Last year I went to the Fables panel. I think that the room capacity was about 300 and it was not even filled. This year they decided to move it into a third of ballroom 6 and had a large line-up of the books contributors. The panel was also held on Saturday where last year’s fell on Thursday.
It sounds all well and good, but things did not go as smoothly as anyone would have hoped. The schedulers stuck the thing between panels for
Boondock Saints II and
The Venture Brothers. So a lot of
Venture Brothers guys had decided to sit in on the Fables festivities to ensure their seats for their own gig.
The problems were compounded when the convention staff mismanaged the line. Apparently and inexperienced individual was tasked with forming the line in the backside hallway and wrapped it back and forth before crossing the second doorway creating the third column to the line which was not wanted. When the subsequent person took over, he formed a new line where it was wanted without making any attempt to accommodate the mismanaged portion of the line which was comprised of people who had arrived an hour before the panel to get in. Soon, these people were told that they were not in line and that they needed to leave.
I can’t say how this shock out exactly because I was forced to take my kids to this panel and left one to hold our place while I took the other to use the bathroom and to get them some snacks. When I returned however it did not appear that many had left and the few people I had talked to were still there.
At any rate, Bill Willingham somehow became aware of this fiasco and actually came out and personally apologized to this portion of the line. It was pretty clear that he had hoped to be able to address a much larger segment of his fans and it did not look like it was going to work at nearly as well as he had hoped he was clearly disappointed.
I stuck it out and was able to get into the room having missed only the first few minutes of the presentation. Although, my children and I had to each sit separate. I will commend the interior staff of this panel for working diligently to accommodate as many people as possible. Unfortunately this was not the case with a certain other room I had had some experience with earlier in the show.
Having missed the first few minutes, it later became clear that Mr. Willingham had expressed his disappointment with the situation to the assembly prior. While I do not know exactly what he said it was enough to earn the ire of some attendees to the point where they took it upon themselves to become hecklers.
One rather boisterous gentleman seated one spot away from took it upon himself to express some rather rude opinions include one used of a word which some would consider a mild obscenity. I never find it appropriate to be disrespectful to creators even when the “fan” has been angered directly by the work of said creator.
This was a very unfortunate situation and one that I might even dare to call ugly. I would really hope that event organizers would try to go the extra mile in the future to try to avoid the scheduling situations that will lead to panels filled with large numbers of disinterested individuals.
Again though, for Mr. Willingham to come out and apologize for something that he was clearly not responsible for really went above and beyond his charge. It was a classy move which showed how much his readers actually mean to him and it is the sort of thing that make one proud to be associated with this genre even as only an enthusiast.
And, if any of this information can get back to him, I would like him to know that it is my personal opinion that all of the people who were mishandled by line management and stuck it out were in fact able to gain access to the room for most of the panel.
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