Salon Internacional del Comic convention, part 1

Originally published November 8, 1996, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1199

Tuesday, Oct. 8—I arrived in Spain for the Salon Internacional del Comic. Lately I’ve been trying to cut back on comic con appearances, to concentrate more on work and family. But hey—it’s Spain. Can’t pass that up.

Unfortunately, my command of Spanish is limited to a couple of words I picked up from watching Zorro, and, of course, “Hasta la vista, baby” (not to mention the ability to say “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die” in a bad Castilian accent).

But I suffer from the same conceit most Americans do, one that is oddly both self-aggrandizing and self-deflating. My reasoning is that everyone is going to be able to speak English because it’s such an important language and because everyone in Spain, from infancy to dotage, is smarter than I am and can thoroughly master two languages while I’m limited to my native tongue and a smattering of French.

The convention was being held in Gijon, situated in an area called Asturias. It had been highly recommended to me by Walt Simonson, who apparently attended a previous year. Unfortunately, my plane got into Madrid at 10 a.m. and there was no connecting flight until 4 p.m. The notion of cooling my heels for six hours didn’t appeal to me. Even though it was a five-hour car trip, I found the thought of driving preferable. So I rented a car and made the drive up.

I stopped for gas. The attendant didn’t speak English. I managed to struggle through getting my tank filled. As I pulled out, I called, “Hasta la vista, baby!” I got a blank stare.

I stopped to try to get something to eat at a crowded roadside cafe. I got a menu written entirely in Spanish with no translation. The waiter didn’t speak English, nor did the maitre d’, or anyone else around me. And I, brain that I am, forgot to bring the Berlitz guide I’d been advised to buy. I grabbed a bag of potato chips from a vending machine and left, shouting “Hasta la vista, baby!” behind me. Blank stares.

I was getting worried. This might not be as easy as I’d thought.

Still, the directions written out for me by the convention organizers were quite clear. On the last leg of my journey—a trip that took me across half of Spain, including farmland, mountains, and other lovely scenery—I passed a large city called Oviedo. Fifteen minutes later I was at the outskirts of Gijon. According to the little map of Gijon, I was no more than five minutes from the hotel. I was supposed to get to an intersection, where I could either go straight or turn right—it made no difference—and the map would guide me straight to the hotel.

I got to the intersection and went straight.

Forty-five minutes later, I was heading back towards Oviedo.

I hadn’t intended to; I just suddenly realized that I was on the road out of town. I’d wound up going in a complete circle, never having found a single one of the streets on my little map. It took me about 10 minutes to find somewhere to execute a U-turn, and eventually I found myself back at the intersection. This time I hung a right.

Thirty minutes later I was Oviedo-bound again. I was still hopelessly lost, but at least I was doing it more efficiently.

I’d even stopped at one point to ask a couple of policemen, neither of whom (naturally) spoke English and consequently were of no help. I’d handed them my map. They looked at it and laughed. Never a good sign. I didn’t bother with my Terminator 2 line for fear it’d be misinterpreted and I’d end up in jail. Then again, at least I’d have had a room for the night.

By this time I was shouting profanities and reminding myself to thank Walt Simonson with a brick.

I pulled over and pondered the situation. When I’d been wandering through Gijon, I’d kept seeing signs for Oviedo, which I’d tried to avoid, and signs for sections of town I did want to go to, which I’d tried to follow. And I kept winding up heading towards Oviedo.

I had three choices: 1) Take another shot at finding my way; 2) find a cab and hire him to drive to the hotel, and then follow him; 3) drive to Oviedo and hope they moved the convention there. The first option seemed hopeless, the second embarrassing (not to mention tough to explain to a cabbie), and the third not terribly likely.

