Borys Kit of The Hollywood Reporter agrees with me that the Comic-Con International oughta stay in San Diego, and comes up with some other good reasons why.
But I will quibble with one thing. I've been going to these cons since they began and watched them morph from primitive events where the attendees were all teenage boys and the big topic was who should be in the Legion of Super-Heroes. The con has turned into a place where major filmmakers and stars and writers and artists and the movers 'n' shakers of the entertainment industry converge, and the hall is full of adults and families and even attractive women. Isn't it about time we drop this stupid "geek" talk, like everyone there is sexually retarded and living in their parents' basement?
It's bad enough that every video news report trains its cameras almost wholly on the half-a-percent of folks roaming the halls in bizarre costumes. I mean, I understand that slant. It's the first and only approach that would occur to a really shallow, go-for-the-easy-story reporter…but I've largely come to expect that on the news.
What I don't get is why no one seems to have grasped that the real story is that the attendees aren't geeks; that they're the target audience for mainstream entertainment for all ages and probably a lot smarter and hipper than you'd find at the average shopping mall anywhere in this country. The comic book industry is catering to a more adult crowd and defining much of Hollywood's future…and journalists are recycling all the old jokes about Star Trek fans of the seventies not being able to get a date.
I'm not even sure what the word "geek" means in this day and age but it has something to do with being outta-sync with the tastes and interests of the majority. Which does raise the question of how long movies like Iron Man and The Dark Knight have to be Number Uno at the box office before it dawns on some people that it's all popular culture, emphasis on the word "popular."