Sometimes it really sucks when people discover you are right about something.
What was that I said? Why would it be a bad thing for others to know that you’ve been right all along? What’s wrong with them getting on board and embracing what you and a select group of others do?
Well… In some ways I don’t even know how to put it into words. But I will try.
I’ve attended San Diego Comic Con for years now, in many different functions and in many different ways. My first SDCC was a casual drive down from LA on a Friday, I showed up, got my badge, walked the floor, bought what I came for and drove back . Something so easy and casual doesn’t sound like SDCC does it?
Trust me, it was a different time.
A couple years after that, I had made my first comic.
I was so proud. And after seeing the convention years before I was positive with just the sheer number of attendees I was gonna sell a ton!
I had never stayed in San Diego for the con, I booked a hotel in the Gaslamp, spent just as much money being in San Diego as I did publishing the comic and that was okay, this was our launch, I was gonna kill it, selling tons of this single issue for a mere three dollars!
That was my first taste of the mass size and brutality, which can be Comic-Con.
The artist alley is a graveyard in the middle of a Manhattan.
Yes, tons of traffic passes by, but nobody stops to smell the roses… or buy heartfelt handmade entry-level comics.
In four heartbreaking days I sold maybe 4 or 5 books and two t-shirts.
That was over a thousand spent to be there and about 30 bucks recouped.
We couldn’t sleep because the frat-party noise on the streets below our horribly small hotel room, I was crestfallen by the lack of interest in my book, we were stuck in traffic for nine hours trying to get home (to LA four hours away).
That was SDCC then.
Flash forward a couple years, I was now working in marketing, first for a comic book company then a home video company. One of which folded, the other almost did. So I ended up in television.
Ironically, the comic book company I was at couldn’t get me to SDCC but the TV Network could.
And so I was back, I was part of a team working with a real budget, now instead of a 6-foot folding table and poster-board I was in a custom designed booth just down the isle from the monster setups like the Syfy booth and the Warner Bros booth. I was part of that wave that came in and took over Comic-Con from the comic book people. We had budget to give shit away, we had the budget to feed that frenzy of carp swimming over each other for food pellets!
And for four years we did. And they kept coming back in bigger numbers, hands outstretched for more and more.
It’s interesting; my career in genre entertainment was evolving and growing right along with SDCC.
Every year I’d climb up the ladder a little bit there and it would grow bigger and bigger. You see Comic-Con is much like the Titanic.
It’s huge, not sure of its course and there are two worlds there.
Those celebrated on the upper decks and the commoners destined to remain below. Don’t want to think of it that way? Just leave a party in the Gaslamp where you have been “gifted” given hours of free drinks, then stumble drunkenly past all those camped out in line in front of the convention center, some for this thing called Hall H, others for entry to the main floor or tickets for the following year.
But that was then, I fought and clawed and I’m no longer that broken-hearted kid behind a table in the artist alley.
Soon, the chaos of the main convention floor was even too big for the TV Network I worked for.
That’s right, a national cable television network couldn’t make a proper impact on the floor because of the money being spent and competition for eyeballs and awareness. The amount being spent just for floor space would BLOW YOUR MIND! That’s not counting the money spent to manufacture items to be given away, manpower and hotel rooms (don’t get me started about booking hotel rooms for an entire staff ).
We found ourselves shouting as loud as we could on the floor with a pretty healthy budget and resources and nobody was noticing. At least not enough people were noticing for the money spent.
Often those that did notice had no care for the genre, they didn’t care about horror movies, or reading comics or cult films, all they wanted was free shit. Hands outstretched, looking for swag, a t-shirt, a keychain anything. They didn’t care what, just as long as it was free and they could toss it in their ridiculously sized free convention bag.
So we needed to make a change.
We made the strategic decision to pull out from the floor and set up camp in the downtown Gaslamp section of San Diego. Like many, it no longer made sense to spend those big dollars to be on the floor so we were part of the convention that was spilling out into the city. It was a new chapter for SDCC and we were once again at the forefront of a wave. We did what anyone wanting friends and attention would do.
We threw a party. A raging party. one that took six months of planning. And for that year I was very popular. I would like to say a funny thing about Hollywood… but we are talking about Comic-Con, right? Funny thing about Hollywood—I mean Comic-Con, if you are throwing a big party, all of the sudden you are being invited to everyone else’s party (could it be because they want in on yours?)
