Defense Con

Originally published June 7, 1996, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1177

Some assorted ramblings upon returning from Defense Con in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma…

For those of you who have come in late, two retailers—John Earl Hunter and Michael Kennedy—have come under fire for the crime of possessing comic titles frowned upon by right wing organizations. They didn’t sell the adult titles to kids; nonetheless they were arrested, brought before a judge in handcuffs, and charged with eight criminal counts which could amount to eighty seven years in jail if convicted. Thousands of dollars of merchandise was removed from the store.

(Interestingly, according to Hunter and Kennedy, the “official” list of confiscated material only has a fraction of what was actually taken. For all we know, the rest of the comics are being passed around by the Oklahoma police to be read and enjoyed… which is more than Planet Comics customers could do.)

Displaying tactics that would have done the Gestapo proud, cops stormed Hunter’s house in January, and left three and a half hours later with eight grocery sacks of his office records, every floppy disc, order forms and other assorted materials.

Three of the counts were reduced to misdemeanors. Planet Comics, in the meantime, saw its clientele dry up. Kids were kept out of stores by their parents, and firemen and cops who used to frequent the store reasoned that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to patronize the place. Their landlord evicted them, and promptly tore down signs that they had left posted telling where their new location was. Unable to make a go of their new store, Kennedy and Hunter finally packed it in.

Meantime the prosecutor (“persecutor” might be a better word), apparently feeling that the former retailers’ lives were not being sufficiently destroyed for the crime of selling adult comics to adults, got two of the three misdemeanors jacked back up to felonies, with the third presently under appeal.

I appreciate the sentiments of the CBG letter writer who felt no sadness over the fates of Kennedy and Hunter because he doesn’t support pornography, and so sees no reason to concern himself over this matter. Of course, Hunter and Kennedy have not been convicted of selling pornography. They’ve just had their livelihoods destroyed, and there’s now one less store that can sell material which the letter writer likes.

I guess I was just unaware. I was unaware that the marketplace was so healthy that we can afford to lose stores which were doing well. And I was unaware that Oklahoma City was so prosperous that tax dollars could be blown on prosecuting a crime in which the victims involved are the accused. Didn’t five vice cops have anything better to do with their time than go through business records of a comic book retailer?

*  *  *

On the flight in, we hit a lot of turbulence as the plane approached our destination. And suddenly I remembered: Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains. But what if the winds didn’t know and thought that the lyrics referred to planes? We’d be swept right out of the sky.

But we weren’t. But I was worried there for a moment.

*  *  *

The purpose of Defense Con was to raise money for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the organization which was created to provide financial assistance to retailers in situations exactly like this. Some folks from Chaos Comics—Brian and Francisca Pulido, along with friend Wayne Short—were the driving force behind putting it together, and they cited this column as being the inspiration for doing so. So when I was asked if I would attend, what could I say? “Gee guys, glad I prompted you to go to all this trouble; you’re on your own.”

The convention itself could have wished for a better weekend than the weekend before finals. Most students, I was told, were busy studying and couldn’t get away.

I could also have wished for a better turnout, pro-wise.

What any convention needs to really pull people in are high-profile, main stream artists. None showed up. Some didn’t have the time or resources, some didn’t return repeated phone calls, some felt that this was simply not their problem. Any convention which has me as one of its highest profile mainstream guests is in serious difficulty.

The convention was held in the Oklahoma City Fair Grounds, convenient to… well, nothing, really… in a building the size of several airplane hangers. The hope was that there would be somewhere around two thousand people a day. Purely based on my eyeball guess, I’d say it was more in the realm of three to four hundred.

But it was an enthusiastic crowd. A nervy crowd. After all, who knew what sort of reception the convention might receive? It might be picketed. It might be targeted for violence (“We can nail all them pornographers in one shot!”) It might come under police scrutiny. Believe it or not, I think some retailers actually had Verotik comics for sale. Talk about the year of living dangerously.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund was set up right at the front entrance. There executive director Susan Alston hawked t-shirts and told people about the CBLDF, while Dave Sim did sketches and brought in the Cerebus fans.

(As an aside: Remember the Dave-Sim-Gets-Drunk-on-Coca-Cola anecdote? Dave stated that if it was in the early 1980s, then he likely really did think he was getting drunk. But if it was in the mid-1980s… which I believe it was, around 1984… then he would have known that the Rum and Coke had been reduced to 99% Coke and decided to act drunk. His mildly paranoid thought process would have been that Marvel was stiffing him on the drinks because he wasn’t a Marvel employee, and we wouldn’t have seen fit to waste good rum on him. So to “get back” at Marvel, he would have loudly acted three sheets to the wind, knowing that Marvel couldn’t cop to the knowledge that his alcohol consumption didn’t warrant the behavior. Of course, poor Mike Hobson—who probably couldn’t figure out why Dave was apparently completely blasted and yet had no trace of alcohol on his breath—didn’t know what the hëll was going on. But I digress…)

* * *

The Chaos Comics booth—publishers of Lady Death and Evil Ernie—was definitely the place to be. Long lines that wound around while rock music played and red lights flashed. I had a fairly steady trickle of people, but these guys drew tons of fans. I’ll be interested to see if they pull that same kind of interest in San Diego. I wouldn’t be surprised.

