Comic Con San Diego: Perspectives From A Melted Brain

I was warned in advance that my first trip to Comic Con San Diego would melt my brain. It doesn’t happen quickly, like some kind of high concept microwave brain laser. Rather, Comic Con melts the brain slowly, through a massive sensory overload and an unfathomably high degree of human interaction. Halo-8 collectively had a booth on the convention floor, some talent autograph signings, and a panel appearance. It was heavy load for our small staff, but it was all over soon enough. I still haven’t quite recovered, which explains the incoherent ramble below.

Comic Con has long been the place for Hollywood to market big tentpole movies, so I wasn’t surprised to see an aggressive marketing presence from the major studios. But I didn’t realize the degree to which the Studios and TV networks had built Comic Con into a Sundance style film market, with backroom deal brokering all day, and starlet filled invite only parties all night. The surprising part is how little this Hollywood scene has to do with the
convention itself, creating a virtual two tiered caste system between the Hollywood business sector and the droves of comic and pop culture fans that fill the convention floor. The upper class Hollywood caste doesn’t mingle on the convention floor, and the lower classes of the Comic Book caste don’t mingle with starlets at the after parties. This isn’t terribly shocking, — these disparate groups have very different reasons for attending the show. But its fascinating that Comic Con operates with such a dichotomy, and I wonder if one part could survive without the other. Are they symbiotic, or is one of them a parasite?

The two castes eventually do come face to face in the panels where new films are introduced. The studios parade the talent and preview scenes, and the press eats it up. The studios have engineered Comic Con into the most powerful publicity scheme I have ever witnessed, and the coverage is remarkable. The crowds love these panels too, but only a lucky few get to see them. The infamous “Hall H” holds about 5600 people, which is about 5% of the total Comic Con attendance. If a fan wants to preview a highly anticipated project, it means lining up before dawn and devoting the better part of a day to holding a place in line, creating a dream scenario for the studios where only the most dedicated set of fans end up in the screenings. These devotees just waited six plus hours in line for a screening, and their ready to scream and cheer no matter what they see. Virtually every preview gets a glowing review because the vibe is good and the press and bloggers are just happy to be there. I heard several conversations about how Comic Con San Diego didn’t used to be such a mass marketing event, which is probably true to some degree. But 2009 was the 40th anniversary of Comic Con San Diego, and the printed program guide had a retrospective of highlights from the previous four decades. I read there that George Lucas previewed Star Wars in 1977, so the film business has had its hooks in Comic Con from early on.

Halo-8 had a booth at Comic Con, and we value the one on one interaction with the consumers (this is what Pizzolo refers to as “retail politics”), so we were on the convention floor all day. But at night, we hooked up with the Hollywood set and hit the parties and bars. That meant that we never slept, because the parties kept us out until after 3am, and we were up by 7am to ready the booth. After 3.5 hours sleep on Friday night, I walked out of the hotel at sunrise on Saturday morning expecting to find the streets of San Diego’s Gaslamp District deserted. But in fact the neighborhood around the convention center was teeming with activity. After a stroll down to the coffee shop, I realized that I was witnessing a casual intermingling of the most extreme members of the two Comic Con Castes, as the hard partying Hollywood elite stumbled back to their rooms after a night of debauchery, and the hardcore convention enthusiasts were lining up early for seats in the screenings. Each crossed the others path, oblivious in that moment to their respective roles in the largest comic and pop culture celebration in the world, and the most elaborate marketing hustle in the movie business.

By the way, Syfy opted out of a booth on the convention floor this year. Instead they took over the Hard Rock Cafe across the street and re-branded it into a Syfy venue. If Halo-8 goes back to San Diego in 2010, we’re opening a speakeasy.