I was sitting there going “Think-think-think” in a very Winnie-the-Pooh-like manner, and then I was reminded of the Milne story wherein Pooh, Piglet, and Rabbit are hopelessly lost in the Hundred Acre Wood. Every time they wander away from a particular clearing to try to find their way home, they wind up back at the clearing. And Pooh reasons that they should walk away from the clearing and then try to find—not their way home—but the clearing. In other words, they should try to stay lost and, in so doing, they will achieve their real destination. The idea works. They lose the clearing, but make it home.

Having nothing to lose, I entered Gijon and followed the signs to Oviedo. Five minutes later, I was at the hotel.

Bear of Very Little Brain, indeed.

Wednesday, Oct. 9—This convention was like none I’ve ever encountered. For starters, there was no dealers’ room. Plus, there were no daytime activities at all. The activities didn’t start until 7 p.m.

This was not a convention in the standard, commercial sense of the word. The money for the convention came from the government, with comic books being treated as a cultural phenomenon to be discussed by panelists and guests in a scholarly fashion.

The disparity between Spain and the United States is immediately apparent: In Spain, tax dollars go towards celebrating comics as an art form; in the United States, tax dollars go towards paying the salaries of DAs and cops so that they can shut down comic book stores and prosecute creators.

By this point I had met the organizer of the convention: Faustino Rodriguez Arbesu, a bearded, barrel-chested man who was also a teacher—outgoing, slightly bigger-than-life, and, so I was told, something of a local legend. There was also his eldest daughter, Sofia, who served as translator and guest organizer.

I had also met some of the other guests, such as Alan Grant and his wife Sue, Bryan Talbot and his wife Mary, and Charles Dougherty.

I had attended the previous night’s discussions. Unfortunately, the darkness of the auditorium and the two hours of sleep I’d had in the previous 48 caught up with me. I sat there in the audience and kept dozing off during Bryan’s speech. That, I figured, did not look good, so when Sofia suggested that I might just want to go back to the hotel and crash (perhaps my snoring was disturbing other attendees) I took her up on it. I slept 12 hours, then got up, did some writing, and now I was ready to go and explore the city.

It was closed.

Alan and Sue had told me that stores closed at noon and didn’t open again until 5 p.m., but I hadn’t quite believed that everything really did. But they knew whereof they spoke. The entire city was shut down. Nothing to see, nothing to do.

I went to the evening’s speeches. Jose Ortiz did a one-hour Q&A—entirely in Spanish. It would have been an utterly boring endeavor for the English-speaking audience members (such as, for instance, me) but the way the speakers were set up, there was a huge movie screen to the right of the speaker. And all during the Q&A, slides of the participants’ work appeared on the screen. Ortiz’s artwork was quite splendid, particularly project 45 feet tall.

Charles Dougherty had his Q&A next. I carefully watched Charles’ interaction with the crowd. This was not going to be easy. When you were up on stage, it was impossible to make eye contact with the crowd because the lights were down. Plus the language barrier further distanced one from the fans; Charles had to wait until a question was translated, then make his response, and then the questioner had to wait until the answer was translated. On that basis, it was tough to connect with the fans on any sort of emotional level.

A late dinner was served, after which I was indoctrinated into the Spanish night life. We didn’t get out of the restaurant until after midnight, at which point we went to a bar which also had dancing. At one point the DJ put on “The Macarena.” No one danced to it. I was astounded. In the United States, the entire Democratic National Convention was dancing to this Spanish tune, but in Spain, people didn’t even seem to know it.

A fun fact that I learned, which went a long way toward explaining the previous day’s blank stares: When Terminator 2 was released in Spain and dubbed into Spanish, it was decided that having Arnold say “Hasta la vista, baby” didn’t work; the line didn’t stand out. So Spanish audiences heard the Terminator rumble, “Sayonara, baby.” Which actually isn’t half bad. I wonder if, in Japan, he’s back to Spanish or whether he speaks in Urdu or something.

I asked what types of questions I could expect the next day, and was told that fans were really anxious to learn why I hate Image.

Oy.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)