On Friday, I reported that the operators of Comic-Con International in San Diego had won a trademark suit against the operators of the Salt Lake City Comic Con. I don't know enough about the law or what was argued in court to say if this was a just verdict or not but I'm getting a lot of e-mail from folks who think it was wrong because the Big Guy beat the Little Guy. I'll admit that I am sometimes suspicious of lawsuits that are won by the side with the most money but they're not always wrong and the Salt Lake City event ain't that little a Little Guy.
I also don't see why anyone is fearful of the impact of this verdict. Can't the Boise Comic Con (if there is such a gathering) rename itself the Boise Comic Fest or the Boise Media Con and proceed without much of a speed bump? Are a lot of people going to go, "It's a Comic Fest? Oh, no! I only go to Comic Cons"? There are plenty of successful enterprises around the country that could call themselves "Comic Cons" and don't: Heroes Con, DragonCon, WonderCon, Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo, Megacon, etc. Still, a lot of folks seem worried that the group in San Diego now wields some undeserved power to control the industry and wipe out its competitors. I don't see how anything is going to change except one or two words in some conventions' names.
I also don't get these negative feelings some people seem to have about the Comic-Con in San Diego. If you don't like crowds, I get that but you might as well bad-mouth Disneyland or the Super Bowl and see how much that changes anything. Understand that crowded places are crowded because they please so many and that you don't have to go. I do get that there are those who are angry they can't secure badges for Comic-Con but I'm afraid that's the nature of the beast. The convention center can only hold so many people and if ten times that number want to go, a lot of people are simply going to be turned away.
I have dealt with Comic-Con since its inception. In 2019, I expect to attend my fiftieth (!!!) installment of this institution — one of maybe a half-dozen people who can say they've been to every one of them.
(Brief interruption to say something out of what Daffy Duck used to call, sheer honesty:) Before Comic-Con started under another name, its organizers had a one-day mini-con as a kind of warm-up exercise. I didn't go to that. Also, there was a period when my interest in Comic-Con faltered a bit and I began skipping the first day or the last day. I no longer do that but my pal Scott Shaw!, who had to miss one year for medical reasons, has been to more total days of Comic-Con than I have.)
Anyway, I know Comic-Con and I know the people behind it. They're great, hard-working men and women who work for a non-profit organization. I put that in italics because a lot of the convention's detractors either don't know that or hear it and don't seem to know what that term means. It means the people who run the con do not pocket large amounts of cash. Almost all of the other comic conventions — the good ones and the bad ones — are run for profit. There's nothing wrong with that — I like a lot of the conventions that aren't non-profit — but don't confuse which are which.
A month or three ago, I got a call from an agent who books celebrities into conventions — celebs who will sign autographs or pose for selfies for large fees. He told me he had recently booked a Superstar Client into one con for a $50,000 guarantee, meaning that said Superstar was guaranteed first-class transportation, a luxury suite, food and beverage expenses and a take-home haul of at least $50,000 for the weekend. The agent wanted me to tell him who to contact about Comic-Con International because, as he put it, "They have more than twice the attendance of our last con so I figure I can hit them up for $100,000 at least!"
I told him he would be wasting a phone call. "San Diego doesn't do that."
He thought either I was nuts or they were…or maybe both. He kept explaining they con would get to advertise his client's appearance and that would bring swarms of people to their doors. "What convention wouldn't kill for that?" he asked.
I replied, "A convention that completely sells out each year months in advance without advertising any of its guests. In fact, Comic-Con usually sells out in less than two hours. They don't have any place to put your swarms." (Early reports peg this year's sell-out, which occurred yesterday, at 64 minutes. A new world's record!)
I also explained to him that very few celebrities at Comic-Con make megabucks signing autographs there. There are too many other things competing for fans' dollars, including some pretty famous people who sign without charging to promote their books or TV shows or movies. (Some of them, of course, are paid by publishers or studios to be there and sign. The point is that if the casts of The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones are signing for free across the aisle from you, folks might be a little less eager to fork over $100 for your signature.)
The agent did not like any of this and I don't know if he even contacted Comic-Con. Conventions, by the way, often get a cut of what the celebrity autographers take in…and San Diego still doesn't do that.
Getting back to the battle royale over the name "Comic-Con," I don't know who is right in the decision insofar as the law is concerned. Maybe it will get appealed and reversed. But I have a hard time seeing the damage to the enterprises that will now have to trade in part of their name for another word that conveys the same idea. If a lot of people were thinking that the Hell Comic Con in Hell, Michigan (that's a real city) is a local outpost of the famous Comic-Con International in San Diego, maybe it's a good thing to clear up that CONfusion.