Of the few panels I attended at this years Stumptown Comics Fest, I’d have to say I enjoyed this one the most. Scott is a vivacious speaker and truly has an energy and passion when talking about comics. He should, as he has written multiple books on the subject. The Scott McCloud panel had the heaviest attendance of all the panels I was able to go to and there ended up being standing room only.

Scott first talked about how great a town Portland was for comics.


Creators of all sizes have made this town their home and Scott related how comics have a healthy ecosystem…for now. One of his points was that eventually he wonders when our bubble will burst. We were nerds before we became mainstream, and when the mainstream rejects comics again we will go back to being nerds, but that’s ok for Scott.

He talked about his and comics writer Kurt Busiek first exposure to comic books. There were only three choices for young readers: Marvel, DC, and Archie. The underground scene had pretty much dispersed or were unavailable to kids like him. Scott was more interested in chess than comics, but through Kurt’s persistence, comic books began to take it’s hold on his heart and the rest they say is history.

At the panel, many topics came up, one after the other. One of them was the idea of, “side door diversification.” This is the concept that people are being exposed to the comics medium because they are interested in video game, tv show, or something else that is in a comic book, and are then drawn into comics, or at least the comic dealing with their genre interest.

Another interesting thing that Scott brought up was how he goes about doing comics. He never writes a full script for himself and finds it confusing that others would do so. The most he would do is work on the word balloons first and get them into the layout. There was an artist that said he did work in such a style, and Scott found that intriguing, but rare.

The topic of micropayments also came up, an idea Scott had where readers of web content would pay a small sum to gain access to a comic strip or other piece of content, dropping five, ten, or twenty five cents down here or there. And Scott was the first one to say that it was a failed idea for the web. He talked about how one of the things that saddens him was that many webcomic sites have become nothing more than brochures, glossy images with ads that push you to buying product, and this is something he did not want to see. Rather, he wanted artists to find a way to make their money on the content of their work, not necessarily on the side content generated by their work.

The panel then turned to how many webcomics can be successful, but there have been very few graphic novels that have had the same measure of success. One of the reasons, in Scott’s opinion, was the lack of readability for graphic novels on the web. When reading a print graphic novel and you are ready to turn the page, you don’t really have to tell your hand to turn the page, it just automatically does it. Reading on the web, however, requires you to look away from the “page” to find whatever item the web creator has generated to get you to turn the page. Your reading experience is broken up due to the fact that you need to think about turning the page to get to the next piece of content, therefore making the reading experience less enjoyable.

The rest of the panel went into one of Scott’s hobbies, matching comic creators with their musician counterparts. The crowd had a great time with this, some shouting out their own ideas and Scott really seemed to enjoy himself. Will Eisner was the Duke Ellington of comics, Dinosaur Comics was the Ramones of comics (their lyrics change, but the music doesn’t), Kirby was the Elvis of comics (in all his forms), and there were many others that came very fast. Scott McCloud? Looks like he’s the Herbie Hancock…and he’s ok with that.

If you get a chance to see Scott McCloud speak, do yourself a favor and attend. He’s incredibly quick, both in mind and wit, and the panel had everyone leaving on a high note.