Salon Internacional del Comic convention, part 2

Originally published November 15, 1996, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1200

Continuing my travel journal of my trip to the Salon Internacional in Spain:

Thursday, Oct. 10—I was supposed to do my Q&A session. I was sitting up there on stage, and a fellow named Jordi, who was doing the translating, was giving an introduction. The crowd was listening with great politeness. I don’t do well with greatly polite crowds. I like slightly rowdy crowds. While Jordi was talking, I started mugging like Chevy Chase used to do on Saturday Night Live while Jane Curtin would pontificate during “Weekend Update.” The crowd started giggling.

Jordi wasn’t quite sure what he’d said that was so funny. He checked to see what I was doing, but I was watching him from the corner of my eye and was utterly deadpan when he looked my way. He continued talking. I continued making faces and not getting caught at it. The crowd loved it. Later I took pains to assure Jordi that I wasn’t making fun of him, per se, I was just trying to connect with the audience. He nodded and grinned. “Definitely a good way to break the ice,” he said.

I also had an opening speech, written for me by my teenage daughter Shana, in Spanish. I informed the crowd that Shana had “assured” me that it was a harmless, “Thanks for having me out here”-type of speech. I warned them that, knowing Shana, I suspected foul play, but that I was willing to give Shana the benefit of the doubt. I read the first sentences and the audience erupted into hysterics. I turned to Jordi and asked him what I had just said. He replied, “You said, ‘Hello. My waiter has a hot sausage in his pants. Last night I danced with a prostitute.'”

Needless to say, the speech was well received.

Questions covered a wide variety of topics, ranging from “Why do you hate [certain particular comics professionals]?” (Answer: I don’t) to “Why doesn’t the Hulk have a huge [male sexual accoutrement]?” (Answer: He does).

The thing that was disconcerting was that occasionally a question would be asked, and it would garner laughter from the audience. And I was sitting there, the one person in the room who didn’t know what was so funny, feeling a sense of impending doom as I wondered, “Ohhh jeez, what do they want to know?”

I also did an interview with a newspaper reporter. She asked me a number of questions about censorship. This wasn’t the first time I’d been asked about it since I’d arrived; indeed, it seemed a topic of paramount interest. I asked Sofia why.

Her answer surprised me. According to her, Spain regards the United States as a hotbed of censorship. She claimed that all they ever hear about is massive movements of artistic repression. This was, to me, ironic. Here’s the United States, a country which felt so strongly about freedom of expression that it spelled it out with the First Amendment. Yet on the other side of the Atlantic, we are perceived as being intolerant and constantly censorious of all artistic expression: sexually uptight and repressed. Which, y’know, we are.

The center of democracy and leaders of the Free World. Nice image to have, huh?

I asked Sofia whether they ever encountered such problems in her neck of the woods.

“No, we never have any problem with that,” she said proudly. “It’s not like America.”

“Yeah, well—at least our stores are open in the middle of the afternoon,” I retorted.

Friday, Oct. 11—I bought souvenirs for the family, also for myself. I found a toy store with all kinds of PVC figures you can’t get in the United States and grabbed a whole bunch including Hawkman, Silver Surfer, and Zorro.

Bryan and Mary and I were driven to a university in Oviedo where Bryan and I were to participate in a question and answer session with university students. Oviedo had apparently kicked in money for the convention, and we were brought over there as sort of an exchange program. There were about 50 or so students in attendance. Not surprisingly, seven or eight people kept asking all the questions, everyone else content to sit and watch. Which is pretty much what would happen in the United States, I’d wager.

We returned to Gijon. Roy and Dann Thomas had shown up by this point, as had Paul Gulacy and his wife Jan. They were both speaking that evening. I also signed a number of autographs. The nice thing about signing for fans in Spain was that I didn’t get anyone coming up to me with 50 copies of Spider-Man 2099 #1.

I couldn’t help but admire the job that Spanish publishers have done in the collection of my work. Many people brought me trade paperback editions of multiple-issue runs of Hulk and Aquaman. By and large, they were extremely well made, beautifully colored. The one exception was the Spanish edition of Hulk: Future Imperfect, where the pages kept coming right out of the binding.

Something else I encountered here in surprising numbers was bound volumes. Maybe once every other year or so in the United States I meet someone who wants me to sign a set of comics that he himself has bound. But during the course of this convention I signed a dozen bound volumes of my work: everything from Spider-Man 2099 to Atlantis Chronicles.

It was another late night. Since it was Friday night, many of the discos and bars were extremely busy. We finally wound up at a place right near the hotel. It was about 2 a.m. and the place was relatively empty. By 3:30 in the morning, the chill air from the nearby ocean was cutting through me, and I figured it was time to call it a night. Apparently most of Gijon disagreed; as I was leaving, mobs of people were approaching the place. (Perhaps having heard I was departing, an “all clear” was quickly spread throughout the town.) I left behind me a packed disco. I couldn’t believe it. They have one hëll of a night life in this country.

Saturday, Oct. 12—A group of us, including Art Adams, went out to lunch. For some reason we fixated on making jokes about a dessert called “flan.” We (OK, I) ran the gag completely into the ground with such ghastly puns as Silence of the Flans (complete with Flannibal Lecter), film swashbuckler Errol Flan, the Flantastic Four, etc.

It was the final night of the convention, which had an awards ceremony in which they presented an award called the Haxtur. It was sort of a cross between the Eisners and the Inkpots.

There were nominations for particular works, and then the convention committee decided to whom they wanted to give the awards. It was impressive. Haxtur is a heroic character created by artist Victor de la Fuentes, whose name rang a bell with me until I realized I was thinking of “Victor Fuentes,” the character played by Jimmy Smits on L.A. Law. The award looked like an Oscar: a bronzed statue of the character, about a foot tall, mounted on a marble base. Beautifully made.

It was also an impressive ceremony with very much an “Oscar” feel to it. Sofia, in a black mini-dress, announced the winners from a podium, while music composed by Tim Truman pounded over speakers and huge sketches by previous guests surveyed the proceedings. Slides of the nominees’ work were flashed on the now-familiar movie screen. It made other ceremonies I’ve attended at U.S. conventions look anemic, to be honest. I’ve come to the conclusion that folks in Spain lead the world (or at least every place I’ve been in it) in knowing how to celebrate. Doesn’t matter whether they’re celebrating achievements in comics or the fact that it’s a weekend.

Haxturs were given out in the category of Best Long Story to Jean Van Hamme and Philip Franq for Largo Winch #5, Best Penciller to Jose Luis Garcia Lopez for Kal, Best Short Story to Denny O’Neil and Rick Burchett for Batman Chronicles #1, and Best Cover to Art Adams for Classic Star Wars #1. “The Author We Love,” which is sort of a Lifetime Achievement Award, was given to Roy Thomas. I must admit I liked that term better; Lifetime Achievement sounds as if that’s pretty much it for everything you’re going to do while you’re alive.

And they presented me with one for Best Script for “Lest Darkness Fall” in Incredible Hulk #420.

I got up on stage and did something I will later regret.

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