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Five Ways to Solve the Paradox of Comic Con
San Francisco, 5:53 PM
Mon Dec 14
23 posts in the last 24 hours
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02/09/09
02/08/09
All of those are genuinely feasible, except: no more models clogging up the con floor.
In all seriousness, the world has to put a limit on SWAG. Useless, peripheral garbage.
02/09/09
HEAR, FUCKING HEAR.
02/08/09
I go to comic cons to dig through long boxes and buy comics. I go to game cons to play games and hang out with people and find all kinds of cool, weird new things.
02/08/09
I'm going to be hitting up Wondercon this year and I have to admit, I'm not all that excited about it. It's usually the same (sad) row of "celebrities" and a bunch of "look but don't touch" booths. And the lines! Ugh, the lines.
When I went to PAX I saw a lot of the same stuff (mostly because it's been gaining steam since E3 lost its flare) but what I really liked were the interactive elements. It wasn't just a boring trade show, it was something made by fans, for fans. Which meant that a lot of the convention rooms were littered with hundreds of consoles playing anything you could possibly imagine. There was also a whole floor designated for Nintendo DS play in which you could borrow any game you wanted. There were even tabletop games! My point is that fans want something to truly remember the experience by. We're tired of lame oversized t-shirts and stupid figurines. Give us something new, I'd certainly pay for it.
And by "something new" I mean a sexy parade of male cosplayers all dressed as Leon from Resident Evil 4. There, I said it.
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I haven't been to a Worldcon in a couple of years (sigh) but the last one I went to in L.A. did have the live performances. There was a small stage adjacent to the dealer's room/display area and they had short plays, improv groups, and so forth. It was near a feeding station so you could grab some food-like substances and watch live entertainment.
Many cons have live groups entertaining during intermission at the masquerade; there was a Westercon that had a very funny comedy group that actually kept everyone in the room.
I know I've been at cons that have had the live interactive stuff, be it scavenger hunts or stuff as mentioned above.
I think the traditional literary-based (*cough*REAL*cough) volunteer cons do things better than the gigantic for-profit monstrosities like ComicCon. They have to.
In conclusion, support your local SF cons. Generally cheaper, more imaginative, and way less overcrowded. You can usually get one-on-one time with your favorite people, even!
Check the wonderful graphic calendar io9 puts up every month or the definitive-ish list at Locus.
[www.locusmag.com]
And have some maple syrup for me this year at Worldcon.
(it's in Montreal, and is the 67th)
02/08/09
But everything else I agree with, including the sexy dudes. I'm hetrosexual and even I got tired of the endless amounts of boobs. Never can get enough ass though. I'm black... I have standards.
It all seems like people are just going with the flow at those things, even famous artists. I haven't seen Alex Ross' booth change since 2000, only in regards to his background poster, and size. Sometimes, he's not even there.
Are there any SciFi cons!? Maybe they could throw one of those dedicated to the Science Fiction arts and possibly, we could see some progression in the convention format out of those. CES always gets bigger and bigger, sometimes branching out to unconventional territories, but those are exclusive. We need something less exclusive and more intuitive... and bigger. SD Comic-Con is like swimming in a sea of sweat and sweat people.
02/08/09
Comic, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Whatever...it doesn't matter what you call it, it will still attract essentially the same crowd of people. And there will still be a bunch of them whose lease will expire before they finally get around to buying a shower curtain. We have a fairly modest Comic-Con that runs twice a year in the local area, and I once looked up the page for volunteers. They specifically said that volunteers are expected to bathe themselves. And they followed it up by adding "yes, we're serious".
It's just part of the fanhood, and there's really not anything that can be done to fix it short of threatening to kill anyone who steps through the door with even a hint of BO (and even then, some of the people I've seen at my rather limited experience with Cons will probably work up a sweat just toweling themselves off afterwards).
But to give you an idea just how weird the fandom can get, I went to the last House of Bricks event, which was held in conjunction with what also turned out to be the final 2BeContinued event (the irony was not lost on us). They had a panel there that sounded like it could be amusing (it wasn't), and one of the things that stuck with me was how an older couple, who looked and acted like they could have been married for most of my life, spent ten minutes lamenting the fact that neither of them could get laid to save their lives. The were both fugly, but apparently they had standards that were much higher than their own appearances, such that the blatantly obvious solution wasn't even considered.
And really, the biggest change that you're likely to see by switching to a Sci-Fi theme is that you'll have the TV/movie generations (anyone who grew up on Star Wars or younger), and you'll have the bitter old coots who hate what popular sci-fi TV/movies did to the future of old-school sci-fi. They won't get along very well, they'll be there for and expect different things, and likely noone will walk away happy. If you want a sci-fi con that will actually be popular, call it a comic-con instead, or pick a single IP.
02/08/09
bwa ha ha ha hahah!
Oh, sorry. Where do you think Comic-con got the idea? Cons started back in the late 1930's. There's a convention or three every weekend somewhere in North America. Check it:
[www.locusmag.com]
02/08/09
And there are plenty of single IP conventions -- check the link I gave, there's one just for Jordan's "Wheel of Time" books. There are about a million anime cons (everything from Naruto to gay anime, where you do see the naked men), cons just about writing, dozens of filk cons, Star Trek or Wars only stuff, gaming cons where you can roll your D12 off, comics conventions without movies, and of course the furries have their conventions.
There's something for everyone out there.
Comic-Cons' problem is they're trying to appeal to too many people, and getting too many.
02/09/09
2BeContinued was held in Chicago, and I only went because House of Bricks was run in conjunction with it. When 2BeCon went down in flames, HoB was reborn as Brickworld, which is now bigger than 2BeCon probably ever was. Aside from that, I've been to GenCon twice (both times in Milwaukee), participated in LEGO displays at two different Motor City Comic-Cons, and I went to a very small, one-room startup Con in Grand Rapids...once (I was led to believe it would be _much_ larger than it actually was).
But mostly it's from 2BeCon, where most of the attendees were either bitter old coots or high-school cosplayers. And the most they had in common with each other was the fact that they were wearing the same badges. It's not that there was any open animosity (not that I noticed, at least), but just that there was this odd feeling like it was two unrelated events that got scheduled to run at the same time in the same place.
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Also, if a unicorn 'deflowers' a virgin, she loses her 'purity' and would be unable to see the unicorn again. It's the ultimate fuck-and-run!
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02/08/09
Not to mention the former virgin's total unfulfillment.
It'll all end in tears.
02/08/09