Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett draws conclusions from this year's Comic-Con.Well, Comic-Con, what Stephen Colbert recently called "the super bowl of marketing" has once again come and gone and once again I followed it via the Internet where every conceivable media outlet had their own idiosyncratic take on it. BusinessNewsDaily gave us "10 Comic-Con Career Lessons," consisting of such self-evident axioms as "Be your best self," "Show your enthusiasm" and "Market yourself." Out of course focused on "Chris Hemsworth's guns, Stephen Amell's abs and more," the "more" ranging from "the queer side of comics to your favorite TV ships." And Access Hollywood showcased this year's inexplicable fashion parade of fantastically out of place big name female actors in a piece called "Glam Slam: Comic-Con Gets Chic." Most favored basic black and cropped tops though Cate Blanchett "choose a pretty pink and cream silk dress with a black waist accent and back pumps for her first time at the fan fest."
Some of them, including Katey Sagal, Sarah Paulson, Tatiana Maslany and Natalie Dormer, appeared on "The Women Who Kick Ass" panel which got its own share of coverage (The Daily Beast declared that this "Comic-Con's Year of the Kickass Woman"). You can watch it yourself over on YouTube. And the sexual harassment of cosplayers, which if the online Washington Post piece by Lindsey Bever is to be believed, is now being called "Creeping at a con," was also covered in a surprising number of news outlets. I would like to think that increased awareness will result in the problem being taken more seriously, though given the way so many of those reports designated the activity as mere "misbehavior" I'm not overly optimistic.
I have never been much for panels; the crowds, the noise, etc., it's just a lot easier (and more comfortable) to read about them after the fact. But one I really wish I could have attended was "Where is the Love? The Strange Disappearance of Romance Comics." It's a subject I myself have often speculated upon, my theory being that at least one reason they disappeared was the romance comic never evolved past the anthology format the way that superhero, western and war comics did. But in a recap posted on The Beat website Michelle Nolan, author of Love on the Racks: A History of American Romance Comics, has a different answer. She's quoted as saying "The one thing that killed the romance comic was the birth control pill."
And there were of course loads of recaps and best of lists, stories with subtitles like "here's what it was like," "best stars, trailers and costumes," "biggest reveal," and even how to "plan now for next year." The one I found most interesting, though, was "Comic-Con 2014: Hollywood's Highs, Lows and No-Shows" by Marc Graser, which appeared in Variety. It recapped the various studios' marketing campaigns for their upcoming genre movies; if they worked they would spread "positive word-of-mouth like wildfire across social media platforms." But if they didn't, well, "If you can't get the Comic-Con crowd to want to see your film, you're pretty dead in the water." Then after establishing that this year’s trend was for studios to screen some of their releases the author asked, "Is Comic-Con evolving to the newest niche film festival?" To which I can only reply, "Well, duh."
Of course Comic-Con is now a film festival, the same way it's also a fashion show. It's also about TV shows and cosplay and then, maybe, maybe, it's about comics. Let's face it, comic books are now the tail that wags the dog of this festival, and because what the festival is really all about is money, it's kind of understandable that comics have become an afterthought. No matter how respectable "nerd culture" becomes, the members of that society are still going to be looked down on as low class and low rent. Because we spend what money we have on the things we love and not meals at four star restaurants, at least that's the considered opinion of a New York Times piece by Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes titled "Large Crowds Spend Little at Comic-Con."
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com
