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So the
year, 2011. The place: San Diego California.
The
event: Comic-Con, the biggest, most expansive
comic/movie event of the year.
Every
year it’s held in July. Every year in the same place.
And every year is the same story. Immediate sellout so I
can’t get a ticket. Can’t make it through the lottery
system on the hotels and now can’t make it through the
lottery system for tickets to the show itself.
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And this year? I
just don’t care anymore.
There are a lot
of reasons why I don’t, and this Raging will
be spent labeling them and explaining
exactly why I don’t care about making it to
SDCC anymore. I’ll worry about other cons as
they happen, but SDCC is officially, and
completely, dead to me.
The first reason
I’m okay with never going to SDCC (unless of
course someone buys my ticket and hotel room
in advance and I go as part of the
publishing strategy of a big comic book
company).
Wait, let’s
backtrack a bit. |
I write
comic books. Currently. I write a lot of them. Under my
real name. Not Momar Van Der Camp. That’s a pen name.
Sorry readers to burst your bubble of perception.
And I
write them and I think and have heard that I write them
well. Nothing big, nothing major, mainly bio comics and
a lot of upcoming fiction stuff. I’ve written a bunch,
and the dream has always been to get a big gig with
Marvel or DC and get to SDCC and sell one of my
creator-owned ideas and make a comic and someday a
movie. I’d like to think a few of my ideas are original
in the sense that they take pre-existing ideas and tweak
them to where they could conceivably go with a little
push.
So,
unless someone gets me to SDCC on their dime, it’s not
going to happen. Back to the reasons why I’m okay not to
go.
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Congestion.
The Convention Center has not grown in the
last 10 years while the population and
audience has grown 10 times larger almost
every year. I like a convention to have some
foot traffic, but I don’t want it to be so
congested that I can’t walk between people,
can’t shake hands with creators, can’t meet
people and talk and enjoy the show and pick
through comic boxes or graphic novel boxes
or toy boxes and find really awesome stuff.
Congestion seems
to be a major problem every single time I’ve
seen any picture from SDCC or any of the
video footage from G4. Yes it looks awesome
and yes there are a ton of things to do
there. But really, I’d rather be a little
comfortable and get through the place
without fear of getting robbed or my comics
stolen. That’s just me. Also, I don’t really
feel like rubbing against a bunch of
overweight, sweaty, smelly people for 5 days
straight. But again, to each their own. |
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Reason number two: the movies.
This used to be called San Diego Comic-Con and they
meant it. It was the mecca for all comic creators,
publishers, fans, editors, and everything in between. If
you loved comics, you came to San Diego to get the news
about it. And over time, things started to change. San
Diego started blurring the lines between being a comic
convention and a sci-fi convention (which, if you ask
fans of either, the lines can be blurred at times but
not always and should not always be either).
Once
they started doing that was probably around 2000 when
comic book movies started pushing into the mainstream.
And with production companies pushing their agenda on
unassuming masses. While it was probably cool the first
time you saw these movies and hadn’t heard anything
about them, with the internet being so dominant these
days, they really don’t need to waste their money and
efforts on pushing their agenda at comic-con.
So some
production houses stopped and others took over. When
those others took over, movies like Repo: A Genetic
Opera and Twilight made their way into Comic-Con. Taking
the spotlight away from comics and all things comics and
sci-fi and onto shitty films and idiotic crap movies and
terrible actors.
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When Twilight
fans take over an entire hall for an entire
day just so they can see the Twilight panel,
it ruins Comic-Con. It makes it so that fans
who REALLY want to see something about
Avengers or Captain America don’t get a seat
and don’t get to see the panel. Instead,
some 12 year old emo girl sits through
Captain America’s trailer and gets no
pleasure out of it and thinks about cutting
herself again.
It’s ridiculous
and it ruins Comic-Con. By taking the focus
from comics and placing it on Hollywood,
they’ve ruined Comic-Con.
And that’s only
reason 2. |
Reason 3:
Money. Money. Money.
That’s
pretty simple. My being a comic book guy means that when
I go to cons I like to spend some coin. I like to enjoy
the fruits of my labors and make a list out in advance
of things I’m looking for. Runs to complete. Trades and
hardcovers to pick up. Out of print stuff to search for.
Statues. Busts. Toys. Etc. The list goes on and on and I
like making a list but also getting completely taken
back by something so awesome it can’t be contained.
Like a
poster or a print or a sketch or something like that.
