The Con Artist

by Fred Van Lente

  I mean, that’s what I do.

  I’ve long wondered where this compulsion to rank each other by merit and anoint a best in show comes from. Is it left over from the brutal public art critiques we grew up with in college art school classes? Is it hardwired into the pack mentality of the human animal, constantly jockeying for higher status toward the Alpha; or is it a psychological need to have your labor and toil validated by somebody, somewhere, somehow, to calm those nagging whispers in your head that you are no good, an imposter?

  I am fairly certain that if a plane full of comic book people crashed on a desert island, the first thing we would do, before securing food, water, and shelter, would be to start giving each other awards, even if they were just coconut shells and bamboo lashed together with vines, Gilligan’s Island–style: Best Tourniquet, Best New Cannibal Deserving of Wider Recognition, Scurviest Gums, etc.

  Hey, don’t get me wrong, I love getting my ego stroked as much as the next red-blooded American; I’ve been nominated a few times. This year, flipping through the program while waiting for the ceremony to begin, I was surprised to see my name listed as something other than a presenter: the Gut Check omnibus released last year in conjunction with the movie was up for Best Domestic Reprint (Fiction). Did my publisher tell me about that? I honestly couldn’t remember.

  As further proof of comics’ elevated cultural cachet in our current historical moment, the Kirbys rated getting an actual celebrity for its emcee; this year it was a well-known comic, Dante Dupree, who I vaguely recalled seeing in a Comedy Central showcase somewhere. Dupree established his “comics” bona-fides by expressing his love for Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and Harry Potter, the great unifying trifecta of modern pop culture, then launched into a slightly geekier version of what I assumed to be his regular act.

  I couldn’t follow any of it. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Sam showed me on his phone. I wasn’t exactly an expert in Violent Violet’s—Pilar’s—behavior, having known her only a couple days, but the girl in the video did not seem at all like the person who picked me up at the airport. She was odd, sure, but…was she the sort of nutty fan who could kill an editor because she thought he was raping her childhood, as the kids say? Was that what she had been spending the whole con trying to tell me? But hadn’t she started saying that to me before the murder even happened?

  My God—what if she was trying to tell me what she was planning on doing, and I might have prevented all this madness just by listening?

  The Best Letterer and Best Foreign Language Reprint of Nonfiction Material had been presented, passing totally unnoticed by me, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see a frizzy-haired geek girl in owl glasses with a headset and a clipboard leaning over me.

  “We’re ready for you in the Green Room, sir,” she whispered. “If you would follow me, please?”

  She led me out of the banquet hall through a side door that connected with a small room to one side of the stage via a short corridor. The presenters—a motley mix of comic book legends and supporting cast members of CW superhero shows—milled about in varying degrees of anxiousness, waiting to be called to the lectern. Winners also exited this way after being called up on stage, clutching their trophies, flushed faces all smiles.

  Owl Lady immediately tried to dash off to some other task as soon as she dumped me in the room, but when I looked at the envelope and index cards of nominees that she had handed me, I touched her arm.

  “Hey, sorry? I think there’s been a mix-up. This says Best Writer, but I’m here to hand out the lifetime achievement award?”

  “Yes. Sorry, I should have said. In light of current events, the awards committee has decided to not give out the lifetime achievement award this year. The intended recipient, Ben K, has been disqualified from receiving it on account of him, you know, dying. He’ll be eligible for the Hall of Fame next year. We had Samuel L. Jackson cancel on us last minute—I think he got food poisoning?—so would you mind filling in for the Best Writer category?”

  I blinked. “How can I say no to Sam?”

  She might have said “thank you” but I wasn’t sure because she turned away and moved on to her next mission so quickly that she left a mild sonic boom in her wake.

  Once left alone, I noticed an extremely good-looking man in a camelhair blazer and turquoise V-neck making his way over to me. He had sandy blond hair and blue eyes and stubble so precisely trimmed it must have been measured off with a level.

