The 2024 Comic-Con International in San Diego officially sold out last weekend. There may be a few opportunities in the coming months to score badges but for the most part, the con is sold out.
The two biggest complaints I hear about Comic-Con are probably "It's impossible to get tickets" and "It's too crowded." Those kind of cancel each other out. If they made more tickets available, it would be even more crowded. Or if it was less crowded, it would be even harder to get tickets. Some folks don't seem to grasp that buildings have capacities and fire laws.
A friend I know asked me, "Wouldn't it be great if they could somehow double the size of that convention center?" Well, maybe. But they'd also have to double — preferably, more than double — the number of available hotel rooms and parking spaces and places to eat and also widen the roads in and around that area and get the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner to put on about twenty more train cars and airline tickets to San Diego that weekend are already hard to get just before the con…
…and there would still be people who couldn't score badges and the prices would probably be even pricier. It's just a basic fact o' life: Disneyland is always crowded and always expensive. You may not be able to get a ticket to the Super Bowl and if you can, it'll cost you a bloody fortune. Times Square is packed on New Year's Eve. Some stores have long lines on Black Friday. Las Vegas just had its big Formula One Grand Prix race in November and you don't want to know what a mess that was.
And way more people will always want to attend Comic-Con than that convention center can hold.
Which brings me to the third complaint: "There isn't enough at Comic-Con about comic books." I think there's always a lot of it and some people just don't notice it or don't like that there's nothing about the particular comics that interest them. Before I delve more deeply into this topic, I want to quote something I wrote here after the 2009 Comic-Con…
One [guy] actually came up to me on Sunday and started bitching about all the focus on the movies and the Hollywood celebs and such. Now, my attitude about the Comic-Con (oft-stated) is that the con is really a dozen or more cons rolled into one. There's an anime con in that building, an animation art con, a small press con, a Golden Age comics con, a gaming con, etc. Some of them don't interest me in the slightest so I sidestep those aisles and find the con I want to attend. I always seem to be able to find it. Unless you're dying to attend a sparsely-attended gathering, the one you seek is in there somewhere. Don't let all those other conventions annoy you or distract you.
But this guy was upset that so much of the Comic-Con wasn't about comics and he felt, I guess, that I'd concur and would rush off to do something about it…maybe throw Robert Downey Jr out of the hall or something. Instead, I told him about that great panel we did on the Golden Age of Batman with Jerry Robinson, Sheldon Moldoff and Lew Schwartz. If you're interested in the history of comics, it doesn't get any more historical than that. I then said to this fellow who was complaining about the con not being about that kind of thing, "I didn't see you there."
And so help me, he replied, "I couldn't be there. I had to get in line to see the 24 panel with Kiefer Sutherland."
For those who don't know: Moldoff, Robinson and Schwartz were the three main artists who ghosted for Bob Kane from Batman's inception until the mid-sixties.
For many years at Comic-Con, I interviewed folks like that either individually or on the annual Golden Age Panel. At one point, I renamed it The Golden and Silver Age Panel because we were running out of folks who qualified under the old name. Eventually, we stopped the panel altogether because there were simply not enough folks to put on it. Most had passed away and the few who remained were unwilling, or maybe just unable to travel to the con.
This year, I had the pleasure — and it really was one — to interview Barbara Friedlander, who worked on DC's romance comics from around 1964 until 1970. I suspect that of the 130,000+ human beings who were in that convention hall that weekend, she had the oldest credits in mainstream comic books. If there was anyone else, I can't think of who it could have been.
The scary thought is to wonder who was in second place: Name the person who attended that con who had the oldest credits in mainstream comic books after Barbara. I have the chilling feeling it may have been me. I got in in 1970.
Now, of course, it's possible to do panels about comics before 1970 by having scholars and folks who grew up on those comics talk about them. There are such panels, some very interesting…but they rarely draw huge crowds. A bunch of guys like me talking about Will Eisner is not the same as the panels we used to do with the real Will Eisner.
And, yes: We do draw a pretty large audience each year for the annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. But there aren't many people in comic book history who attract that kind of attention without being present. Steve Ditko is probably on that list…but even if you'd staged a panel about Mr. Ditko's work when he was alive, he wouldn't have been there.
So you might say, "Well, how about panels with folks who wrote and drew comics in the seventies and eighties?" A fine question…and I have to tell you that for several recent cons, I tried to put together panels for the seventies and I've given up. I didn't even attempt it for this last con but during those four days, I'm pretty sure I didn't run into enough with the right work experience to fill out a seventies panel.
There actually are some reasons for that. Right now, a lot of such folks are making some good money by attending for-profit conventions. Comic-Con International is a non-profit affair. They pay absolutely no one an appearance fee to attend. They only pay for transportation and lodging for a very small number of invited guests each year. They do not give lots of famous people lots of free exhibit space to sell autographs and photos. Some cons even guarantee their celebrity-type guests will make X dollars in sales. Comic-Con doesn't do that.
I'm not knocking either kind of con one bit. I like that friends of mine have the source of income and attention they get at most other cons. But most other cons need celebrity guests to draw attendees. Comic-Con International sells out instantly each year before they've announced a single guest. In fact, their invited guests are selected mainly because the con wants to honor and promote those people, not because any of them has a hit movie or a top-selling comic book. It's a different game altogether.
Still, there will always be plenty of people at the con who do comics and next year, there will be more actors and movie stars because there won't be a strike. Because it's Comic-Con International. Some of us just plain want to be there even if there's no money in it. It's that kind of experience.