How to "Do" Comic-Con – Part 4

Part 1 can be read here. Part 2 can be read here. Part 3 can be read here. Which brings us to Part 4…

Shortly after this year's Comic-Con, I read a post online — I'm not sure where — where someone accused Comic-Con of failing to "evolve." And at the same time, the same person was accusing the Con of changing and wishing it was more like it used to be. I didn't quite understand the post so I bookmarked it so I could go back and spend more time with it…and now I can't find it.

As someone who has now been to 55 of these, I am well aware that Comic-Con has changed over the years…and guess what? The comic book industry has changed, too. DC Comics and Marvel are now companies that are largely about the exploitation of their properties in films, on TV, in videogames and various additional forms other than printed-on-paper comic books. There are also dozens of new companies, some with very different business models and hundreds of small publishers or creators who self-publishing.

Something else that has changed: The ways in both new comic books and old ones are sold. One reason there aren't more dealers selling old comics there is that many vendors now find it easier and/or more lucrative to sell via online sites like eBay or online auctions. Why lug around crates of old books when you can (often) get a better price without shlepping them great distances, carrying them into the convention center, setting up a booth, carrying the crates back out to a van, driving them home, taking them back inside wherever you store them, etc.?

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

Also, here are two basic rules of conventions: The greater the attendance, the more they charge for exhibitor space. And the more they charge for exhibitor space, the less likely dealers are to bring cheap comics. That's not just Comic-Con. That's all conventions. If you're looking for real inexpensive old comics, a big convention is not the place to find them.

Finally: A core part of Comic-Con has always been the comic book creators. Over the years at these events, I had the honor/privilege/duty (call it what you like) of interviewing people like Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Will Eisner, Gil Kane, John Romita, Gene Colan, Al Feldstein, Harvey Kurtzman, Joe Sinnott, Will Elder, Al Williamson, John Buscema, Dick Giordano, Joe Kubert, Murphy Anderson, Chuck Cuidera, Irwin Hasen, Sheldon Moldoff, Dick Sprang, Dan DeCarlo, John Broome, Gardner Fox, Julius Schwartz, Russ Heath, Joe Giella, Chase Craig, Roger Armstrong, Jim Mooney, George Gladir, Sid Jacobson, Irv Novick, Ric Estrada, Jack Davis, Frank Kelly Freas, Nick Cardy, Victor Gorelick, Kurt Schaffenberger, Stan Lee, Sam Glanzman, Everett Raymond Kinstler, Vince Sullivan, Dan Barry, Lee Ames, Fred Guardineer, Joe Simon, Jack Kamen, Arnold Drake, Bob Haney, Martin Nodell, Dick Ayers, Paul Norris, Bill Lignante, Denny O'Neil, Dan Spiegle, Frank Springer, Mel Keefer, Tom Gill, Herb Trimpe, Leonard Starr, Stan Goldberg and Allen Bellman.

That's 61 names and I could probably list 61 more.

Comic-Con no longer has people like that around. I can't put together a Golden Age Panel or a Silver Age Panel like we used to do and some critics seem to be blaming the convention for this instead of the passage of time. (In case you didn't realize it, the 61 people in the above list have all passed away. In some recent years like this one, I have been unable to even assemble a panel of folks who worked on comics in the seventies. There are many still with us but they either aren't at the con or don't want to leave their tables, where they're making money, for even an hour.)

There are panels about the newer writers and artists. Those of you who are interested in hearing creators talk about their work should try attending some of them. Some of them are very interesting but they're no longer about the birth of the industry…or when folks in my age bracket first discovered comic books and began collecting.

I just don't understand the "Comic-Con needs to evolve" criticism. It seems to me that it has evolved because the world and the industry have evolved. But then I also don't understand when some of the same complainers insist that "Comic-Con needs to get back to its roots" because that's a wish that it would devolve.

If you would like to influence the direction in which Comic-Con goes, I have two suggestions to make. There are two ways you can influence that. One is by showing up and supporting the kind of programming you would like to see more of. No convention programs for empty seats.

A pet peeve of mine back when I was doing all those panels with the above 61 is that there were attendees who would tell me there should be more such panels…and then when we did them, they didn't show up for them. I told this story here before a couple times about one such no-show…

[He] 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."

That kind of thing happened a lot more often than you might think. So what I suggest is that you support the kind of programming you want to see by actually attending it when it's offered…and this next point is so important, I'll put it in all caps: TALK IT UP ON SOCIAL MEDIA. That helps, people. It really helps and not just for Comic-Con. If you see a great presentation, write about it on Facebook or Instagram or Tik-Tok or whatever alias Twitter is going by this week. You have some power to influence the programming at conventions. Use it.

That's about all I have to say this time out. There will be at least one other part in this series soon but they all go to my main point, which is that you can't just show up at Comic-Con and have the best possible time. You need to understand the event you're attending and understand what you want to get out of it. Once you do both those things, you can indeed have the best possible time. In that next part, I'll tell you some of the many mistakes I made before I learned what the hell I was doing there.