San Diego Comic Con is On

San Diego Comic Con starts up Thursday and runs the weekend.

I will not be there. Tens of thousands of people will be there, but I will not be there.

The main stream media will swarm San Diego to show the rest of the world how crazy all those comic book Geeks are.  The comics (game/movie/whatever) media will make sure that the vast number of Geeks in the world feel less cool than the small number of people who were there for their exclusive this-or-that.  Hundreds of companies will spend millions of dollars making sure that I know that their exclusive products will be exclusively announced at SDCC.  I won't be there, but somehow I will still find out about all these products.

It's a Comic Con Exclusive!

I don't know how to feel about San Diego Comic Con.
I went once when it was a small local con I could drive to from my house.  1982, I think...  There weren't a lot of famous people there.  Walter Koenig from Star Trek, I think....  I remember just loving all those long boxes full of old comics and meeting a few other people who knew what the Invaders were.

Now I can no longer drive to San Diego.  And I watch what SDCC has turned into, and don't really want to fight those crowds to go there anyway.
So, I don't know if I am jealous that I am not in San Diego or not.

We have a great comic convention here in Seattle each year, Emerald City Comicon.  And it hasn't gotten so huge that it is overwhelming, yet.  And we have smaller shows, like Jet City and GeekGirlCon.  So I get plenty of comic convention action.

It is always weird though, watching the comic industry and its big-money cousins the gaming and movie industries go ape shit over San Diego every year.  They hype normal developments like they are monumental events and even delay perfectly mundane releases so as to have something exclusive to launch at Comic Con.

So I guess my personal take on San Diego Comic Con is pretty cynical at this point, but I still kind of wish I was there..