Something I didn’t think I would ever need but now, all
of a sudden, it’s a necessity. Like meeting Angel Medina
and just being taken back by how awesome an artist he
really is and just falling in love with his work. Or the
same with Clayton Crain or Greg Horn or any number of
artists who are real guys and talk to you and actually
act like they’re happy to be there.
Those
guys are awesome.
Or
meeting writers like Jai Nitz and just talking with him
about a little bit of nothing forever and making a
lasting friendship. Buying his books and spending as
much money as possible on his stuff so that I can feel
like I’m supporting him.
That’s
the stuff I do. And that’s the stuff I like to do.
But
because it’d be such a chore to buy tickets to Comic-Con
(which is now nearly 150 dollars or more for the full
show) and buy plane tickets or train tickets and a hotel
room, I’d have no money left for comics or food. It’d be
bust. The whole point of going there would be wiped
clean off the slate and there’d be no reason to even
try. So money is a major factor in my not going to SDCC
anytime soon.
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Reason 4:
Lottery Systems
I’m not a lucky
person by any stretch of the imagination. A
lot of things might come down to luck or
stupid circumstances just working out in my
favor. But for the most part, I’m not lucky.
I’ll never win Powerball. I’ll never just
get discovered by someone trying to make a
movie. I’ll never happen to be in the right
place at the right time. I have to work for
everything I want.
So when I hear
things like a Lottery System is in place to
get a hotel room, I say screw it, I’ll drive
down. But now this year there’s a lottery
system in place for the tickets to the show
itself. That’s a joke. A stupid, insane joke
that someone has to be playing in order to
make me laugh. That takes fandom completely
out of the equation and puts the winner of
the lottery system to obtain the tickets
firmly in the hands of people like the emo
girl from before. |
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I have
a day job. I can’t spend all day on 5 or 10 computers
signed into a login system in order to get tickets to
the con. I can’t spend all day waiting for registration
to open and make it all the way through the first round
of registration issues in order to get to the second
step and have my battery die or get called into a
meeting and have to leave my computer or have the system
shut down completely because of internet usage or any
number of issues that could happen.
The
lottery system is almost as much of a joke as them
selling tickets for this year’s show at last year’s
show. That also takes any kind of opportunity out of the
question when the full pass with the preview show was
sold out a YEAR before the next year’s show. There’s no
luck involved. Why even bother if they’re going to sell
tickets? I mean, what the hell could happen next year
that could keep me from going? How do I even get a shot
if the shot is taken out of my hands when I’m not even
capable of buying tickets?
Reason 5: Waste
of Time Now, this one is just based purely on conjecture
and personal thoughts. I could be completely off base in
my thoughts here, but I’m going to run with it anyway.
Because
SDCC has become so congested and big, there’s almost
nowhere for the little guy to go. The little guy who’s
trying desperately and working his or her butt off to
break into comics and thinks about how awesome it would
be to get their work seen by someone higher up at Marvel
or DC. But because there are so many people vying for
their attention, the editor or publisher or EIC is off
in meetings all day with Hollywood types or major comic
creators and lowly little guy gets nowhere.
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So all the money
and effort seems wasted to that person. They
give up their love of comics in favor of
working in another field. Like digital
animation. Animation. Publishing. Marketing.
Advertising. Video games. Anything.
And this goes
back to my piracy argument as well. When the
little guy realizes his dream may never be
realized, they give up and move on and find
out they’ll make much more money working in
another field instead of the field they want
to be in.
And that’s
heartbreaking. I’d like to think that there
are a lot of stories that people want to
tell. Probably very good stories. But
because they won’t get to tell them in that
media, we may never get to read them and we
may never get to see them.
San Diego
Comic-Con has become everything that comic
fans hate. A big, loud, brash, boisterous
waste of space. It reminds me so much of the
early 90s comic world where variant covers,
shiny covers, holograms and everything
stupid was all the rage. |
It
didn’t matter that the story was crap. All that mattered
is that it sold 3 million copies. That’s what San Diego
Comic-Con seems to be now. A bunch of fluff, no
substance.
So for
me, SDCC is dead. A long con that has finally ended and
there’s nothing left but dust that needs to settle. All
we have to do is pick up the pieces and move on. And by
moving on, I’m going to forget about it. I’m going to
worry about comic conventions that are smaller. I’m
going to work my way up to Emerald City Con and NYCC and
a bunch of the others.
But
SDCC is dead. A joke that has been laid to waste. No
longer on my bucket list, I can move on with my life and
rage against something new. So comic fans, good luck. I
hope you get to see some of the actual events and
screenings and up fronts because I guarantee that this
will again be ruined by the likes of Twilight fans
everywhere. |
