San Diego Comicon Aftermath: Where Have All the Comics Gone?
By Bruce! MacIntosh

The recently concluded 2008 San Diego Comicon gets this writer's nomination for most effective weight loss program: Not only is it a massive calorie-burner to run laps up and down, back and forth, along the 2 ½-level, six block Convention Center, but the crush of more than 100,000 other people can make even the ego-inflated movie studio execs feel small until they hopped back in their limousines for Burbank. Read this comic fan's impressions of America's largest pop culture media event, and why I suspect it may not be called "Comicon" for very long.

First, before anyone accuses me of being a cranky old Comicon purist pining for the "good ol' days", I'll tell you what's great about the San Diego Comicon: The comic programming. Note that I say, comic programming. In other words, all the programming that doesn't relate to movies or TV programs which have absolutely nothing to do with comics. (Much as I enjoy The Office, NBC had a large area devoted to selling merchandise related to the show.)

There are literally hundreds of panels and presentations devoted to every little corner of our comics universe: Panels spotlighting the thinning field of Golden and Silver Age creators, "How-to's" about drawing, writing, marketing and legal issues, podcasting panels, and auditorium-packing discussions with dozens of creators and every comic publisher, large and small. In fact, there are so many panels and presentations, that even the mildly eclectic comic aficionado is forced to make some serious choices.

The seer scope and variety of panels also requires that the folks in Con Management in charge of scheduling must be very circumspect in the panel timing and logistics. And… Here's where the griping starts: I realize that there are so many variables to be considered - nature of the programming, expected attendance dictating size of room, schedules of the individual panelists, and on and on… So given those restrictions, the schedulers deserve a round of applause. But some of their decisions negatively affected both my personal and professional enjoyment of the Con, and frankly left this veteran Con-goer questioning whether I should return.

I can tell that the schedulers made a conscious effort to stagger the panels. (This year they did not all start "on the hour". For example, of the possible two dozen panels starting around the 1pm hour on Saturday, six might start on the hour, another six would start at 15 minutes after, six more at half-past the hour, and the final half-dozen at :45.) I suspect this was mostly for crowd control, since they don't clear the rooms between panels. Panels starting at all different times would discourage people from racing through the crowded halls at the end of one panel to get to another by the time it started, three blocks away at the other end of the Center. Professionally, this made it impossible for this reporter to "cover" more than about three panels a day, because of screwy logistics and timing. (This will sound strangely obsessive, but next year I will strongly have to reconsider driving 1200 miles each way and spending buckets of money on parking, etc., if I can "only" attend three panels a day. That would be a huge disappointment, because I really used to love this Con.) The other issue panel-scheduling issue - which may seem small, but could be another deal-breaker for any attendees who actually go to San Diego for the panels – is the conflicts in subject matter. Again, I know the schedulers did their best, but I was left scratching my head when the big Ray Bradbury Tribute was held at the exact same time across the hall from the panel featuring the guy who famously adapted that writer's science fiction stories for EC Comics, Al Feldstein.

"Torchsong" a fellow poster on the Comic Forums, made this comment that was so on-point and funny that I asked to quote it: "Remember how some of you were feeling bad because you couldn't go to Con and you were going to miss out on the MST3K reunion of the entire cast? Well, don't feel bad...we missed out on it as well. In a stroke of absolute genius program scheduling, they scheduled the Venture Brothers one hour before the Robot Chicken panel which was one hour before the MST3K one...and they had the nerve to act surprised that nobody was leaving and the line was outside the building! Finally they just told people the line was closed, they were welcome to wait, but really, it wasn't going to happen. Good job, San Diego, you stay classy!" It is easy to watch the tide turning, as the promotional pennants displayed from lampposts for several square miles around the convention center removed the traditional images of comic characters. In fact, the convention promoters have replaced the cheerful superheroes such as Spider-Man and Superman with the Con's decidedly non-comics motto, "Celebrating the Popular Arts". A real slap in the face.

Don't get me wrong: I love movies. I love movies almost as much as I love comics. In fact, I worked in a movie theater for about five years as a teenager. But I think that the movies' ever-expanding movie (and TV) presence at the venerable Comicon - which celebrated its 40th Anniversary this year) reached critical mass this year. With the capacity crowds, tickets sold out months in advance, and a convention center and staff that never seems to be quite prepared for the crowds – something's got to give. I fear, however, that it will be the comics part of Comicon that is going to be purged first. That sucks.

I'm not the only one crying foul: Chuck Rozanski, the founder and President of one of the largest online comic retailers, Mile High Comics, caused a bit of a stir when his comments lamenting the purge of comics from Comicon were posted online and quoted in the local San Diego newspaper. At Saturday Night's annual SDCC Art Auction benefiting the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the retailer served as auctioneer – as he has done for many years. Rozanski used one of the lulls between auction pieces to share his observations regarding the state of the convention as it affected the comics retailers at the show.

