July
30 Comic-Con: The annual post-show rant

The shockwaves from Comic-Con continue to ripple, moreso even than yesterday's earthquake.  Returning from the show is always hectic, because there's work to be caught up, a thousand thoughts to sort through and some need to rest for the first time in four or five days.

But first let's get into the big questions: Dealing with the crowds and the future of the con. PWCW has a wrap-up interview with Con spokesman David Glanzer, who says that if there's no significant progress made by the city of San Diego to accommodate the show with a convention center expansion by 2010, they'll listen to offers to move the show after its current contract expires in 2012. Of course, if attendees say they don't mind capping attendance at 125,000 and staying in San Diego, offers from other towns may not matter.

A lot of talk gets spread around about this, and there's a few ideas that come to mind that could keep the show where it is: One is to spread the convention out from the convention center, make it more like a film festival or Euro comics bashes like Angouleme with events at multiple locations. It might also make sense to  split the convention in two — have a smaller comic book event and a larger "media" event somewhere near a hall or arena that can accommodate a big crowd. That could happen anyway should the Con leave San Diego — I'm sure someone would try to fill the hole left by the show's departure and start a new San Diego con.

The much-discussed idea of moving to Las Vegas keeps coming up, and it may make sense in a lot of ways especially if the media takeover and hyping of the con takes it any further from its comicbook roots.
It would make some things about attending the show a lot easier — but it would no longer be Comic-Con and I can't say that I personally would feel motivated in any way but the professional need to cover such an event to go to Las Vegas in the summer for that show.

The crowds this year were better-managed than last year, but this again brings me back to THE PRESS RANT. I know people will write this off as "press whining," but there is a legitimate problem with the way the show deals with the press. Having attended many large conventions (trade and otherwise) as press, there is an expectation at each event that such a pass offers properly credentialed members of the press reasonable access to the events and people they need to reach in order to do their jobs.

But at Comic-Con, the press pass is essentially a complimentary pass that grants access to nothing that isn't covered by a regular four-day badge. This policy worked fine as recently as four or five years ago, before the crowds hit six figures and there was far less press covering far fewer mainstream events. But when folks from Variety, the L.A. Times and countless other legitimate press outlets who have busy schedules of events and panels to cover are told to stand in line for an hour or two with everyone else just to get in to a panel, it interferes with those outlets ability to cover the event and — by interfering with their ability to do their job — makes them testy, angry and overall unhappy with the show. There's no reason I can see why some kind of policy — even a limited one — can't be worked out that would reserve say a small area of Hall H for press, or provide a room where press who can't make it into a panel can at least observe it on monitors. Maybe that'll come when the show heads to Vegas, though I'll suggest to the studios who now make a huge effort to go to Comic-Con that the show's having no way to facilitate coverage at an event like this seems like a good excuse for a lot of legitimate mainstream outlets to think twice about covering big panels.

One last complaint is that the press usually has access to lists of contacts and events that may be worth covering in advance of the event. And while Comic-Con provides its list of registered press to exhibitors, there is to my knowledge no way for press who have no previous contacts to similarly contact publicists representing events, panels or companies that may warrant coverage. Thus the thousand emails I receive from booths and panels outside the purview of my job, but no way to contact the few essential ones i need short of some serious legwork that shouldn't be required.

Tomorrow: More news, more thoughts on the show — after just a bit more sleep.