When Did The Rest Of You Start Paying Attention To Comic-Con?

Knowing what the big stories coming out of Comic-Con are is the most natural thing in the world to me.  I am into geeky things, and stopped apologizing for it even before the geekstream became the mainstream.  I’ve even been to a Con or two in my day (though I’ve not yet made it to the big one, and haven’t worn a Doctor Who-related garment since I was 10).  Generally speaking, there isn’t much of a leap between space nerd and comic lover, or zombie junkie, or sci fi freak. If you like Buffy or Serenity, it’s a good bet that you’ll carry a flame for Battlestar or Iron Man or even Eureka.  This is why those of your friends that like any of those things keep trying to get to watch one of them: they know that any geeky thing can be a gateway drug to all others. Like vampire or zombie bites, geekdom is infectious.  And we geeks know how to spread our shared culture.

But this year it really seems like something has changed.

It’s no longer news that we have moved past geek-chic to something akin to post-geek, but when people who I wouldn’t expect to know a Viper from a Raptor mused aloud about what to expect from the 39th annual Comic-Con International last week, I realized that this year, you are all paying attention.

Last year, an estimated 126,000 people attended Comic-Con’s four day San Diego event, and passes were sold out weeks ahead of time; similar numbers were estimated this year.  Compare that to the approximately 445 die hards that attended related events in 1970.  Somehow something that started as a gathering place for a bunch of like-minded oddball outsiders has become, according to the New York Times, “an event that has acquired major importance on the [entertainment] industry’s calendar; major studios promote their biggest coming projects, and television producers for shows like “Lost” and “24” try to stoke interest in their approaching seasons.”  Last year, Comic-Con was our go-to for content related to such (ex)-obscurities as Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog; this year, Dr. Horrible is not only nominated for an Emmy, but hosting them. It’s no wonder everybody is talking about Comic-Con.

Note the lack of reference to comics.

Here’s a secret: That was built into the DNA from the start.  Comic-Con became the festival of pure geek joy that it is (and one of the, if not the, defining entertainment industry events of the year) because since day one, name notwithstanding, is it has always been pan-geek.  Sci-fi authors and Star Trek personalities have been there since the start.  Luke Skywalker himself even made a movie set there.

But that is also why, with an entertainment industry that is interested in sequels, franchises and the already-proven value of any new investment in an entertainment property, Comic-Con has become the center of both the entertainment-industrial complex as well as the countless fan-universes that each franchise has created. It is no accident that the first modern blockbuster also provided the protoype for the merchandising and cross-promotion models driving franchises like Transformers to blockbuster status despite the barest critical assessment of their quality. Of course it was. It was custom-built for the Con.

Make no mistake ye cool kids, when it comes to how we spend our entertainment dollars, we are all geeks.  Star Trek, Harry Potter, Twilight and the Dark Knight don’t lie; we all want larger-than-life escapism and a little zombie terror here and there.  We want the other, the strange, the fantastic and the far off, and we vote with the dollars we spend on books, DVDs, downloads, movie tickets, toys, collectibles, miniatures and cosplay props (not to mention the clicks we spend on bittorrent trackers and blog posts). The SciFi Channel has even become the kinder, gentler SyFy, in an acknowledgment of how mainstream geek really is. (3.5 million viewers for the debut of their latest, Warehouse 13, is acknolwedgement too; that’s 1.1 million more than the Battlestar finale. Word spreads, eh geeks?)

Like some alien gestating to life in a slimy pod, geek culture ripened over the years in its (our) own obscure cons, from back when the cancellation of the very first Star Trek spawned modern fandom (and fanaticism).  And you know how that alien springs to life and starts spreading its seed all over the place? Right: cue the modern entertainment franchise of comics, books, films, blogs, series, webisodes, collectibles, podcasts and any other format yet to be dreamed up. So, with that in mind: how could the convention at which you most expect to see somebody wearing fangs without the slightest hint of self-consciousness not become ground zero of the entertainment world?

Because, importantly, it’s also establishing itself as a leader within it. Back to Dr. Horrible: An indie labor-of-love project launched on the side during the writer’s strike, launched on the web, became a critical and financial success — entirely outside the traditional models. In its initial limited run, it got over 2 millions streams in five days (and would have had more had demand not crashed the servers); a year later, its Amazon sales rank is #87 for Bestsellers, Movies & TV; with top five rankings across all its sub-categories. Like Comic-Con, Dr. Horrible is pan-geek: comic-book, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, musical theater (two words for you here: Rocky Horror) — with the heroes, villains, inventors, outsiders, romantics and strivers plus the crucial morality play that underlies the best of each genre. The storylines may be fantastical, but the impulses couldn’t be more visceral.

Which is maybe why it’s all finally catching on. It’s a phrase us geeks know well, from bad zombie movies, from Twilight Zone episodes, from the collective subconscious that geekdom has shared since at least the first Comic-Con in 1970, and that should resonate with anyone that has consumed the smallest morsel of popular media in the past half decade or so: “One of us, one of us, one of us…”

Related:

Comic-Con 2009: The Hero Complex collection [LA Times]
The Winners & Losers of Comic-Con 2009 [Seattle PI]
Who Won Comic-Con’s Buzz Wars? Our 10 Picks [i09]

Ash Kalb is the general counsel of a New York-based telecommunications and technology company and an instrument-rated pilot.  He will be writing a weekly column on geek culture for Mediaite. He wishes he went to Comic-Con.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.