EPISODE 325: TO BE CONTINUED

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

It's Comic Con weekend, which means I'm in San Diego, spending most of my days either sit-standing in line or wandering around looking at comic books.

I'd hoped to be able to offer some kind of on the ground reporting from the Con today. In fact I was first writing this entry in a line at 7:30 this morning, much to the curiosity and bemusement of those around me. You see pretty much everything at the Con; I was trapped in a different line today having a very tall young man with absolutely no sense of personal space berate me about The Last Jedi for an hour. (He actually said Rose Zico was a terrible character. At that point, I just could not even.)

Anyway a guy acting cool by pulling out a computer is pretty standard fare.

I wrote a bunch last night, too, but it hasn't all quite come together yet. And I have to be up at 4am to start this all over again, so this is going to be unusually short. Forgive me! Next week will be back to normal, I promise.

Let me just say this one thing:

Very little, really, of the biggest stuff that happens at Comic Con today has much to do with the comic book industry. In fact the LA Times last week had a piece concerning what is the great irony of Hollywood today -- while it feeds on the comic book industry like mosquitos on a vein, the comic book business itself had a pretty big downturn last year. Sales dropped by more than 10%. Stores across the nation are closing, prices are increasing... there's significant reason for concern.

And that's all despite the fact that not only are many of the stories you're seeing in the movies and on TV based on characters from comic books, but much of the actual storylines and traits of the characters are heavily indebted to recent comic book writers' and artists' interpretations of those characters.

It's a very strange and disturbing paradox.

But if you can manage to step back from some of the Hollywood dazzle of Comic Con, panels filled with famous movie and TV people talking about famous movie and TV people things like pranks in trailers and table reads, it turns most of the best talks, the most interesting panels, are still all about comics. Writers being interviewed about how they write, the major themes of their work; artists letting you in on the drawing process -- the craft, in other words, the actual work of the storytelling, it's all there.

I've never produced a comic, yet I cannot get enough of sitting in those rooms listening to the artists talk about how they do their work. It all feels so much more real than the hype men and the celebrity guffaws. A profession of fragile beauty.

This weekend, when you hear the latest Hollywood big news item, think of us sitting in long lines and sitting on concrete for no better reason than hey, maybe I can see the cast of Supernatural in six hours.

Then spare a thought for the shy, complicated people who have sat in the background making it all happen with their amazing imaginations.

Back to normal business next week. In the meantime, remember you're not alone. We're in this together.

Here we go.