So this afternoon, I’m reading all kinds of things about San Diego Comic-Con and the importance of it (here, here and here.) And really, from the comfort of my chair thousands of miles away from San Diego I have to ask is the comic convention there really all that important?
Or at least, is it all that important to comics?
As one of the unwashed masses who has never been to San Diego let alone Comic-Con, I can only think of one or two books I’ve ever bought because of “the buzz” (Rocketo and last year’s 5.) I’ve already ordered Pixu this year but I ordered that well before San Diego. I’ve hemmed and hawed about Comic Book Tattoo since it was announced and I’ll probably get it but not due to any “buzz” or excitement from the land of Arnold. In fact, while I’m excited about a few of the things announce at the con, I would have been equally as excited with a press release on Newsarama or CBR.
So what’s so f*cking important about San Diego? Someone explain it to me. What’s so all mighty powerful about that stupid show that when a publisher like IDW says “maybe this was our last year” it gets everyone in a minor huff.
My main problem with all the coverage is that here we are almost 8 days removed from San Diego and CBR’s front page still reads like a shill for CCI and their boat (ooohhh, the boat.) All the sites (and I guess I’m now guilty of that) are still talking about Comic Con and making it sound like it’s the most important thing. This is all part of the problem of the industry being bigger than the product right now.
Maybe it’s because of the rise of the creator-superstar or because of the size of the movies right now but the industry of comics is a larger spectacle than the comic books right now. We talk more about incentives, exclusives and numbers than we talk about comics themselves. All this coverage of San Diego just goes on to show how the spectacle overshadows the comics. In an age where Watchmen is the buzz book because of a silly little trailer, it means that we’re more interested in something other than the actual work. Would all of those copies of Watchmen be selling if it wasn’t for a trailer on the biggest movie of the summer.
Here’s my question– when did San Diego become comics? When did it become the end all, be all of comics? It’s a show. Yeah it’s large but it’s not the Wednesday experience. It’s not comics 360 days of the year, no matter what people would lead you to believe this week.
It’s important because this is the one show each year where EVERYONE stops what they’re doing and looks at the comics industry. Yeah, its a spectacle, but its part of the convention’s mission statement: to broaden the fanbase mixing it up with the rest of pop culture.
This con is about getting non-readers into comics. The Watchmen trailer did a good job of that, didn’t it? Isn’t that what comics need right now, more readers?
It’s all good. I’m not arguing against that. It’s more this ongoing coverage about the coverage about how San Diego was covered that’s getting to me.
Maybe I’m just bitter because I wasn’t there but there was this weird buzz (there’s that word again) around San Diego, where I can’t tell what people like about the show. There’s a combination of dread and exhilaration around the show for people who are going but I’m losing track of what San Diego (or Wizard Worlds or Heroes Con or whatever) means to the much vaster majority of fans who aren’t at the con.
I’m not trying to disparage this con or any other but, as a non-professional and non-attender of a majority of them, I wonder what a con does.
And cool, I now have a Pat Loika comment. I can almost stop blogging now.
It seems to me that the buzz is from all the non comics stuff. San Diego has become the big thing for blockbuster movies and sci-fi tv shows. I’m not sure when it stopped being about comics and became about everything else. I go to movie blogs and they talk about comicon, but, they never mention what Marvel, DC, IDW, Oni, etc are doing. My interest in going is my love of movies. I still like comics but movies are my passion. I think that’s why you’re getting the “what’s the big deal” feeling about the show. It’s not about comics anymore. If Wizard would realize this and quit trying to compete with San Diego the Chicago con could be the premier comic con in the country.
Well, what movie news was there really? Most of the movie blog coverage that I saw was just as repetitive, vapid and newsless as most of the comic coverage is ending up being. Actually, its probably more.
I just want someone to explain what Comicon should mean to me ? And by me, I mean someone who wasn’t there. I like the con reports that make you feel like you were there in some way or another. This was the year that Twitter became my preferred form of coverage. Everything else feels corporate and mass produced at this point.
I think CCI probably generates about a half-dozen legitimate news stories, the same way that major conventions do in some of the other industries I’ve covered. Also as a comics-related business it is its own story. And as you mention, as an experience it can be its own story as well.
If you’re a site that thinks people talking about a comic book series or whatever is news, the show generates a TON of news stories, basically every panel, plus potentially any announcement made at that panel, plus potentially an interview with someone at the panel about the panel. That’s a lot of stories.
A lot of the rest of it is inside baseball, as they say, and shouldn’t really interest anyone other than like 10 dudes. The press stuff is like that.
It probably feels a bit sloppier and omnipresent because a lot of news is on-line now and drips out rather than taking up six pages in the next magazine or whatever.
Plus August is a slow month for most traditional industries, comics included. That probably doesn’t help.
But you probably shouldn’t care about it any more than anyone following an industry or an art form really cares about their big yearly convention. I don’t pay any attention to Cannes or BEA news except in a very broad fashion, but they dominate a couple of news cycles for those industries.
You might want to take the “comic” out of Comic-Con, as it’s a little misleading. It’s a pop culture media convention, and as far as I know it always has been. George Lucas, so I’ve heard, was pimping a little soon-to-be movie called STAR WARS at Comic-con in the 70’s. My first show was (I think) 1995, and although it was maybe half the size it is now, I actually felt an even larger comic book presence this year, relative to all the other media.
True I was pimping a little book called COMIC BOOK TATTOO at the Image booth, but I got to walk around and see a lot of comic book companies selling comics and tons of creators signing stuff. And then there are the dozens of public and private parties that fuel the creative lifeblood of the industry.
What makes comic-con important? The fans and creators get to interact with each other on a large scale. You can go to your local store on Wednesday, pick up your weekly stack, take it home, and read it alone. And if that’s all you need, good. But many people want some kind of feeling of involvement in their chosen hobby or career.
It’s beautifully massive, incredibly well organized, pop culture festival (Burning Man for nerds, anyone?) in an awesome building (that’s like seven blocks long!), in very attractive and friendly city. What’s not to like?