  I stepped out of the guy’s path, but Mr. Handsome stuck a hand out at me. “Mike M, am I right? Pardon, mate, I don’t mean to bother you, but I am a huge, huge fan.” He had a thick Australian accent. “Gut Check is like one of my favorite series of all time, and your run on Mister Mystery—aces. I got ’em all, plus the variants.”

  I shook the guy’s bronzed mitt. “That’s very cool, thanks for saying so, man. You presenting too?”

  “Yeah, they’ve got me doing Best American Edition of Foreign Material.”

  “And you are—sorry—”

  “No worries, mate. You don’t watch Cell Block Z?”

  A dim recognition flickered through my brain, glimpses of his perfect jaw plastered across subway platforms and highway billboards. “Oh, yeah, sure—”

  “Armond Delaine. I play Jack Jenkins. ‘The Gentleman Rapist’?”

  “That’s very…edgy? I guess?”

  “Yeah, cheers. We don’t hold back from portraying what it would really be like to be in a maximum security prison during a zombie apocalypse.”

  I nodded vigorously. “Well, somebody has to.”

  “But at university I studied to be a cartoonist, you know, before I realized I was handsome. So listen, mate, I wanted to run something past you. I imagine you do a lot of these things, yeah?”

  “Awards ceremonies?”

  Armond laughed, exposing teeth you could make no-stick cookware out of. “No, comic cons. I didn’t really know this before Z-Block took off and I started hitting the circuit hardcore, but people on what I guess you’d call geek-genre TV shows can really make a killing at these events. We’re talking about featured performers pulling in two garbage bags full of $100 bills in one weekend in Buffalo or wherever. And the security at a lot of these venues—no offense to any of them—is downright dreadful.”

  I nodded for real this time. “No lie. I mean, usually I can fit what I make into my wallet, but it’s still a lot more cash than I like to wander around with. And most banks close—”

  “Saturday at noon, which isn’t even halfway through most cons. You see what I’m saying, mate.” Armond flicked a business card at me. “That’s where we come in.”

  Across the card the words “MEATWALL—Pop Con Management • Representation • Security” were written in the form of vein-bulging muscles. The other side just had a close-up photo of bloody red ground chuck.

  I pointed at the name above the phone number and email address. “Who’s Terrence Lawson?”

  “Oh, Terry is the best. He’s got a background in this field. He’s a huge fan of Z-Block and volunteered to help me out at a con in…Denver, I think it was? I started recommending him to my mates on other shows. Pretty soon we realized there was an untapped market for this sort of service, so we co-founded this firm.”

  The owl-eyed-glasses geek girl with the clipboard appeared by Armond’s side wearing an expression that indicated she was planning to eat him. “Mr. Delaine, it’s just about time.”

  “Right,” Armond said, and shook my hand. “Anyway, if you have any need of our services, be sure and give us a ring. Oy, mate—great to meet you. Like I said, big fan.”

  “Thanks, same here,” I lied as Armond turned away, hooking his handler’s arm with his own. Her knees buckled slightly as her body rippled through a visible orgasm. Somehow, she maintained sufficient fortitude to put one foot in front of the other and lead him to the stage.


  Burning with masculine jealousy, I put the Meatwall business card in my back pocket and promptly forgot all about it.

  * * *

  – – – –

  I went to wait in the wings, beside an enormous table gleaming with trophies, for Best Writer to come up. Named, of course, after the legendary American comic book artist known for his bombastic fight scenes and otherworldly technology, the Kirby Award was a one-foot-tall silver Plasticine tower spawned from the unholy union of a SETI satellite dish, Frankensteinian lab equipment, and an alien warship, sprouting at the top a lush broccoli head of “Kirby Crackle” a/k/a “Kirby Dots,” which he often used to indicate the presence of unfathomable cosmic power. It was the ugliest damn thing you had ever seen; my designer’s eye immediately noted several simple tweaks that could’ve improved its unwieldiness and brought it more in line with Kirby’s vision. But the perpetually cash-strapped not-for-profit that ran the Kirby Awards was as proud of its statuette as a second-grader bringing home a misshapen ashtray from the art class kiln for Mommy, so most of us cartoonists kept our mouths shut and just sniggered at its hideousness out of earshot of the ceremony’s organizers.

