The drive down to San Diego yesterday was brutal. It was more like stacked parking than a freeway out there and my GPS lady kept telling me, "Slow traffic. Slow traffic." Yeah, like I couldn't have figured that out from my speedometer telling me I was racing along at a quarter-mile per hour…and that was in the car pool lane. I often say that Comic-Con is the just about the most fun you can have in this world. Note please that I'm only talking about Comic-Con itself when I say that, not about the ride to or fro.
For that matter, just about every trip I've taken anywhere on any freeway this year has been like that. I thought the economy was in trouble. How are all these people able to afford gasoline?
I didn't have much of a convention today, having to tend to some personal matters and arrangements for weekend panels. But I did do three panels. One was to celebrate 100 years of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Another was the annual Sergio-Mark Show with Sergio Aragonés, Stan Sakai and Tom Luth. How is it that I get my name in the title while Stan and Tom don't? Simple: I write the descriptions for the programming schedule while Stan and Tom don't. Then there was the Two Editors panel.
I was supposed to interview Sid Jacobson (who was the editor for years at Harvey Comics) and Victor Gorelick (who has been the editor for years at Archie Comics). That was a great idea for a panel and it would have been even better if the person who was supposed to tell Sid about the panel had told Sid about the panel. Literally fifteen minutes before it was to commence, when I was sitting on the Sergio/me panel, I received an e-mail from Sid in Los Angeles telling he he'd just heard there was a panel with him sometime during the con and wanted to know when it was.
So…next year at Comic-Con, I will interview Sid Jacobson with or without Victor Gorelick. This year, we had the One Editor(s) panel with just Victor, a hard-working gent who's one of the main reasons Archie and His Pals have been going so strong so long. Victor started at the bottom there — doing art corrections or as he put it, "removing Katy Keene's cleavage and Veronica's navel just to satisfy the Comics Code." He eventually became editor-in-chief of the line and I'm trying to think of anyone else who ever managed that ascent. There may well be one but no names spring to mind. Anyway, I enjoyed my chat with Victor and the audience seemed to but I still wish Sid had been with us.
I didn't get around much of the hall today but the parts I visited seemed peaceful and well-peopled without being crowded. To read some of the press accounts, the convention was abuzz with excitement about this new movie or that new TV show. My sense has always been that 90% of the convention is never abuzz with excitement about any new anything. That's just the construction of press agents and of the entertainment reporters who think "reporting" is a term for the retransmission of press releases.
There have been a few articles lately that said that some of the major movie studios are scaling back their presence at Comic-Con; that they've been disappointed that being a hit at the convention is not translating into huge box office grosses upon release. I suspect those studios are guilty of buying their own bullfeathers. Current special effects artistry being what it is, it's not hard to take any movie that's heavy in such visuals and edit an exciting sizzle reel. Bring it, a couple of star names and some freebee handouts to Comic-Con and you too can get a reaction you can sell as "the hit of Comic-Con." That has its value but it's not going to ward off disaster when the film comes out and people decide it should be shown at poison control centers to induce vomiting.
That's it from Comic-Con Nation for now. Tomorrow kicks off me with a tribute panel for Joe Simon and Jerry Robinson. Miss those guys already.