The ethics of going until someone says “no”…

So look, believe it or not, Dawn and I are not saints. We have had our instances of playing it loose with the rules when it comes to conventions; for example, some have it in their exhibitor rules that rolling any sort of cart through the lobby of the given convention center is prohibited, and after suffering through the slings and arrows of the loading dock a couple of times because of that, and once trying to arrange a three person system where two people stood on each side with handtrucks while the third awkwardly carried boxes and bins between, we were given the advice by veteran peers of, “You don’t have that much stuff, just do it”. So we do, and in practice no one seems to care. Security and staff in fact often hold the doors open for us, and sometimes there’s even a temporary path laid out in tape and cardboard, and we just put our heads down and we’re in and out in a handful of seconds with not so much as a scuff left on the carpets. I like to call it our “go until someone says ‘no'” policy, and thankfully it works because loading dock areas are a pain in the ass when you’re a smaller vendor.

Now you might ask, how can I justify this bending (if not outright breaking) of regulations, especially when I’ve gone ballistic in the past over others overstepping their bounds? It’s a matter of degrees. It’s a matter of who it harms, and how much narcissistic hubris is involved. Rolling a small cart of booth stuff through a convention lobby before it opens to the public arguably fits the Wiccan conceit of “An it harm none…”, perhaps even representing a boon since there’s one less car clogging up the loading area. Now, were we a bigger operation or were that convention lobby already packed with people, it would start to get more iffy. Now there’s a chance of (literally) stepping on (or rolling on) toes. Now we’ve got a whole work crew trekking lumber through the front doors and the union would justifiably be calling foul. That kind of thing happening is likely why the rule is on paper to begin with, because some asshole abused common sense and went beyond all bounds of empathy and reason.

Which is as good a segue as any to this week’s subject of controversy, one Arthur Suydam, best known as a cover artist for the short-lived Marvel Zombies series. It began with the Bleeding Cool site sniffing out trouble a-brewin’ on the Montreal Comic Con twitter feed.

You can read the full article by clicking here, but basically Suydam was accused by Jim Zub of taking it upon himself to “rearrange” the convention layout by gifting himself three adjoining tables to his own, removing the artists there in order to fit his display.

“He just shows up early, sets up his gargantuan booth and takes down the signage for the people next to him. No regard for anyone else…The shows don’t stop him so he just continues his ego-fueled awfulness year after year.”

I remember Arthur Suydam, I’ve seen him at the Long Beach cons with a similarly large set-up, but I guess like most everyone I assumed he’d negotiated for it. Maybe he did? But from the amount of people that started coming out of the woodwork with horror stories, it began to sound like Arthur Suydam, or at very least his operation, had a history of shady practices, making the statement issued by his publicist in response and laying the blame squarely on convention organizers seem disingenuous. In this case it wasn’t even unknowns that Suydam displaced but well-known artists like Francis Manapul, the man responsible for illustrating the Flash comic that I spent a whole blog gushing over a single page of. Had I gone by the convention program I would have ambled to Manapul’s assigned space only to find it taken over and Manapul nowhere in sight, since the convention’s solution was to give him another random table elsewhere on the floor. But it shouldn’t matter how big or small a name is being displaced under these circumstances; it just isn’t right.

Is it in Suydam’s contract that he always gets four tables, and if the convention fails to provide that the onus (and blame) is upon them? Again, the claims that this is repeated behavior are enough to make you question why–if it is clearly in his contract–these table grabs keep happening. Also there was this gem in the comments section of CBR’s report on the situation:

“I was contacted by Renee to book Arthur for our local comic con. Originally she said he requires 4 booths. I told her that was not possible. We negotiated it down to 2 booths on an end cap. I drew up a contract and had him sign it. He also agreed to do an exclusive piece of art for us to use for the events guide, flyers, and posters. A few weeks after getting the signed contract, Renee emailed and told me Alamo City Con booked him without his knowledge and had already purchased his airline tickets (I don’t believe a convention would buy tickets without confirming an artist’s attendance). She basically told me he felt obligated to go since they already put money out for him. It didn’t seem to matter to her/him that I had a signed contract with him. I had to scramble, but I ended up with a much better artist. I was gonna keep it to myself and chalk it up as just one of the problems of putting on a convention until I read about Arthur’s boorish behavior in Montreal. I think everyone should know his unprofessional actions aren’t reserved solely for fellow artists. His word/signature is worthless.”

“Renee” in this case refers to Renee Witterstaetter, Suydam’s publicist. Suydam has a posse, you see, and it’s their job to promote Arthur Suydam. They do it well. Perhaps too well, if this backlash is any indication, and yet I suppose they give him a sense of plausible deniability. You see, the thing I find most personally baffling about all of this hubbub is that in the course of it it came out that the publicity stills of signing lines that were being sent out to conventions to prove Suydam’s status as a “#1 draw in comics” were photoshopped to appear far bigger than they were. Exhibit A is already in the articles above, but here it is in case you didn’t click on those:

The response from Suydam’s posse on this was that “no photos have been doctored in any way, as can be attested to by anyone that has seen Arthur at any show. To suggest otherwise is rather laughable.”

Right? I can’t imagine ANY artist going so far as to photoshop their lines to appear like more of a big shot so they could get special treatment by conventions. I mean that would just, indeed, be both laughable and pathetic. Summarily occupying your neighbors’ tables is already pretty narcissistic, but that would just be beyond belief, particularly if you weren’t even smart enough to use your own private photos instead of public photos that someone could actually find and post–

Oh goddammit. God-freakin-dammit. What do you have to say about that, Art?