Rozanski's had two main points: 1) The replacement of comics by movies and videogames is illustrative of the general societal shift from actively reading to passively watching. The SciFi Channel and Lucasfilms displays were gigantic and flashy enough to be seen from space, but despite the fact that they were mesmerizing to look at, they did nothing to promote literacy; 2) As more comic vendors give up due to rising costs and dropping profits, their space on the con floor is taken over not by by another comic vendors, but by toy sellers or media companies.

You couldn't find any comics at the comics companies' displays, but you could find plenty of chaos. This was the Marvel booth as hundreds of fans crawled over each other like ants at a picnic to get one of the few remaining freebies, five minutes after the Con officially closed on Sunday evening.

This may seem like a whole lot of suck-it-up, "survival of the fittest" boo-hoo, but keep in mind that "Comicon International" is a non-profit organization and part of its charter is based on the promotion of literacy and the celebration of comic books. What is left of that charge if all the comic books disappear from the Con floor? (I'll give you a hint: The general public in Southern California gets a big Toy and Media Show, and comic readers get to go somewhere else

One argument that has given comic fans some recent consolation is that comic-centered movies serve only to legitimize comics and comic collectors. That's an argument for another time. But one thing I can observe is that blockbuster movies and the omnipresence of giant media companies do not improve the sales of back issues. While hundreds of fans frantically crawled over each other like crows on roadkill to get a free giant tote bag at the WB booth, comics sellers stifled yawns and reduced the prices marked on their hand-made signs.

This is only one of the legs of the winding line of hundreds of fans waiting to get into the Golden Age panel on Thursday. Only five years ago, about 50 of us were treated to the same panel, which consisted of the legendary Julius Schwartz and Ray Bradbury.

I can only speculate, but it seems simple: As the convention packs in more non-comics vendors and therefore, fans, fewer comic collectors or high-end gold or silver-age comics buyers want to brave the crowds. This can only serve to increase the popularity of online sales and auction houses such as Heritage, but it also accelerates the demise of the "mom-and-pop" comics dealers who used to be the backbone of our industry. It is this "Wal-Mart-ization" of the San Diego Comicon that Chuck Rozanski so eloquently rails against in his own newsletters and monthly column in Comics Buyers Guide. The net effect of the mass of humanity at Comicon who couldn't care less about comics, and the systematic elimination of the "small" comics dealers that is making us feel like guests in our own homes.

In addition to the Con Committee's palpable neglect of comics fans and dealers, is the skyrocketing costs for both parties. It's tough to ship out thousands of comics in hundreds of long boxes of a product that you can only sell at $1 or $2 a pop, if even that, because of the dwindling number of potential purchasers. At Saturday night's auction, Rozanski did mention that ten to twenty comics vendors were thinking about not renewing their reservations for space at the 2009 Comicon, and he was considering having Mile High Comics join the retreat.

Finally, all this would merely be an exercise in complaining, if I didn't propose some solutions. Keep in mind that Comicon is a non-profit organization. Although this is a gross over-simplification, all they need to do is make enough money to pay the bills and promote comics. As Rozanski rightly pointed out in a recent newsletter, the Con is clearly bringing in buckets of money, so what they must do now is get back to promoting comics. How? First, take the comic vendors off their desolate island in a far corner of the convention center and put them front and center. Sure, that would annoy Lucasfilms, and require some movie fans to cross the convention center when they want to get the latest free tote-bags, but Who Cares? It isn't called "MovieCon".

Second, provide incentives and reduce fees for exhibitors who actually have something to do with comics. If you actually sell or make comics, you get a break; if not, you pay extra. If an exhibitor wants this advantage, they would actually have to sell or give away comics at your booth. This would actually, you know, promote both comics and literacy. It would also have excluded Marvel this year, where you would never know they had anything to do with comics if you could have gotten that horde. (DC would only marginally qualify, because they did manage to give away a few Con-exclusive sample comics.)

Another solution would be to (further) limit the attendance by reducing ticket sales. Comicon has already done this, which is why 4-day passes were sold out months in advance. But the result of eliminating walk-up ticket sales was to remove the casual fans who just wanted to catch a glimpse of the giant Lego sculptures, and replace them with 100,000 obsessed fanatics on a mission. Take it from this veteran San Diego Con-goer, the underlying mood of the place has gotten very serious in the last few years, with half the attendees crabby from waiting in line outside for two hours and the other half stuck in a logjam in front of the WB booth.

What would happen if any of these solutions were implemented? Well, some fans might not choose to buy advance tickets. Over a few years, attendance may drop to a more manageable level, and the Con might return to that fun comics event from, say, 20 years ago, that I've heard so much about. The big media companies might cry foul, and threaten to take their football and go play elsewhere: Probably Las Vegas, which has a big convention center, thousands of nearby hotel rooms, and where the city actually has the infrastructure to handle this kind of event. The exhibitor exodus is bound to happen anyway when the bloom inevitably comes off the rose. So the Con promoters should be acting now to satisfy its base constituency before the last of those comics sellers, creator, and readers pick up and leave for good.

In addition to fulfilling Comicon's official charter, the end result of these drastic measures might actually be to promote comics and encourage reading. Then Comicon would be fulfilling its mission and we comics fans can actually have our Convention back.