This year was, in reduced form, the 51st Comic-Con in San Diego…and to the extent I "attended" by being on four panels, I "attended" my fifty-first.
One of the things I've learned about Comic-Con is that it's a real smorgasboard of expectations and thrills. If 130,000 people are there, there might just be 130,000 different answers to the question, "What do/did you want to see happen?" As I've said so many times I'm sick of hearing me say it, you have to pretty much make your own convention because there are dozens of different ones going on there at the same time. Find the one you want in that building and you can have a wonderful time.
Of course, it may be a little difficult to do that when you can't get into that building. Like this year.
I may have heard 130,000 different complaints about the con. That's not counting the biggie, which is "I tried and tried and couldn't get a badge to attend." This year's con succeeded wildly in not having that complaint. But other years, I've heard a lot of folks complain that they went to make some connection that would result in some form of employment and that didn't happen. I've heard "I have this list of comics I need and I couldn't find half of them and the half I could find were way overpriced." And that didn't happen.
A woman complained to me once that all she wanted was to meet and get a selfie with Leonard Nimoy and he was there but the lines to meet him were too long and he left before she got to him. Another woman another year complained that she wanted to meet William Shatner but he wasn't there that year.
The topper may have been the guy who complained to me not that long ago that there was no Golden Age Panel featuring people who wrote and drew comics in the 1940s. I asked him who we should have gotten to attend the con and appear on such a panel and a conversation ensued that went kind of like this: He named a Golden Age Artist or Writer. I said, "He's dead."
He named a Golden Age Artist or Writer. I said, "He's dead."
He named a Golden Age Artist or Writer. I said, "He's dead."
We went around like that about nine times and finally, he named someone who's still alive and said, "He isn't dead, right?" I said, "Right but he's 97 and he can't walk and he's in a nursing home in Florida." I think the guy felt that Comic-Con should have sent a limo for him.
What am I getting at here is that everyone has different things that they want to see or experience at Comic-Con and too many of then act like the whole convention should only be about that. Which brings us to a very silly, narrow-visioned article in Variety called 'Why Comic-Con 'At Home' Was a Bust." Here's why, according to this piece: Its online videos that were promotional vehicles for TV shows and movies didn't attract enough viewers in the estimation of Adam B. Vary.
And I'm not even faulting Mr. Vary, who is "a senior entertainment writer covering the business of genre storytelling and fandom across movies, television and streaming platforms." Variety has never cared much about anything at Comic-Con but movies, television and streaming platforms. Neither have his two previous places of employment, Buzzfeed and Entertainment Weekly. If that Oprah Winfrey magazine had assigned a reporter to cover Comic-Con, he or she would probably be disappointed that the con didn't do a great job promoting Oprah.
In the days leading up to Comic-Con's online version, Mr. Vary wrote a series of articles about what he considered the major events. They were all about the Star Trek panel, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Charlize Theron, Joss Whedon, this new series on HBO Max, that new series on Amazon Prime, Stumptown, The Simpsons, Nathan Fillion, etc. The closest he got to mentioning comic books or anything printed on paper (you know, like Variety used to be) was telling when the Eisner Awards ceremony was and promoting a panel on the challenges of adapting comic books to the screen.
It really isn't isn't that much different from the lady who thought Comic-Con was a failure because she didn't get her selfie with Leonard Nimoy.
I probably don't have to point out that nothing in Comic-Con's mission statement was ever about disseminating promotional videos by which HBO and Netflix can promote their products. If there was a failure to attract enough attention to them, how do you think all the dealers who count on Comic-Con as a place to sell books and artwork and crafts and COMIC BOOKS feel about the impact on their businesses? Keanu Reeves has other places he can promote his new movies. He'll do just fine. So will Netflix and Amazon and Fox and all the others.
Nor do I have to point this out but I will: The kind of panels Mr. Vary cares about would have happened, had they happened this year, in either Hall H or Ballroom 20 at Comic-Con. Hall H seats 6,000. Ballroom 20 seats 4,900. Most of the panels that he says underperformed online had a lot more viewers than that.
And while no one can say how many people would cram into Hall H for any given event if the room had infinite seating…well, Comic-Con welcomes about 130,000 people each year. Clearly, one of the most popular, hard-to-get-into events in the world attracts a lot of people — I'd guess an overwhelming majority — who never go near the kinds of superstar promotional panels that are all Comic-Con represents to reporters who cover movies, television and streaming platforms. And who measure success by how many people tweeted about something…because, you know, Comic-Con fails if it doesn't create buzz for Disney-Plus.
In fairness, as they say, Variety's reporter acknowledges "if Comic-Con [at] Home achieved anything, it was revealing the abiding truth that there is no substitute for the live experience." What I don't get is why he thinks that anyone thought it would be. Did any sentient human being on this planet think that? I don't know. Are there people who think that watching PornHub is a substitute for the live experience?
Well, maybe if that's all that's available at the moment…