This is not nerd Woodstock. It is nerd Altamont. You will go expecting to recognize every person you see as your spiritual nerd-kin. You will leave hating your own kind.
I don't know how anyone can generalize any event of this size, but the truth is that Comic-Con isn't really Woodstock or Altamont; it's more like New York City.
There are many, MANY generalizations to be made about New York. if you want to go out and find them, you can. Someone will be rude to you. You'll find lots of garbage on the streets. You can stay up all night in the middle of Times Square.
But if you end that trip and say, "New York City is a rude, dirty city that never sleeps," full stop, does anyone really believe that mirrors any kind of reality?
The backlash that seems to be rising against Comic-Con is becoming folded into a backlash against geek culture itself, and it seems to be specifically a response to Hollywood embracing geek properties as a path toward cocaine and hookers. Their presence has turned the mainstream image of Comic-Con into a place where a lot of nerds sit in rooms and get pandered to by pretty famous people.
And that's fine. That happens. TV networks show up, small and large, and cover it. So do journalists. So do bloggers. The din is overwhelming.
But it's total bullshit to define Comic-Con as "a tumorous growth so massive that the original tissue is all but obscured." Hell, I was a couple thousand miles away, and I have a long list of projects I was excited to hear more about that have nothing to do with pretty famous people, from the next chapter in Adam Freeman and Marc Bernardin's Genius comics series to the Mickey Mouse reprints coming from Fantagraphics. I guarantee most of the stuff that is on my radar after Comic-Con isn't going to be covered by Mary Hart on Entertainment Tonight.
Does that matter? Should it? Of course not. Me and all the others who would be excited by such things got to hear more about them. On the other side of the country, some of those people even gathered in rooms to talk about them excitedly. Then they splintered off into small groups who got to commiserate, drink, and generally have fun together.
That is the spirit of Comic-Con. It's the spirit of conventions since time immemorial. It's not dead, and it won't die. And if you don't see it, or you can't find it, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.
(Full disclosure: I haven't been to Comic-Con since 2002. I want to go back.)
Postscript: What's becoming truly aggravating is the propensity of people who are paid to attend Comic-Con spending most of their time complaining about it on Twitter and blog posts. I get that it's exhausting, and humanity doesn't always represent itself well. But if it's that big of a burden, STAY HOME.
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