ben Saunders. (Qiana Whitted had travel delays and could not attend.)

The John Lent Award Lecture: How to Think About Comics as Social Objects, by Benjamin Woo.

Film Screening: Comic Book City, Portland, OR, USA

Panel Discussion: An Evening with Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon, moderated by Matt Fraction

These are the twins, or the Wonder twins, but people usually call them the twins, as they are twin brothers. I think this nomenclature may be a way of avoiding the accent marks in their names. I know I will write more about them.

Academic Panel: Self, Memory, Perception, with Jennifer Anderson Bliss, Christophe Dony, and Josina Robb presenting from papers, and Stanford Carpenter moderating as it was open to questions.

Panel Discussion: Comics and the Pacific Northwest, with Megan Kelso, Greg Rucka, Chris Roberson, and T. Edward Bak, moderated by Ben Saunders

Plenary Speaker: Sculpture, Stasis, the Comics, and (oh yeah) Hellboy, by Scott Bukatman

So, the way I believe the next few days will go is that I will be writing about my thoughts from these on Tuesday, Wednesday, and then next Monday through Wednesday, and then I will move on to a different topic, though comics will still be a part of that Monday's post. Or, maybe my thoughts will be so drawn out and chaotic that the forum will need another week. I'm not always succinct.

(Music posts will definitely be Kissing Candice and Chomp Chomp Attack! this week, and either next week will be about the rest of that concert, or I will take a break from that to write about New Politics and Fall Out Boy, whom I will see on the 18th, and then circle back to the rest of the concert at the Haunt, with information on the venue, the two local bands, and of course, Snow White's Poison Bite. It just depends on whether giving the FOB concert extra time will deaden my writing or allow me to do it justice better.)