We’re still in recovery mode from C2E2, which just wrapped up in Chicago this past Sunday. Despite switching to a smaller hall at McCormick Place, attendance in the show’s sophomore year rose 24%, from 27,500 to 34,000 attendees. So things were looking up, and many artists we spoke to in the Artist Alley reported record sales and sell-outs. One title that sold out was the just-released Comic Book Comics #5, the all-lawsuit issue, so we weren’t able to procure a copy (yet).
One panel we neglected to mention in our highlight post was “Food and Comics.” Let’s take a peek at that description:
Food and Comics
Friday, March 18
4:30 pm – 5:30 pmJoin CB Cebulski, Rick Bayless and Chicago Tribune‘s James Beard award-winning food writer Kevin Pang as they discuss the art of food and comics, moderated by Ron Richards of iFanboy and “A Taste of Comics”.
Sound interesting? Well, it was, if you liked food and/or comics. They spoke about how the art of making a great dish was very similar to the art of making a great comic. The air was abound with similes such as how you can over-season the art on a comics page just as you can over-season a plate of food. Or how both young chefs and young pencilers are eager to use every technique in their toolbox when they first get started (leading to the mentioned over-seasoning).
With all the talent on the stage (Rick Bayless is a PBS and Top Chef alum and Cebulski writes the Eataku blog), there was plenty of discussion of food or comics, but not really of the two together. Bayless and Beard didn’t talk about comics at all, responding more to questions asked of them by the other panelists or members of the audience. No plans were announced for say, a collaboration between the food guys and the comics guys, similar to Anthony Bourdain’s upcoming graphic novel Get Jiro!. In fact, no food comics were mentioned at all until an audience member asked why John Layman of Chew wasn’t on the panel. The basic answer was that he wasn’t at the con, but with all the great personalities that were at the con, they couldn’t find someone else to tie it all together?
Overall, it wasn’t a bad panel, but it wasn’t very filling either.