Con Crazy

WonderCon, like its big brother Comic-Con, is an interesting sort of beast. Nerds of all ages, races, faiths, sexual orientations, and perversions flock to these events in hopes of catching a glimpse of someone who represents the thing they idolize, but also to congregate with others like them. It’s definitely a place where everyone gets along based solely on solidarity. San Diego Comic-Con is enormous and there are lots and lots of movies, tv shows, and video games trying to entice their target audience to buy into it; basically a big trade show. WonderCon, on the other hand, is only really really big and the bulk of the floor is made up of comic book sellers or publishers, with the other media represented only marginally. This Con really hones in on die-hard fans and weeds out a lot of the riff-raff.

Saturday was a full day of walking the exhibition floor. It was about half the size of the one in San Diego, but I would say it was more focused. Comic-Con is a massive explosion of pop culture and promotional material while WonderCon is a bit of promo but is mostly independently owned comic book and merchandise sellers. Which is great and all, but if you aren’t in the market for action figures, t-shirts, or vintage comics, it’s only so interesting. Still, there were plenty of odd little artist and craftsman booths to occupy my brain. What really make these conventions great are the panel discussions.

As I already mentioned, the Kevin Smith Q&A was a great treat, but just as inspiring to me was a panel I attended Saturday morning with eight of DC Comics’ top writers. As someone who aspires to write for a living, I’m always eager to hear other writers talk about their process. I’m also a huge DC fan, so to hear the people who write the books I read is pretty fantastic. The big problem you run into with any Q&A or panel is crazy or stupid people asking crazy or stupid questions. Since most people who’d go to WonderCon are familiar with this, the questions tended to be respectful and topical, if leaning toward the fanatic side. At Comic-Con, the questions were a mix bag of good ones, awful ones, and “Security.”

Which brings me to the nature of fandom. A great many people who go to these conventions are die-hard fans of one thing and they show it by dressing up and outwardly deriding fans of other things. This makes no sense to me. I don’t like Star Trek, but I’d never make fun of somebody for liking Star Trek because I know full well it’s no less nerdy than half the crap I like. Yet to overhear some conversations, it’s like the Jets and the Sharks, but if those gangs were in totally different cities. I wore a Flash t-shirt on Saturday which is about as close as I come to dressing up in costume, but there were people with full-on, professionally made outfits that look like they could easily be put in a movie.

Stormtroopers and bounty hunters from “Star Wars” were big this year, as were Justice League people, but I also saw a guy dressed like Bumblebee from “Transformers” in a fully articulate plastic shell that for a second I thought was a remote controlled robot. And these people, called “CosPlayers” don’t just wear the clothing, they embody the characters they represent in every way, which is somewhat off-putting. And also there’s the matter of being, *ahem* suited to wearing the costume. For every Super Girl or Wonder Woman who were knockouts, there were three others that were TKO’d, if you pardon the bad analogy. But, for having the guts to wear them in the first place, I must applaud them.

Saturday night I wanted to see the screening of the new episode of Doctor Who (not surprising) and in order to get good seats, we decided to go in to the room two panels early. The first we heard was for “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” cartoon series, which I’d never seen. The panel began by showing the 1979 theatrical trailer for “The Empire Strikes Back” as this is the 30th anniversary of its release. That was pretty amazing and made me miss that movie, which I sold last year. Then that feeling slowly went away when the rest of the panel consisted of talking about the cartoon series which was heavily steeped in the prequels, which if you don’t know are the worst things ever created by human beings. But there were people in the room who lived and died Star Wars even in spite of the crap. I got bored.

That was followed by the DC panel for Brightest Day, the immediate follow up to the excellent Blackest Night which just ended last week. The panel basically consisted of introducing the writers and artists of the main book and ancillary titles and then having the audience ask questions that couldn’t be answered for fear of spoiling anything. I’ll probably read these books because I read the previous ones, but it’d be nice if they didn’t have to make so many of them. I can’t afford it.

Now, I am a fan of Green Lantern and the DC books, but it was clear that a good many people in the room were Doctor Who fans waiting for the screening and not enjoying the DC panel one little bit. I overheard them griping about how stupid the panel was and making little rude comments about the things being discussed. This makes zero sense to me. Why hate on something other people like just because it isn’t the same thing you like? I could get on my soapbox now and spend five pages lambasting people in this country for their intolerance and their “Us vs. Them” attitude about everything and how it actually hurts the fabric of our nation when individuality comes in the form of exclusion and hatred, but I won’t do that. I’ll just say it doesn’t make sense, ESPECIALLY in this case. Doctor Who is an alien who flies through space with a human and makes things safe for all the planets of the universe; Green Lantern is a human who flies around space with aliens and makes things safe for all the planets in the universe. Why the hate? They aren’t told in the same way, surely, but they are definitely kindred.

I won’t go too into detail about the actual Doctor Who episode given that it doesn’t hit screens here in the U.S. until April 17th, but I’ll just say that it was fantastic. The new actors and head writer are setting up a great new series of adventures and it looks great.

For my blog entries, I usually like to end with a conclusion paragraph to tie everything up and put a little bow on it, but as I’ve been working on this far longer than I should because I’m deliriously tired, I’m not going to do that. Sufficed to say, I had a good time, the convention was fun but different than Comic-Con, and fans express their love and unlove of things in strange and excessive ways. Not articulate, but accurate.

You’re not as welcome as you usually are.

-Kanderson