Comic-Con #50 lasted four days — five if you count the three-hour Preview Night. I shouldn't be spending five days recovering from it.
Still, I loved…well, I won't say I loved every minute of it. I didn't like being knocked down by a cosplayer with the I.Q. of a bran muffin and I didn't like the decibel levels at the Batman party which could have rousted Adam West. But the rest of it, no matter how tiring, was great. As I keep saying, I couldn't live at the pace all year round or even for two consecutive weeks…but it's fun to not be bored for a nanosecond from Wednesday at 6 PM through the following Sunday at 5.
I didn't see much of the hall and there must have been fifty people there I wanted to talk with but never saw, along with thousands of others I'd have enjoyed meeting. Still, Comic-Con days are often the favorite days of my year. If you've never been because the crowd reports scare you, just know that I don't think that's a good reason…and the overpopulation is really not that bad if (a) you're wise enough to stay out of certain aisles, (b) you don't demand entrance the second the hall opens and (c), you don't absolutely, positively, you'll-die-if-you-don't need to see the "hottest" panels with the biggest stars.
Photo by Bruce Guthrie
I'm not trying to talk you into going. Obviously, a convention that sells out in 38 minutes (or however long it took this year) doesn't need your business and you might not get a pass if you did decide to go. Just don't be afraid of it for that reason. The crowds are there because it's a great place to be. Would a convention that no one wanted to attend tempt you?
This year, I really enjoyed the panels on the history of Comic-Con and I wished I hadn't been scheduled against some of the ones I wasn't on and would like to have seen. I moderated two and appeared on two others and I truly enjoyed hearing about all the volunteerism and hard, hard work that went into making Comic-Con exist. A lot of folks were involved and any article or new story that credits only a few is just plain inaccurate.
Contrary to what some people seem to think, I was not a founder of the con in any sense. I have never been an employee, paid or otherwise, nor have I ever been on a committee. I have nothing but gratitude and respect for those who really did do the work. I'm just a guy who shows up every year and who began doing an increasing number of programming items. I believe I did my first one at the fifth Comic-Con, which was held Aug 16–19, 1973 at the Sheraton Hotel on Harbor Island.
There might have been one the year before at the first of the cons to be held at the legendary El Cortez Hotel. They kept sticking something called The Writers Panel on the schedule without any thought as to what was to be discussed. Was it how to write comics? Why to write comics? How to get a job writing comics? It usually turned out to be a discussion on the business problems of the industry and why we were all writing in such narrow areas, all the time envisioning how much more the field could be.
Photo by Bruce Guthrie
If I wasn't on a Writers Panel at the El Cortez in '72, then I'm right in remembering my first as a Writers Panel on Harbor Island in '73. That Sheraton didn't have large rooms available for panels so it was just Mike Friedrich and me talking to about twenty people in a space that couldn't have accommodated many more than that.
I did more in succeeding years, including a lot more directionless Writers Panels. But around 1977, I began to find myself getting (gasp!) bored at Comic-Con. I have always hated the idea of sitting behind a table all day and signing my name or, worse, selling something. In 50 years, I've never taken anything to the con to sell because (a) I don't really have anything to sell and (b) I wanted to enjoy the con and not be concerned with how much cash I was taking in. I'm not knocking vendors in the slightest just as I'm not knocking folks who like to sit and sign comics, either for free or dough. I just never had the urge to be one.
So what do you do at the con if you don't do that? I got tired and I got sore feet and for a time there, I was skipping the first day of the con and heading home after lunch on Sunday. Then I began doing more than the two or three panels per con I'd been doing.
If you want to blame anyone, blame the fine comic artist Al Williamson. He was a guest in 1984 and as was and still is the custom, he was expected to do a "spotlight" panel talking about his own work. We'd spent a lot of time talking before its scheduled time and when that time arrived, he said to me, "I don't know how to get up there and talk about what I do. Why don't you come in and interview me?" I did, it went well and soon, the convention was using me as the solution when some guest said, "I don't know how to get up there and talk about what I do."
And voila! I had something to do at the con and places to sit down instead of roaming the hall for three days. I went back to arriving on the first day and staying 'til the end. And then one day, I suggested that I do a panel interviewing actors who do voices for cartoons and someone else suggested this thing we do called Quick Draw! and I took over moderating the Golden Age Panel, which the con featured as long as it still had guests who'd worked on comic books in the forties…
So that's the answer to a question I get asked a lot. I like doing 'em. I liked doing 'em this year for sure. While I still have the con in my head, I'll try to write about a few more of this year's.