The Best – And Worst – Things About the Modern Comic Convention

I have been to San Diego before. A few times, in fact. Once, to see a Padres game with my best buddy, knocking that ballpark off the list as we slowly but surely see a game at every stadium in the major leagues. The others were to visit my oldest friend, who lives there with her husband and kids in one of those idyllic suburbs that has kids playing and neighbors greeting each other and a general look and feel like something out of an old Spielberg movie.

I bring this up because, while I like San Diego quite a bit and consider it one of our lovelier cities, you will not find me anywhere near it this weekend. Not for Comic-Con. No thanks. And if you think I’m alone, ask some of your journalism friends. If they tell you they’re actually looking forward to covering it in person, they’re undoubtedly lying to you.

The thing is, I don’t really need to go, either. Anything that happens, anything that I need to know in my capacity as commenter on all things industry-related, I can discover on line within minutes of it happening. There’s no such thing as exclusives here, not when thousands of people are jammed into conference halls to listen to a bunch of creators talk about their upcoming projects and showing footage from them. Each year, in fact, someone tries to show something specifically for the Comic-Con crowd, but it inevitably leaks to the rest of us scattered around the world, making my job exceedingly easy and, in the process, defeating the whole purpose.

Last year, for instance, Warner Bros. did away with any pretense and released its first trailer for Suicide Squad — the one it debuted in San Diego — a whole day after the convention ended. Sure, the cast made a surprise appearance in the legendary Hall H, but footage of it was almost immediately online for anyone who wanted to see it.

Marvel didn’t even go last year, at least partly because it had just made an enormous presentation about its upcoming slate the previous October, so there was no point in showing up to rehash old news or show new footage to several thousand people in attendance a scant few moments before they might show it to a few million online. Company CEO Kevin Feige said the only reason to go to San Diego is to “over deliver,” which makes sense, on the one hand, and no sense at all, on the other.

All the geeks who have shown up for the festivities — and I can call them geeks because I am one, myself, and I’ll get more into that below — are eager for hot dish on projects they want to see, which they can then tout to their friends and chat endlessly about how excited they are to see the movie when it comes out and how many times they’re going to see it and is it going to live up to the comic book and how dare they make any changes at all from the original text or go out on a limb with their storytelling? DO THEY WANT TO DESTROY OUR CHILDHOODS?

In fact, I think the thing has lost all value for the geeks out there. It’s still an event because we allow the studios to tell us it’s an event, because they’ve taken it over to sell their products to a bunch of information hungry folks who like to dress up as their favorite fictional characters to help escape the hum drum monotony of every day life. We have been hypnotized into helping them spread their buzz for the projects they want us to love and on which we should be spending our hard earned dollars.

But, see, the concept of actually needing to create buzz for some of these movies is absurd in the abstract, because they are buzz-worthy the moment they’re announced. Warner Bros. didn’t have to bring the cast of Suicide Squad to San Diego last year, it just had to keep dropping trailers and tales from the set about how nuts Jared Leto was acting and all the crazy “gifts” he gave to his co-stars and how amazing Margot Robbie looks as Harley Quinn and so on.

Marvel knows all this, which is why it had its special event back in October in 2014, rather than doing it amidst all the hullaballoo in San Diego last year, where it would have had some competition. Feige and his team are coming this year, mostly because it has to push Doctor Strange, and I’ll check in to see how that goes from the comfort of my own couch, instead of having to fight the teeming masses to get a look at Benedict Cumberbatch from 100 yards away in a stuffy, packed room filled with people who may or may not have bathed that day.

You just rolled your eyes at my mention of hygiene, because it’s the cliché of the nerd, the literal great unwashed, but the thing is, I used to love comic book conventions, and they always smelled the same, an odd combination of old paper, vanilla, and yes, a tinge of body odor. They were small and filled with vendors from around a certain region who were bringing their back issues to sell to new buyers who wouldn’t normally get to their stores. As a kid, they were amazing, because while I loved my local shop in Portland, Maine, its supplies were limited. The two or three times per year I got the chance to actually peruse someone else’s wares were a genuine delight. I found some real gems there, like the time I stumbled over a gorgeous copy of X-Men #120, the first appearance of Canadian superhero group Alpha Flight, for a fraction of what it should have cost.
Thirty years later, I still own it.

See? Geek.

I’m not even sure why they call it Comic-Con anymore, really. They should call it Entertainment Con, because it’s not about comic books and hasn’t been for a long time. It’s about movies and TV and pop culture in general, with a little bit of comic books mixed in. Yes, those companies still show up, which I know because I’m friends with a couple of guys who run indie publishers, but they also show up to Wonder-Con in Anaheim and Emerald City Comicon in Seattle and New York Comic-Con here in Manhattan and C2E2 in Chicago … the list goes on, and all the publishers go to each one to push their upcoming books, or their ongoing ones, and get their goods in front of as many people as possible, as often as possible, which is, as you can see, rather often.

I, of course, will be well aware of it all, gathering all the news as it happens, and from the comfort of my own living room. Those old back issues I am still looking for? I can find them on eBay.

Neil Turitz is a filmmaker and journalist who has spent close to two decades in the independent film world and writing about Hollywood. Aside from being a screenwriter/director and Tracking Board columnist, he is also a senior editor at SSN Insider.