Andrés Accorsi on...The Future

This is the last in the series of posts of my interview with Andrés Accorsi. I hope it has been enjoyable to read! I have three interviews coming up in the next week, one with a journalist, another with a student from my workshop with Diego Agrimbau, and finally, an interview with a comics publisher.

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CDS: Where do you see yourself in the future?

AA: I don’t feel like I still have many challenges to face in the comics industry. I would like to do some of the things I have already done and do them better. I am very self-demanding. I don’t think I have something entirely new to offer this medium.

I think the project I should really stick to and invest real time and effort in is the Comics Festival inside the children’s book fair. It has the potential to grow into a full-fledged comics festival of its own, not as a sideshow to the children’s or international book fair. It could become a major event with an international projection to gather all the comics fans all around the country. The foundation that puts together this fair is really powerful and has contacts, real drive and love for culture, commerce and entertainment. You go to the international book fair and see something well done that clearly works. This summer, during the children’s book fair, we will have our first international guest—Mark Wolfman. The comics portion of the fair has a real potential to grow. It’s like being the coach for Argentinos Juniors. If you don’t reach the championship, it’s okay. But if you reach the championship, you might get a chance to coach for Boca or some other huge team that should go for the championship. It has a real potential for growth and could grow beyond the margins of the book fair. It could be the beginning for a real comics fair produced, financed and promoted by a foundation (Fundación del Libro) that knows how to do these things well. We have talked about a comics fair since the very first time they summoned me to put together this festival. They are constantly saying the idea has potential, so if we show results that stimulate them to go farther, they will go farther.

CDS: What sort of results are they looking for?

AA: A huge turnout of people that would not normally attend a children’s book fair. That’s the real challenge, to get the comics community to attend the fair. If we can get a huge attendance of comic fans for the book fair, next year the organizers will say “let’s try four days of comics festival instead of two days” and then the next year it may increase or expand to its own international comic festival. The organizers are very conservative in terms of going slowly, analyzing the results, debating everything as a committee. If we can produce results that get their attention, they will give us space and resources to grow.

One of the things I wouldn’t want to do is become a publisher again. It’s ungrateful, hard. There are people like me constantly badmouthing publishers. It’s not glamorous or prestigious, you don’t make a lot of money, you don’t get the cute chicks. It’s not as risky as it used to be because we know more about the market and about distribution. We have taught the retailer that they should buy local editions instead of importing. It’s much better than it was 15 years ago. It is still not something I would like to do again, not even if I had the resources.

I am still discovering a whole new world with the book I published. I never planned to have that stuff come out as two books. The second one comes out in August.

Transcribed and edited by Claire Denton-Spalding