* * *

The centerpiece and high point of the convention was the auction. With all proceeds going to the CBLDF, R.A. Jones (whose description of two yokels being hijacked by a UFO remains one of the few times I’ve been reduced to complete hysterics) and John “Bully” Wooley ramrodded the auctioning. There were about sixty people crowded around the auction area as mostly pieces of artwork, with the occasional statue or similar item, went on the block.

And I must admit, I was surprised. The bidding became positively fierce for some items. A Dave Sim piece for the cover of Cerebus #0 went for a thousand bucks. A piece by Linsner went for over two thousand. It’s not like Oklahoma City is the wealthiest place in the nation, and I would have thought that any lot going over a hundred dollars would have been fortunate.

Instead the auction alone raised over eight thousand dollars for the CBLDF.

The convention over all brought in over twelve grand for the CBLDF. Maybe the attendance wasn’t where it should have been, but you can’t argue with bottom-line success.

*  *  *

The extent of my dealers room purchases: A pair of Incredible Hulk kids roller skates, and a marked down Maxx action figure.

*  *  *

We all stayed at the Holiday Inn Holidome, which sounds like something out of a Mad Max movie (“Holidome: Two roach enter, one roach leave.”) Okay, it wasn’t that bad; it was perfectly adequate, except that the rooms inside the Holidome (which is where the pool was situated) had no windows, giving it a somewhat claustrophobic feel. And the heady aroma of chlorine filled the lobby.

But it was worth it for the bar, where a bunch of us lounged around on Saturday night (especially after the room party was busted by hotel security because people were hanging out and chatting in the hallways). There at the bar, one could witness the intoxicating effects that an addiction can cause. An addiction that can induce lurching about, staggering, and making a public fool of yourself.

Alcohol? No, I’m speaking of something much more insidious. I am, of course, referring to: Laser Karaoke.

Yes, it was Laser Karaoke night at the Oklahoma City Holiday Inn. For those of you unfamiliar with this technological phenomenon: There are several monitors mounted around the bar. You pick a song, and a music video plays out on the monitors. The video has the lyrics to the song appearing on the lower half of the screen, but there’s no vocals sung with them. The vocals are supplied by the poor shmuck on the stage who clutches a microphone and thinks he can sing.

Shmucks such as me, for instance, who performed Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle” in my best gravelly Chapinesque voice, and later convinced several folks (including Sim) to supply the “whim-aways” in “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” while I did my best falsetto lead vocals. Once Dave was sufficiently liquored up, he signed on to do his Frank Sinatra impression for a performance of “My Way,” but the laser Karaoke lady shut it down around 1:30 in the morning and never got to him.

The snarkiest moment came when several retailers conspired to try and get the Karaoke lady (who had a lovely singing voice, and performed a few numbers herself) to dedicate a particular song to a particular woman. People who have been following the Planet Comics saga are aware that Michael Kennedy’s wife filed for divorce, stating she “didn’t want to wait for him to get out of prison.” Well, as it so happened, she was at the bar that night, and the guys wanted to dedicate a rendition of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” to her. Ultimately they thought better of it and didn’t pursue the idea beyond the “Wouldn’t it be cool if we did that” stage. Which was probably wise on their parts.

But the stars of the evening were unquestionably the Chaos Comics guys (Steven Hughes, Jason Jensen, Brian Pulido, Justiniano). Regulars at the Karaoke bar sat there smoldering as the upstart out-of-town comic book fellers kept taking up stage time, usually accompanied by fists thumping on tables and rhythmic shouts of “Cha-os! Cha-os! Cha-os!” (I occasionally shouted, “Con-trol! Con-trol!” in my Max Smart voice, but it never caught on.) Offending the country/western sensibilities of the regular customers, Chaos kept performing hard rock numbers. The show-stopper was their rendition of Queen’s somewhat endless “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I thought some of the locals were going to start throwing bottles like in Blues Brothers.

I confess if I have to listen to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” I somewhat prefer the Weird Al Yankovic version, done in polka time, which reduces the twelve minute song to a somewhat more acceptable four minutes.

Nonetheless it was a lot of fun. And now we’re gone, and the locals have their karaoke all to themselves again, and Kennedy and Hunter wait as this business drags through the courts, not likely to go to trial until late this year.

*  *  *

A number of people were talking about Twister, a new movie set in Oklahoma. They seemed very excited about the film. Frankly, I don’t understand why. Not enough that studios are milking old 1950s/60s TV shows such as Sergeant Bilko or Mission: Impossible for movies. But now they make a movie based on some old party game and people act like it’s a must-see event. Oh, sure, movies based on games are nothing new. Look at Clue or Mortal Kombat. But why should anyone pay seven bucks to see a bunch of actors doing “Right hand, blue! Left foot, green!” This week it’s Twister, and what’s next? Chutes and Ladders?

(Peter David can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)