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After the high point of talking with Jason, my first panel was embarrassing. The subject was educational comics and the other panelists all had degrees in education. What was worse, they specialized in learning concepts theories, whatever those were. Their jargon flew right past me.
I had been included on this panel because FC Comics had touted Swoonie’s comic book stories as educational. Steve had been given a list of age-appropriate vocabulary words to use in the scripts. Steve wasn't on the panel this morning, so I had to try to look as if I understood the discussion. The educators debated the readers’ perception of syllables. I was outclassed and over my head, but luckily no one expected me to say much.
I did get asked one question.
“Why does Swoonie wear so little clothing? She’s not a respectable role model for girls.”
This was from a conservatively dressed audience member, probably another academic.
“Ordinary street clothes would weigh down a heroine,” I said.
Nobody nodded.
I continued, “You’d be surprised at how constricting even a pair of jeans or slacks can be. Superhero costumes are usually a takeoff on athletic wear.”
From the dead silence, polite though it was, I realized no one here appreciated an artist’s concerns about how a superhero was garbed in the comics. They simply thought Swoonie was garbed like a pole dancer. They were right. She wore skimpy athletic shorts and a bodice slashed to the waist in front, defying gravity and always showing off her large breasts. Sometimes Steve had even incorporated the breasts into the storyline. I’d had fights with him over that.
I hadn’t originated Swoonie’s costume. Eric had given me a completed character sketch.
No more questions. The silence was killing me. “Uh, I only draw Swoonie. I don’t do the dialogue so I can’t comment on the syllables. Thank you,” I said, and quickly handed the mic to the woman sitting next to me. Awkward.
The torture couldn’t end soon enough after that. They debated the merits of syllables some more while I was sunk in embarrassment.
Released, I consulted my phone to see if I had time to swing through Artist’s Alley before my next panel. It depended on where in this vast building the seminar would be held. I used a map app to calculate the time and distance, but it couldn’t add in wasted time shoving through the enormous crowds. Despite the incidents yesterday, the crowds were much bigger today. Maybe some people had been scared off, but in a crowd of a hundred thousand people, who would miss another ten thousand or so?
Artist’s Alley had started years ago—I knew this from Roland—as a small area in the corner of a much bigger dealers’ room, where indie comics artists would try to drum up business for their small circulation zines by drawing characters for any fan willing to pay a sketch fee. Roland said when comic book conventions started, back in the 1960s, all the artists did quick sketches on plain paper, free, with whatever drawing implement they had at hand: ballpoint pen, marker, whatever. After a while, the artists realized some fans were selling those sketches. The artists started charging for the sketches, but also began to draw them more carefully and with permanent ink on decent quality Bristol board, the preferred medium for comic book artwork. Then some older artists started to take requests to recreate classic covers they’d done decades ago. They sold the recreated pages, thus giving themselves a financial boost in their elder years. The fans got original art that they couldn’t otherwise afford to buy, and comic book companies looked the other way about who had the right to draw their characters. Everybody was happy.
Artists’ Alley now was a mix of veteran artists no longer working regularly, and newcomers hoping to start, and indies like me who wanted to build their audience, and everybody in between. Star artists were seldom in Artists’ Alley. They had regular autographing sessions at the big company booths, where they signed posters or other printed items the major comic book publishers handed out free to the convention attendees willing to stand in long lines.
I checked my app to find where Jean Westover might be. Her table number popped up. All I had to do was orient myself to the numbering of the tables and make my way through the throngs. Today I was dressed as a normal human, my attempt to look professional for the panels. Not that looking the part had helped so far. I wore the Dimensional Diamond under my conservative blouse, in case of trouble. Maybe I would regret leaving my utility belt back at the hotel. Then again, if Ray Herriman was telling the truth and his aunt was behind the lights incident, we could wrap this up quickly and I wouldn’t need to play superheroine at this comicon again.
In the section reserved for the veteran artists who had drawn for major comic books companies, Jean Westover was a female anomaly surrounded by a sea of men. She had a healthy line of people wanting drawings and autographs, or wanting to talk.
I waited my turn, then introduced myself and told her about my webcomic and Swoonie. “I met your nephew, Ray, earlier today. Does he draw, too?”