  The audience applauded politely when Dante Dupree introduced me, their spirits not yet entirely broken two hours into a five-hour ceremony. Animated 3D letters spelling BEST WRITER slammed with teeth-rattling force into a colorful splash-page collage on the large flatscreen rising behind me.

  I stepped to the lectern and glanced down at the index cards that had been handed to me. “Webster’s Dictionary defines writing as…,” I started to read until I couldn’t stop laughing, then I decided to extemporize instead.

  “Well, not plagiarizing the dictionary like an eighth grader, I’m pretty sure.” The audience laughed with me. “At least I hope not.” I’ve done enough guest-artist college teaching in my day that when it comes to public speaking, I do not entirely suck. “Anyway, here are the nominees for Best Writer. To qualify for this award you have to ask your poor artist to draw only one crowd scene per script, with special bonuses for no crowd scenes. Oh, and no horses. Horses are a pain in the ass to draw because no part of their anatomy makes any damn sense, particularly while they’re running. Yet another reason to be angry at God.”

  The crowd chuckled at that, but then burst into real guffaws as the slides for the nominees began appearing behind me. I turned and saw a famous photo of Sebastian Mod that had made the rounds of the internet a year or so back, buck-naked and holding one of his comics over his crotch. In the photo Mod had the wiry physique of a high school freshman on the long-distance track team who had been dipped up to his scalp in a giant vat of Nair.

  Oh, Jesus. “Sebastian Mod, for Mister Mystery,” I read off the card. There were the names of four other slobs and their books spelled out phonetically on there also, and I read them dutifully, but my mind saw no point in registering what they actually were. They were just placeholders. The identity of the winner was as inevitable as a sunset. Sebastian Mod had long ago become the guy who won awards because he was the Guy You Gave Awards To.

  Once I was done reading the other four nominees, I hesitated opening the envelope as if, Schrödinger’s Cat–like, I could keep alive the possibility that Mod hadn’t won simply by never lifting the lid.

  But I’m a Grown-Ass Man, despite my best efforts otherwise, and that was not the Grown-Ass Option.

  “And the Kirby goes to…” I tore open the envelope.

  Without looking at the card first, I declared:

  “Sebastian Mod, for Mister Mystery.”

  Only then did I look down at the card and see with no satisfaction at all that I was 100% right.

  The audience erupted in applause, along with a smattering of cheers. The winner wasn’t surprising enough to garner too extreme a reaction. I looked out over the crowd, mostly faceless blank blobs behind the stage lights in my face, looking for the gleaming dome of Sebastian Mod’s pate rising from one of the banquet tables, but did not find it.

  Instead, emerging from the gloom of the audience in a spectacular blue strapless gown, hair done up in a magnificent pile on her head speared with decorative sticks, came Christine. She had a small blue-and-diamond handbag hanging from the hand that hiked the hem of her dress just high enough for her to make her way between the tables and up onto the stage.

  My first irrational impulse was that this was the glorious rom-com moment of triumph, when the one you love realizes what a fool she’s been all along and at the last possible second makes a public declaration of permanent devotion.

  But no, Christine took the stage and gently nudged me out of the way with her elbow and picked up the Kirby. She leaned into the microphone and said:

  “I’m sorry that Sebastian couldn’t be here tonight. On behalf of him I’d like to thank everyone who voted for Mister Mystery. He really loves doing this book and is so thrilled at how well the fans have responded to it. Thanks again.”

  The audience clapped politely and Christine immediately spun on her heel and marched into the wings. She was in the hallway outside the green room before I managed to catch up to her and grab her arm.

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  She spun toward me, backhanding rivulets of mascara from under her eyes. “Piece of shit,” she said.

  “Who? Me or Sebastian?”

  “I have half a mind to smash this stupid trophy against the wall. SuicideGirls is having their event right now; I bet he’s over there getting his perv on.”

