Why did Keenspot have a panel again?
For my first comic-con retrospective post, I pose the following question: Why did Keenspot have a panel?
Let me start by saying that I am not generally anti-Keenspot. There are some keenspot comics I like, and some I don't, and for the most part, I am not particularly concerned with Keenspot itself one way or the other.
The panel offerings this year for webcomics were slimmer than last year. There was no Blank Label panel, and instead of the Webcomics 10X series there was just "Business of Webcomics." I asked some of the gentleman at the Dayfree Press table why they were not having a panel, and was informed that their panel request had been denied because there were too many other panels.
Now, if webcomic panels at comic-con are going to be a scarce resource, then the Keenspot panel was a total waste of that resource. Now, I am not opposed to panels which are (almost) exclusively Q&A, as the Penny Arcade panel and the Dumbrella Panel both used that model, and were quite enjoyable. If I recall correctly, the Dumbrella panel was in a larger room than the Keenspot panel, and managed to fill a larger percentage of those seats than the Keenspot panel did.
The Keenspotters had one announcement at the outset, something about phones and animations or something, followed by a pretty uninformative Q&A session, in which a good portion of the questions were of the form, "I enjoy your comic, how do you feel about that?" I could complain a bit more about the nature of the questions, but since that sort of complaint is regarded as more subjective than one about allocation of resources, I will simply say, Keenspot could have accomplished everything they did at their panel just as well at their booth, and I would have much preferred to hear from the folks at Dayfree, or, Unshelved, or the same sort of webcomics how-to panels that were held in previous years, and I guarantee they would packed more seats than this one did.
I want to reiterate again, I am not complaining about anything having to do with Keenspot other than the way this particular panel was run (though I have heard horror stories about some past Keenspot panels as well). I am not attempting to criticize their content/comics, their business model, their logo, or Bobby Crosby. My only point is that their panel was quite dissapointing.
My next updates will undoubtedly be more positive.
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