As she replied, I recognized the timbre I’d heard over the PA system yesterday. I interrupted her. “Excuse me, but where were you yesterday afternoon, when the lights in the exhibition hall were turned off?”
She looked puzzled. “Why do you want to know?”
Think fast, Chloe. Of course she’d ask why. “I thought you might have recognized the voice that came over the PA system during the blackout.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I arrived last night.”
The other woman who was sitting at the table with Jean looked up from the drawing she was doing for a fan. I suddenly recognized her. It was Marie Severin, a veteran of EC Comics, Marvel Comics, and the Federal Reserve. I knew about her career.
“Oh, my god! What are you doing here? I thought you were ill,” I gushed. I admit it. I gushed. She was my idol.
Marie Severin smiled with mischief in her eyes. “I’m helping out this poor lady.” She pronounced her words as if everything was a joke. Jean and she exchanged smiles of old acquaintance.
Marie said to Jean, “Yesterday someone sabotaged the lights and caused a panic.”
“My plane was late, and I was exhausted. I went straight to bed,” Jean said.
Marie looked at me and shrugged. “I was at the Art Institute. I missed the excitement. Tell me what happened. I never believe all that I hear on TV.”
“Happy to,” I said. “Could you answer a question first?”
“Fire away.”
“I thought you had a stroke and were stuck in a hospital or nursing home.”
“I escaped,” she said, in a cutesy voice. Her eyes danced. “Don’t tell anybody I’m here.”
I described the lights incident in detail, and then told them about the flier.
Jean said, “Why on earth would anyone risk his life to fly a plane indoors?”
“Craziness,” Marie said.
I said, “It was a woman’s voice. Only a handful of women have worked prominently in the comics business. Don’t you all know each other?”
Jean and Marie shared a glance. Jean spoke. “We do. We’ve both been in the business since we were teenagers. Obviously Marie started long before I did. Before the big comic book expansion of the 1980s, there were only about three hundred people actively working in the comic books, and another couple hundred with syndicated newspaper strips.”
Marie added, “Comic books were a big step down in status from the newspapers.”
“If the comic book artists got lucky, they got asked to fill in on a newspaper strip while someone was on vacation or ill. That gave them visibility with the syndicates, and could lead to taking over that strip,” Jean said. “That’s how I got out. I filled in, uncredited, on a major newspaper strip, and then was offered another strip to draw.”
“You did ‘Wilhelmina’! That was a terrific strip. I copied some of your ideas when I started my own, ‘Average Chloe,’” I said, secretly embarrassed that I hadn’t put her name together with newspaper strips.
We were rocking and rolling, but what about the comicon enemy? “Who do you think made that announcement yesterday? What woman has a grudge against comicons?”
Jean cocked her head. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“Are you one hundred percent happy to be drawing a character you don’t own?”
I looked at Marie to see her reaction to Jean’s strong statement, but Marie was busy using colored pencils to draw the Hulk, starting with his fist.
Jean had turned it back to me, and suddenly I was sweating.
“I-uh-well, I don’t know,” I said. I thanked the ladies and left them to the fans. I walked away thinking hard.
Could Mistress Miraculous be a frustrated female comic book creator of my generation? Given all the social changes of recent decades and the improved position of women in our culture, we should have been on a fifty-fifty basis with men in the comics industry by now. Instead, we were still a tiny minority in a male-dominated business, battling uphill to tell our stories our way. In my case, losing the fight. It could make a person bitter.
I scanned the crowd, looking for the typical visitor. Teenage boys and girls, couples my age, and older men. A few older women who were obviously moms keeping track of young kids. Lots of genuine geezer-age men, but almost no middle-aged or elderly women.
Jean had an alibi for the time period, one that could be proven. I couldn’t for a second believe that Marie Severin was an angry person who secretly held a grudge against the business she’d retired from. She was too cheerful. Anyway, she probably had a ticket stub issued by the Art Institute when she entered. It wasn’t a free museum. It probably had CTV cameras, something the police could easily access. Marie Severin was not a suspect.
Perhaps someone had imitated Jean’s voice. Or possibly, she’d made a recording and had her accomplice play it during the “Who turned out the lights?” scenario. An almost-elderly lady wandering around the staff corridors of the exhibition hall might be invisible if she dressed like a member of the janitorial crew.
