Comic-ally Speaking: The Summer of San Diego

By C2M Contributor Greg Pelkofski

For those who don’t remember, don’t care, or never read any of my articles about comic books last semester (which are searchable here) this is a column about comic books.  Not much has changed in how I will be writing these articles, but starting now all my articles will be organized under the new column title, “Comic-ally Speaking.”

With the current title of this article, some of you may be thinking that I spent the summer in San Diego.  Well, you’d be wrong.  I spent most of my summer at home in Alexandria watching TV and reading comics.  But I did happen to spend two days in late July attending Comic-Con International in sunny San Diego, California.

How can you accurately describe what the biggest comic book event of the year is like to someone who has never been there or has no knowledge of comic book conventions? Well it's like the summer and winter Olympics, the Superbowl, the World Series, and - oh what the hell - the World Cup all rolled up into one (though this may be a bit of an exaggeration). But instead of thousands of sports fans in face paint and team jerseys, it's thousands of comic fans dressed as their favorite character (to be honest only about 10% of the people there were in some kind of costume). Anyway, over 125,000 people flock to San Diego every year to attend this four day extravaganza of all things comic books.

The first thing you need know about Comic-Con, however, is that comic books are not the only thing that brings people to San Diego every year.  In fact, the comics part usually gets overshadowed by Hollywood filmmakers and television studios showing sneak peaks and panels with actors and writers of their upcoming movies and shows.  This year at Comic-Con was no different.  The biggest buzz in the film industry was surrounding James Cameron’s new movie Avatar.  If you don’t know what it is about, I suggest you head over to IMDB.com and check out the trailer, you won’t be disappointed.  This movie was impossible to escape seeing the signs and ads for it all over San Diego, including on their streetlamps.  Also, Sony Pictures showed sneak peaks of two of its latest projects, District 9 and Legion. 

Many other upcoming movies had their place at Comic-Con, including: Sorority Row, New Moon (the next Twilight movie), Zombieland, 2012, The Boondook Saints II: All Saints Day, and Iron Man 2.  Sadly, I did not get to see any of these sneak peaks and panels.  Most of them were on Saturday, and I only had tickets for Thursday and Friday.  Although, I mostly blame myself for missing the District 9 and Legion panels for poor time management.

Next up is television.  The one thing in TV that I wanted to see that was being shown at Comic-Con on a day that I had a ticket, I wasn’t able to get into.  That was Showtime’s series Dexter.  For this I blame the Comic-Con staff, I was trying to find the start of the near-endless line of people waiting to get into the Ballroom which was to house the panel and no one was able to point me and my dad in the right direction.  In the end we just said “screw it” and went to dinner.

What I did happen to see, by complete accident, was a sneak peak at Starz’s new series Spartacus: Blood and Sand.  My dad and I just happened to wander into to this panel with the creators and stars of the new show while waiting for one for the Marvel Comics panels, and we decided that we need to subscribe to Starz.  This new Spartacus series doesn’t start until January, but looks amazing.  Essentially it’s a cross between HBO’s series Rome and the movie 300.  It just looks incredibly violent with a whole lot of sex, and a decent storyline.  And isn’t that all you need in a good show?

But just like with movies there were a whole lot of sneak peaks and panels that I didn’t get to see.  Here’s just a list of some of the popular TV shows that had a place in Comic-Con: Robot Chicken, 24, Chuck, Family Guy, The Simpsons, Futurama, Heroes, True Blood, and Weeds.  Even children’s shows like Spongebob Squarepants were there!

Even though Hollywood has somewhat overshadowed the comic books at Comic-Con, it is still clear which industry reigns supreme.  However, for my analysis on the comic part of Comic-Con you will have to wait until my next article for the continuation of “The Summer of San Diego” (Part 2).

(Also, if you get the chance head over to http://talesfromthezombieapocalypse.blogspot.com/.  That’s my new short story fiction blog about zombies!!!