Darth Vader, Green Lantern, Spiderman and Princess Lea Hang at Comic Con 2005
New York needn’t envy San Diego, which became the epicenter of the geek world last month when it hosted Comic Con International – because it will get its shot in 2006. That’s when its sister show, New York Comic Con (brought to you by Reed Expo and heavily sponsored by Diamond), will come to the Javits Center for the first time, letting East Coast locals experience first hand the Nirvana of the Nerds.
But we digress…More than 94,000 fans from all over journeyed to the 460,000 square foot California event to celebrate all things many consider to be best left in the dark: A Halloween night without the tricks, Darth Vader mingling with a Green Lantern, and Spiderman chatting up a Goth girl as she posed next to her Princess Leia as “slave girl” friend.
Nothing new for Comic Con, a stalwart show in its 36th year – yet, something new for the BEA going bunch, where Ben Franklin was the only full-costume character who popped up more than once. Comic Con is finally being recognized by industries across the board as the new focal point of pop culture. One movie studio flew out their A-list director from Australia (in the middle of shooting next year’s hopeful blockbuster Superman Returns) to speak to some 6,500 devoted fans. Video game companies, toy companies, cable channels (the Sci Fi Network had an impressive booth at the con) have jumped on the bandwagon to see if some of the excitement originally created by comic books, their creators and their fans, would rub off on them.
The latest industry to crane its head in the direction of Comic Con is the “mainstream” publishing industry. Although Del Rey picked up on the show years ago, at this year’s event publishers from Scholastic to Simon & Schuster Children’s Books exhibited, all getting on the graphic novel train. Comic Con should be a lesson for the staid publishing industry, as it is the only “trade show” that is aimed squarely at the fans, with some business being conducted on the side.
As one correspondent who is in the graphic novel industry, told PT, “Frankly I think that mainstream publishing may be so out of touch with the fans that I am not sure that the passion exists for these books, and maybe that’s the problem with publishing. We all talk to each other, to buyers, to marketing and we may even have some research to let us know who is reading our books. But these are numbers, not interactions with real people. This attention to the fan is what I believe has kept comics and will keep graphic novels alive, even in hard times.”
He continues, “Imagine if you will a BEA, open to fans, where publishing showcases their best and the brightest they have to offer. How many would show up? How many would dress up like their favorite characters? Is this the type of passion that needs to be ignited in publishing in order to survive the hard times and build for the future?”
There is hope for traditional publishers. Or, they must be doing something right: the same weekend as Comic Con convened, the latest Harry Potter was released and sold seven million copies. We’re beginning to think there’s a definite connection between costumes and cash flow…
PT thanks our secret Comic Con correspondent, He Who Wishes Not to Be Named, for contributing this piece.