As I considered all this, I tried to hurry through the mass of people, but it was impossible. All I did was work up a sweat. Groups would move a few steps, then pause as they were drawn to a display. I’d attempt to pass them but would soon find myself stuck again, behind another loitering group. Indie expos were not like this. Sure, they could get crowded, but their dealers’ rooms were tiny by comparison to this enormous convention center exhibit hall. The sense of this mass of people was overpowering.
By now, sweat was dripping in unmentionable places. Considering I was barely able to walk twenty steps without being stopped by the crowds ahead of me, that was surprising. Other people were wiping their faces. Uh-oh.
There was no way to listen for the air conditioning system. The crowd noise was far too intense. Now that I was paying attention I realized the air wasn’t moving. The temperature in the hall had risen. My hair got sticky, so I put it into a ponytail again to get it off my neck. That helped a little. All around me, others were wiping their faces, which shined with perspiration.
I was still trapped miles from the exit doors. All I could do was text Roland, tell him what I thought might be happening. I hoped he knew how to fix the air system, because otherwise the fire marshal would close the dealers’ room again.
Of course. That was the point, wasn’t it? Get these crowds to leave. The air system malfunction could not be a mere coincidence. Did Mistress Miraculous dislike the commerce of a dealers’ room? Or the publicity aspect? Lots of freebies were handed out to the public. The autographing sessions at the booths were free, although others were exclusive and expensive. Nobody had to buy a poster or a comic to have a television star or a comic book artist or writer sign it. Who could object to that?
Roland had told me many times that the original comic book conventions that took place in the 1960s were small affairs with a hundred people max. Then they grew a lot larger and had a thousand people. Still small, still concentrated on the comic books and sometimes the comic strips. The indie expos I’d been to had that feel to them. They were held in small hotels, they were focused on published comics rather than movie tie-ins, and they didn’t draw a lot of cosplayers.
Making all of us sweat didn’t pick on the cosplayers any more than the rest of us. Among the crowd were plenty of people dressed for the July heat, some in scanty costumes and others in scanty street clothes. No, the objective was to get us out of here.
Roland finally texted me back.
No air = exhibit hall only.
My next panel was in a half hour. I had time to get to it if I pressed on. More and more people were heading for the doors because of the heat, but plenty didn’t notice it. No panic today, but how long would it be before someone collapsed from lack of oxygen? I already felt the stupor of sleepiness, the first effect. The pace of the throng slowed. I couldn’t get around anyone. It was as if I was on a crowd treadmill. Slowly, we passed booths and tables, but more booths and tables replaced them. Our pace grew slower, and slower still.
The female voice came over the loudspeakers again. “Hot in here, isn’t it? You should go outside and get some fresh air. Yes, you. All of you. Go now, before Mistress Miraculous decides to turn off the lights again.”
Then she laughed, a supervillain laugh. “Muahahaha!”
According to Roland’s info, she couldn’t turn off the lights again; her splice had been located and fixed overnight. He’d have posted a guard, too. Although the guard might not have realized that a harmless-looking cleaning lady pushing a cart was about to take him down. If that’s what had happened.
Was her threat empty? Lots of people around me didn’t think so. Throngs headed for the exits. The stampede from yesterday was on again. Or was it? They say lack of fresh air makes people stupid. They slowed down, began to browse the tables and booths again. As if everybody had developed distractibility. Maybe they had, from lack of oxygen.
Artists’ Alley wasn’t visible from where I stood, but it hardly mattered. No way could anybody have left it and gotten out of the vast exhibit hall in time to patch into the loudspeaker system, override its security, and talk trash. Jean Westover was in the clear, unless these bizarre PA system threats were prerecorded.
Anyway, why would Jean try to sabotage the comicon? She’d had the usual rough time in the comic book business, but then she’d gone on to own a successful newspaper strip, a rise in status and financial security. Why would she want to mess with a comicon?
Was I supposed to stop time again? It wouldn’t help people breathe better, and I was due at my next panel soon.
Finally, I extricated myself from the exhibition hall. It was blessedly cooler on the concourse. The crowd I’d left behind had cheerfully ignored the threats from the loudspeaker. Okay with me. I couldn’t keep stopping time, messing with powers I didn’t understand that might have side effects.