San Diego Comicon 2010 officially ended yesterday at 5pm. A cheer went up, as it has every year that I’ve attended. The hoards shuffle out, the displays get dismantled, and the city starts counting down to the airport exodus over the next few days. And all the professionals give a collective sigh of relief that another year has been successfully survived.
On a personal level, the show is always overwhelming. I work at my companies booth, so I don’t really get to enjoy it from a fan level. I don’t get to go to panels unless I’m on them, the parties are places to see people and discuss projects, and most meals are sporadic or business/catching up/con related. You kind of live off of stress, sugar, and caffeine for 5 days. Sleep deprivation makes you loopy, the walking and standing make your feet angry, and you get really sick of hearing your own voice. Usually right before you lose it and start to croak.
Sharing a space with something like 200K people is pretty much the definition of sensory overload. Getting from one end of the convention center to the other is a lot like fighting a mob sometimes, only they don’t have pitchforks, they have light saber replicas, giant bags with CHUCK or FRINGE or SUPERMAN on them, and poster tubes full of lead. You have to avoid stepping on little kids who look dazed and awed by the spectacle, and avoid getting shoulder checked by a Predator or a Klingon who doesn’t have any peripheral vision due to carefully applied prosthetics. Groups of steampunkers, carefully coiffed, will float by on amusingly anachronistic running sneakers, as zombies playfully gnaw on smiling attendees, and superheroes pose for glamour shots.
If I could describe SDCC in one made up word it would be: intensely-uber-pop-culture-whoa.
Every year I hear similar complaints about the con, usually about the size, the lines, the various fans, and the way comics are supposedly being squeezed out. From my perspective, as someone who works for an independent publisher, I really can’t say that I share the view of the latter. We were insanely busy all weekend. Every fan I talked to was a comic book reader, of all kinds of books, and were just happy to be there and share the experience and love of the medium with other fans and creators.
There’s no denying the influence of Hollywood, nor the way many panels and events sometimes have only the most tenuous connection to comics. Sometimes as little as the cast on such and such show has someone on it who likes a comic a book. But that’s pop culture. It’s grown into this enormous megalith that encompasses so many genres and mediums, there’s no real way to contain it. And maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe what we should be doing is looking for ways to connect it, just like we connect with each other, over the shared geekiness of the collective experience. SDCC is not the be all, end all of comics, and the fact that it has such a hodge podge of celebrity and creativity and fandom coming together seems like an opportunity to really celebrate all of it. How inclusive the love of stories, which I think is what’s at the root of all of this, really is.
But maybe I’m just being really optimistic because I met Brian and Wendy Froud and fulfilled a childhood dream to thank them for Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal and being amazing artists. I geek out over art I love in a big way. About the only thing that could have made the show better is if I could have met Brian Henson and thanked him for Farscape, or somehow found a time machine and thanked Tolkien for writing about Middle Earth and Jim Henson for muppets.
This year was a lot of fun for me, both professionally and personally. I feel very encouraged about our industry and what I took away from it is that there’s room for everyone here. Comics aren’t being ignored, they’re being embraced. All kinds of comics from all kinds of creators and publishers. There’s a lot of great stuff out there and people are taking notice. And as a story lover, that’s incredibly gratifying and exciting to see.
Still, I’ll be really happy when I can finally take a nap.
The Convention That Ate My Brain
San Diego Comicon 2010 officially ended yesterday at 5pm. A cheer went up, as it has every year that I’ve attended. The hoards shuffle out, the displays get dismantled, and the city starts counting down to the airport exodus over the next few days. And all the professionals give a collective sigh of relief that another year has been successfully survived.
On a personal level, the show is always overwhelming. I work at my companies booth, so I don’t really get to enjoy it from a fan level. I don’t get to go to panels unless I’m on them, the parties are places to see people and discuss projects, and most meals are sporadic or business/catching up/con related. You kind of live off of stress, sugar, and caffeine for 5 days. Sleep deprivation makes you loopy, the walking and standing make your feet angry, and you get really sick of hearing your own voice. Usually right before you lose it and start to croak.
Sharing a space with something like 200K people is pretty much the definition of sensory overload. Getting from one end of the convention center to the other is a lot like fighting a mob sometimes, only they don’t have pitchforks, they have light saber replicas, giant bags with CHUCK or FRINGE or SUPERMAN on them, and poster tubes full of lead. You have to avoid stepping on little kids who look dazed and awed by the spectacle, and avoid getting shoulder checked by a Predator or a Klingon who doesn’t have any peripheral vision due to carefully applied prosthetics. Groups of steampunkers, carefully coiffed, will float by on amusingly anachronistic running sneakers, as zombies playfully gnaw on smiling attendees, and superheroes pose for glamour shots.
If I could describe SDCC in one made up word it would be: intensely-uber-pop-culture-whoa.
Every year I hear similar complaints about the con, usually about the size, the lines, the various fans, and the way comics are supposedly being squeezed out. From my perspective, as someone who works for an independent publisher, I really can’t say that I share the view of the latter. We were insanely busy all weekend. Every fan I talked to was a comic book reader, of all kinds of books, and were just happy to be there and share the experience and love of the medium with other fans and creators.
There’s no denying the influence of Hollywood, nor the way many panels and events sometimes have only the most tenuous connection to comics. Sometimes as little as the cast on such and such show has someone on it who likes a comic a book. But that’s pop culture. It’s grown into this enormous megalith that encompasses so many genres and mediums, there’s no real way to contain it. And maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe what we should be doing is looking for ways to connect it, just like we connect with each other, over the shared geekiness of the collective experience. SDCC is not the be all, end all of comics, and the fact that it has such a hodge podge of celebrity and creativity and fandom coming together seems like an opportunity to really celebrate all of it. How inclusive the love of stories, which I think is what’s at the root of all of this, really is.
But maybe I’m just being really optimistic because I met Brian and Wendy Froud and fulfilled a childhood dream to thank them for Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal and being amazing artists. I geek out over art I love in a big way. About the only thing that could have made the show better is if I could have met Brian Henson and thanked him for Farscape, or somehow found a time machine and thanked Tolkien for writing about Middle Earth and Jim Henson for muppets.
This year was a lot of fun for me, both professionally and personally. I feel very encouraged about our industry and what I took away from it is that there’s room for everyone here. Comics aren’t being ignored, they’re being embraced. All kinds of comics from all kinds of creators and publishers. There’s a lot of great stuff out there and people are taking notice. And as a story lover, that’s incredibly gratifying and exciting to see.
Still, I’ll be really happy when I can finally take a nap.