  “SuicideGirls? Is that still a thing?”

  Christine sniffed. “And you can’t imagine the looks I’ve been getting. Geek Jezebel. The one who got Danny Lieber killed. Oh, why did I even come to this con in the first place? I am so freaking dumb. You’re probably thrilled.”

  “No, not me,” I lied. “I just hate to see you so upset.” I handed her a cocktail napkin I’d shoved in my back pocket during the reception.

  She wiped her eyes until the napkin was the color of a bruise. “Listen, I’m sorry I went so, you know, bitchcakes on you last night. That wasn’t cool, but…I gotta be honest, being back here is way more stressful than I thought it was going to be.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “I can’t sit through another second of this stupid ceremony. You want to grab a drink somewhere?”

  My heart started dribbling like a basketball into my throat. “Sure,” I said, voice squeaking. Bringing it down to a more manly level, “I found this great dive bar on G Street that I guarantee you is the only place in the Gaslamp that has no con-goers in it whatsoever.”

  “Nah, I don’t want to walk that far in these heels. Which hotel you staying at? The Marriott?”

  Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. “No, the Bayfront?”

  “Why don’t we go there and try and talk like normal humans.”

  “Absolutely. I can be an extremely normal human when I want to be, especially when plied with alcohol. Lead on.”

  Christine turned to go, and I stepped forward to follow her. I was vaguely aware of the door to the green room banging open behind me, but it didn’t mean anything until the geek girl in the owl glasses managed to cut off Christine’s advance, stopping us in our tracks.

  “There you are! Come on, they need you onstage.”

  “What? Why? I already gave out that thing,” I said, pointing to the unwieldy Kirby in Christine’s arms.

  “No, you won.”

  “I what?”

  “Gut Check Omnibus won Best Reprint. Come on, they’re waiting!”

  The geek girl with the clipboard grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back toward the stage.

  “You go,” Christine said. “I’ll meet you at the Bayfront bar.”

  “I’ll keep my speech short!”

  “And congratulations!” she called as I disappeared back inside.

  * * *r />
  – – – –

  The audience had been waiting for me long enough that the applause was just dying down as I stepped on stage, but at my appearance the clapping reached a respectful new crescendo for a few seconds. The headshot from the front page of my website grinned down on me from the screen.

  “There you are,” said the presenter, avuncular Thor legend Walt Simonson. “You kept us waiting so long I was almost going to take this home myself, but it’s too damn heavy.” The crowd laughed as Simonson shook my hand, congratulated me, then quit the stage.

  I hefted the Kirby in my hand. It was indeed heavier than it looked. “Thanks,” I said into the microphone. “I mean, thank you very much, seriously. This is a real surprise. Like, so much so, I didn’t even realize I had been nominated. So I don’t have any words prepared, or anything…I guess I’m just surprised Gut Check won Best Reprint. I mean, you didn’t nominate it for jack when it came out. What happened in the years since then? Did it just get better with age, like a fine wine or something? Or was it the only nominee you heard of on the ballot because of the movie?”

  “Yeah!” somebody rebel-yelled from the back, but otherwise the audience sat frozen in awkward silence.

  “Sorry—that sounds bitter, doesn’t it? A bad attempt at a joke is all. In all seriousness, thanks to everyone who voted for me, I really appreciate it—it means a lot. Thanks.”

  I nodded and gave a short little half bow, and the crowd wearily applauded again as in enough already, and Dante Dupree started to climb the steps to the podium. But when he was not quite halfway to the wings I spun on my heel and returned to microphone.

  “One—one more thing, actually. Sorry,” I said to Dupree, who remained on the stage steps like a deer caught in the headlights. “I just wanted to say that the thing that kind of bothers me about the whole Best Reprint thing is that we have a tendency in this business to turn everything into nostalgia, that we’re rewarding things not when they happen but after the fact, the memory of them. It’s like we can’t ever value what we have while we have it, you know? And I don’t just mean awards for titles—I mean people. As most of you I’m sure know, we lost the Great One, Ben K, a couple days ago.”