Well… with the party it was locked. In the world that is two SDCC’s I was now up top with the beautiful and fandom famous. (That’s right. I just made a new term. There is famous. And there is fandom famous. And there is a difference.)
A comic book writer I love, Warren Ellis once referred to Comic-Con as Nerd Prom.
And he couldn’t have been more correct in his description. For the culture of fandom is exactly that. It’s a big freaking high school where those who were shunned in their younger years can now take their revenge.
Those who didn’t fit in, who were late bloomers, who were misunderstood and excluded, now have the power to exclude. And it’s sad how often and with such zest they do.
So I’ve laid the tracks down. I’ve made my case and proved in a hipster-like (I was there before it was cool) way that I have been on this fanboy ride which is Comic-Con for years, in different capacities surrounded by different people.
And that brings me to 2014…
This was my first time in years I was there just for me. Meaning I had no booth to produce and manage, no party to throw, no sponsorships to maintain. Just me, walking the floor and the parties and the hotel bars just like many others. It gave me time to really reflect and notice many things.
Stick with me here, I’m about to wonder, but I promise it ties back in. As a young angry teenager I was in… what was called at the time the post-modern or Deathrock scene. We were angry, misunderstood, judged outsiders. We were counter-culture. The mainstream shunned us. But as soon as we found each other and built our little underground things were great! We had this special little world that was an escape. You had to be in the know to see it you had to be in the know to participate in it.
Sadly with all things, it would eventually appeal to and become mainstream.
The music we listened to was accepted and marketed and played out. Deathrock was came to be known as Goth, Post-Modern was marketed as Alternative and the mainstream moved in and pushed many of us out… see this going somewhere? Yes, I’m saying I’ve seen it and more importantly felt it before.
I’m saying when something is counter-culture, even a huge counter-culture it is safe and amazing and wonderful. But when the sheer numbers of mainstream acceptance move in it changes things… and sadly most often for the worst.
And that’s the same thing I have seen with “fandom” in these last five years, nationwide yes, worldwide yes. But no other place do you feel it more in person than with SDCC.
With the counter-culture of comics and superheroes and science fiction becoming the “cool” thing I really have to wonder where those who used to retreat in it can now go to escape? Now that Playboy is at Comic-Con, now that Hot Topic is at Comic-Con,
Now that all the shops and local businesses in downtown are putting up sad cardboard standees of outdated Superman and Batman in their storefronts, now that hardware stores are telling us they are the place for your Comic-Con needs, now that Hustler is shooting on location, now that there are media allegations of child predators looking to hurt cosplayers, now that the media is looking to attack things like Zombie Walk. Where do we now go now?
Where can those of us who have retreated into those fantasy worlds, and that gathering of those who celebrate fantasy worlds go, now that it has been upturned by the mainstream?
I’m not sure I have an answer. But that is the question that SDCC 2014 has given me.
I’m always glad for more people to enjoy whatever it is they are enjoying. I’m happy there are more people who understand all thee little wonderful things from fiction that make me happy and inspire me. As a writer and storyteller I’m glad for more potential audience. But I am also weary of what will be left after the hordes trample what was before.
I am also weary of the culture itself. The high school I mentioned before. For all those who are drunk on their twitter followings, intoxicated with their party invites, celebrated in their cosplay coverage, given many “likes” and photos with fans, photos from creepers, for all those who are finally not only being accepted for who they are, but also celebrated for it I have some words of advice… and I would hope these words which didn’t come from me, will sound somewhat familiar to all those cool nerds and sexy geeks out there. “With great power there must also come great responsibility.”
If you are finally having a good streak, if you are finally popular or celebrated or noticed because of your love for all things genre, or the work you have done or the costume you have made remember just for one moment, the awkward shunned person you were before that led you to all these fictional pieces of fantasy in the first place. Don’t forget your roots and the need for the fiction and the need for the escape and the need to be treated kindly from others… and the need to treat others kindly… now that you are so cool.
The trend will pass.
The huge money being thrown at it will be reduced, eventually being a nerd will once again be being a nerd and things in the culture, and at SDCC will settle back to a “normal”. That is not now, probably not anytime soon.
But for those of you who go because of the fantasy and fiction you love, I look forward to seeing you all there in that future where we are once again not cool.
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