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It’s been a few years since my last SDCC.\u00a0 What’s changed? What’s the same? Will success kill the San Diego Comic-Con?<\/p>\nIt’s been a few years since my last SDCC.\u00a0 What’s changed? What’s the same? Will success kill the San Diego Comic-Con?<\/p>\n
What’s changed?<\/p>\n
Well, it’s bigger. More crowded, it felt. Certainly a bigger mediapalooza.<\/p>\n
What’s the same?<\/p>\n
For all the worries about the media ruining the Con, it did feel like the majority of the Con (if you carve out the center quarter of the dealer floor) was still about comics.\u00a0 You could search out that missing issue of Uncanny X-Men <\/em>#137, or a graphic novel you might have let slip by.\u00a0 Or that anime or manga.\u00a0 Or a collection of your favorite webcomic.\u00a0 Or hats and tchotchkes and t-shirts …<\/p>\n Oh, yeah, t-shirts. Since when did they build t-shirt arcologies inside the convention center?\u00a0 My God, they TOWERED TO THE SKY.\u00a0 I would have worried about their collapsing, except people would be only buried in nice, soft t-shirts.<\/p>\n Fewer (bootleggish) video stalls.\u00a0 Only one big one, really.\u00a0 I was tempted by a few things, but …<\/p>\n Steampunk costumes — and costume stalls — were more common than in the past.<\/p>\n Plenty of art (comic, fine, and otherwise).\u00a0 Artist’s Alley was there (a bit scrunched, and not well laid out), as were more elaborate artist and artist consortium booths.\u00a0 The publisher booths were all there, too — though Marvel’s was kind of goofy (dominated by an Odin throne, a large chunk of their Marvel Super Heroes MMO, and then a couple of signing tables), while DC’s was more traditional.<\/p>\n Lots of Big Media there — cable TV channels, movie studios, toy companies, and the like.\u00a0 Oh, and video game companies.\u00a0 That central part of the hall was the most difficult to get around most days (though it thinned out in the later hours on Friday and Saturday, and was pretty decent Wednesday night and Thursday\/Sunday).<\/p>\n But, in generally, the floor was much like it was — crowded, and full of More Cool Stuff Than You Could Ever Have Hoped.<\/p>\n Since last time, the Con has figured out all sorts of clever\u00a0 ways to manage crowds in the NW end of the meeting area (rooms 1-6).\u00a0 One-way corridors, clever line queues, etc., all helped a lot, even though the line breaks they would run when a queue had to cross a hallway were run for just a little bit too long.\u00a0 The SE (the rooms in the 20s) end was a bit less organized, but still pretty decent — unless you were going into one of the Big Halls — Hall H or Ballroom 20.\u00a0 Then you could expect to get in line with some thousands of your closest friends, said lines snaking around outside (with some good tents to provide shade) in a way that could only make your heart sink.\u00a0 (Room 6CDE on the opposite end was almost as bad).<\/p>\n But, really, you could have a very enjoyable Con without venturing into those huge halls.\u00a0 Yeah, you’d miss the ginormous movie premieres, or getting to see Harrison Ford or Angelina Jolie, or Joss Whedon — but you’d still have plenty of other panels (some surprisingly crowded, some surprisingly not) to attend.<\/p>\n There seemed to be fewer costumes this year than in the past.\u00a0 There will still plenty, but, it felt, not as many.\u00a0 I ranked costumes, mentally, as follows:<\/p>\n Going in costume would be fun, but you have to be ready to strike a pose at the drop of a hat, plus, if you plan on doing anything, make sure it’s a costume y0u can maneuver around crowded halls in, shop in, sit in panels in …<\/p>\n Needless to say, there were still plenty of folks who weren’t sufficiently aware that they did not possess the appropriate body type for given costumes.\u00a0 One very nicely done Captain Marvel, Jr., along with two kids as Captain and Mary Marvel respectively, did not get a picture taken largely because he looked more like, um, a young Uncle <\/em>Marvel.<\/p>\n We dodged the bullet on parking this year.\u00a0 We stayed, of course, with Mary, our friend in town.\u00a0 She pre-bought parking at one of the surface lots and at the Hilton, so we could always just drive in and park without searching around.\u00a0 Not sure how most people did it, but it worked for us.<\/p>\n Buildings draped in ads for coming movies were big (the Marriott, the Omni, and the Hilton all had it).<\/p>\n So, is success going to ruin the Con?<\/p>\n Granted that they are now at their capped size, even with spilling over into a couple of the neighboring hotels for meeting space, the Con can’t grow much in terms of attendance without either the Convention Center expanding, or the Con itself moving.\u00a0 Anaheim seems to be a leading contender, but as I contemplated it, I think that would be a huge mistake for the Con.\u00a0 They could fit — and draw — more people, but the atmosphere of the area surrounding the Anaheim Convention Center is very different from that of San Diego’s downtown and Gaslamp District.\u00a0 The Con would be come … well, just another convention — big, but fully commercialized and fully impersonal, with no idiosyncratic charm.\u00a0 I’m sure the LA media and Hollywood would love for it all to be closer — but they’re willing to make the trip now, so what the value to Comic-Con International would be is difficult to figure out.<\/p>\n (The same argument applies to Los Angeles proper.\u00a0 Las Vegas, another alternative, is just silly.)<\/p>\n I was heartened, within the bounds of what I saw, that the media madness didn’t seem to be destroying what folks were there for.\u00a0 Yes, the OMGOMGISAWHARRISONFORD!!!!! factor was there for some, but it really seemed that most folks really were there for the core Comic Book and (by extension) SF\/Fantasy worlds, and that still commanded a majority of the space.\u00a0 That was encouraging. As long as that stays the heart of what they’re doing, the Con will remain something special.<\/p>\n And it probably won’t be next year, but we’ll be back there soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n