Comic-Con: A Retrospective

Sitting in the San Diego Airport, waiting for my flight to Denver and the connection to Chicago, I looked around at the other passengers. Most everyone was sitting around reading comic books or fantasy novels (a lot of George R.R. Martin). One guy near my had a Pan-Am collectors messenger bag stuffed with Comic-Con collector big bags. People were carrying on rolled posters and signed prints in safety tubes, and there were countless t-shirts, some of which were exclusive to Convention. There were a lot of knowing smiles and nods passed between strangers whose only connection were both being one of the 145,000 people per day that went through the Convention. Everyone looked tired, overstimulated and ready to go home, happy and full of new collectibles, books and t-shirts.

This is what the Convention, known to pros as "The Con," does to people: provides a sense of belonging on a massive scale. Hundreds of thousands of people descend upon the San Diego Convention Center, turning the grey, concrete structure into an epicenter of popular culture. Everyone is there for the same reason: to be at the crest of the next wave of popular culture. There were panels for new seasons of popular shows that have a connection to comics (some more tenuous than others). Actors and producers for shows like Game of Thrones, Big Bang Theory, Twilight, True Blood, Archer, Community, and the Adult Swim line-up showed clips from the new seasons and answered fan questions.

There are two massive ballrooms at the Convention Center that hold near 5000 people, and for the panels in these ballrooms, the lines started queuing hours before the doors opened. For the sneak preview of the next Twilight movie, dedicated fans lined up and camped out for two days, sleeping outside the Center in the warm San Diego nights, just for a twenty minute clip that these said fans could then claim to have seen while others have not. There were a few panels I wanted to see in these ballrooms, namely the Bones panel, so that I could kidnap David Boreanas for my Mom, and the Game of Thrones panel so that I could kidnap Emilia Clarke for myself (just kidding Catherine...or...am I?). However, as it becomes apparent to anyone having attended Comic-Con, these panels are essentially an all-day wait. Standing in line, alone, for upwards of four or five hours is not really why I went to the Convention. Ultimately, I had to pass on Game of Thrones for other activities.

My interest in the Convention is to find out about new books. All the publishers, both the massive, multinational conglomerates like DC and Marvel, and the smaller, more independent presses like Top Shelf and Drawn and Quarterly, have booths selling their wares. A good number of the books are unreleased yet. For example, Top Shelf was pimping Kagan McLeod's Infinite Kung-Fu, Nate Powell's Any Empire and a re-release of Craig Thompson's seminal Blankets in hardcover. The larger booths have a lot of name recognition, and lines for meeting and getting signatures from people like Alex Ross and Geoff Johns were quite long. However, smaller artists like McLeod, Powell, Anders Nilsen (and his INSANELY beautiful collected volume of Big Questions, which was just released by Drawn and Quarterly for the show), and even Thompson, on whose book Blankets I presented a paper, were at their respective publisher's booths signing books and answering questions.

This was a better use of my time. As an academic who is writing about living authors, it is essential that I make connections with these authors and artists so that I might get heads-up, early releases, interviews and what not for my work. Having these connections to living writers will give me an edge over other academics, both when I need to pull one in for a Convention or to help give my writing a more human touch.

Initially, I wasn't expecting so many creators to be at their respective booths. As I wandered the small press booths, I ran into the Flight booth, where Kazu Kibuishi and friends were selling their awesome anthology (now in Volume 8). There were a few other books published on Random House imprint Villard, one of which was Tory Woollcott's Mirror Mind. The book, with a stark black-and-white cover, caught my eye. The book tells the story about Woollcott's struggles with dyslexia while in primary school. I had been kicking around the idea of a paper on the representation of mental illnesses for a while, so I started to flip through. A woman behind the counter smiled at me, and asked if I was dyslexic (which I don't think that I am, but sometimes see letters and words upside-down). We got to talking, and I decided to buy the book. She asked who she should sign it to, and I paused.

"You're Tory Woollcott?" I asked.

"Sure am. And you are..."

"Keegan. This is great. I'm buying this because I want to write about how authors represent mental disorders in comics. Also, I want to look at how comics can be used to convey stories in a medium that might help those who struggle with reading."

We talked for some time about her choice to write the story in the comic form.

"Is there a way I can reach you later?" I asked. "Do you have a card or something?"

She proceeded to write her email address right in the book and told me that I should contact her if I have any questions. Which I do. And I will.

I went on to meet some other artists and authors. Some were new to me, like Nate Powell, whose book Swallow Me Whole has been on my Amazon Wish List for a while. Some were my favorites, like Nilsen and Thompson, both of who said they would try to make my talk (neither did, though Thompson signed a copy of his book for me, even saying as much in the inscription). Some were surprising, like Ryan North of the very excellent Dinosaur Comics. I got cards and email addresses for many of these authors and creators, and now can pepper my papers and publications with interviews and quotes from the authors I write about.

Beside meeting writers and cartoonist, the Convention also gave me an opportunity to meet with other academics. Peter Coogan and Randy Duncan have been putting this event together for several years, and every year there are more and more impressive academics that present papers and pimp their latest books. This year, I was really excited to hear David Beronä would be present, talking about his work in woodcut novels. Beronä, who has a book out, Wordless Books, is a formalist critic that I make use of in my own writing. His work on early woodcut novels of Lynd Ward and Frans Mansereel is groundbreaking.

One day, overwhelmed by the mass of people milling about the Convention Center, I decided to take a walk and get a sandwich. As I was cutting down a pedestrian path, I noticed Beronä crossing the street in the same direction, by himself. Now, randomly approaching strangers on the street has never been my forte, but this was an opportunity that I needed to take. So, with a deep breath and my balls up in my chest, I got his attention, introduced myself and started talking. We walked along the pedestrian path, discussing the Convention, comic criticism and San Diego. I found him to be far more approachable and down to earth than a lot of critics and academics who spend their time enshrouded in books and journals. Like the contacts I made among the creators, knowing Beronä is bound to help my career (in fact, he asked that I send my paper to him to discuss possible avenues of publishing).

On Saturday, when my friend Jonathan Talbert and his fiancee Lisa came to visit me, hearing my talk, we went to a party thrown by the Comic(s) Art Conference. I sat at a table with young academics, many of whom presented papers and posters at the conference, and we all reveled in our nerdity. One academic from North Texas was blissed out over having met Scott McCloud. Another was just excited to meet a popular and credible feminist critic. We talked about the new comics we bought and the panels we attended. I had gone to the party knowing Talbert and Lisa, but left having a table full of new friends.

Comic-Con, for all the press it gets for the weird things that happen at it (the costumes, the fanaticism, the stabbings over seats), is really a place were fans of comics and comic-culture can come together to enjoy the company of like minded individuals. On the bus one morning, three guys dressed like characters from Star Wars boarded the bus and made their way to seats behind me.

"Dude...nice Thundercats shirt," one said as he went by.

Sunday, at the Denver Airport, waiting for my connecting flight, I sat on the ground, watching the mass of strangers mill about going to hundreds of locations around the US. Most people didn't make eye contact, kept focus on finding their next terminal, the baggage claim, a taxi or what not. I started reading Ryan North's Dudes Already Know About Chicken when a young man walked past carrying a hard cover edition of Blackest Night. We nodded at each other, understanding the shared experience, and he disappeared into the disinterested crowd.