Down & Dirty panel
Added 2017-04-17 21:08:52 +0000 UTC(photo credit: William Tyler)
This is shortly before it began... left to right: (Frank Bramlett, moderator standing at podium just out of frame), Roy T. Cook (co-moderator), me nervously drinking some water, Patrick Fillion, Maurice Vellekoop, Gengoroh Tagame, Tagame's translator Anne, and Justin Hall on the right.
The panel started with the co-moderators talking about an academic paper they are working on about the penises of super-heroes... which didn't really gel with the rest of the panel. Then they just tossed the floor to the artists to talk without prompts or questions. I've been on/attended quite a few panels and had never seen this style of non-moderating moderation before. In fact, this was the last panel of the conference and I had been really impressed with the moderation up to this point... the previous panels I sat in attendance of had creative and lively moderators. I was looking forward to seeing how unique our moderators would be... I didn't expect them to be there to talk about themselves and not actually moderate.
So they just tossed the hot potato to the artists to talk about their work... starting with me. I was like "ooookay, I guess I'll just talk about the slides I chose", which then meant I had to turn sideways to see what the slide up above me was. This was good, because I didn't have to stare at the over-stuffed room (why they wouldn't expect a large crowd for this panel is beyond me as well... Justin is well loved in the queer comics world, as is Patrick... and Maurice and Gengoroh are legends making rare appearances), and I did not notice until afterwards that people like Howard Cruse were sitting in the front row of the audience directly in front of me.
Howard Cruse is the man responsible for the comic series Gay Comix , which is what we were attempting to emulate with Hard to Swallow.
So, yea, I guess that part is good. My voice was already the shakey-ist I ever remember it being on a panel, and if I had seen Howard there I would have started stammering.
I can only post one pic at a time here, so I'll put pics from other panels up in separate posts.
