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For some, the Baltimore ComicCon is just a place to people watch, pick up free promotional posters, and buy Christmas presents for their nephews. But for others, this annual gathering of artists, fans, and vendors is an overwhelming immersion into the toys, games, and comic culture that nowadays, may feel like only exists in cyberspace.
To those who haven’t been (or have), the concept of a comics convention probably translates to a heap of smug, 35-year-old basement dwellers facing the sunlight in order to continue their forum-bound flame wars in person. However, this year’s turnout was exceptionally varied, ranging from veteran sellers to kids, teens, college students, and complete families. This could be owed partly to this year’s costume contest, which drew in a wide cast of characters seeking a $1,000 prize. Recognizing a pint-sized Transformer, the whole Incredibles family, Captain America pushing a stroller, and Luke Skywalker strapped with a stuffed Yoda backpack is the kind of disarming ComicCon fun that shows how easily community can be formed when so many people are umbrellaed by one common interest.
More importantly, though, is the art. In few places have I ever consumed that much of it in such little time. On one hand, it’s great to see the place thriving with images. But when each one is designed to be an attention-getter, it’s no surprise when all the dynamic colors, muscles, hands, and boobs eventually quit popping and begin to look about as unique as snowflakes in a blizzard.
A few illustration tables broke the mold, but as expected, the place was flooding with anime, fan art, willowy cat-women, and R.I.P.-Heath-Ledger drawings of the Joker (where immaculate proportions + terrible shading = traced!). And then, there was the seeming wrong side of the tracks, where starving, independent illustrators just trying to make a living poured out their project ideas to anyone who offered the slightest glance. Think of it as going to the humane society. There’s a million pairs of needy eyes staring down your wallet. You only have enough money to take home one, maybe two things, and when you leave with that unearthed treasure, you also take ten tons of guilt with you for turning down everybody else’s work.
It’s really a good idea to know what you’re looking for before you arrive at ComicCon. Otherwise, you’ll end up with no choice but to judge every book by its cover within a fraction of a second. And in a place like this, where all the art falls pretty much under one homogenous tits-guns-and-capes style, you could either wander about for hours in a perpetual nerd-gasm, or find yourself standing near the exit, texting, “omg no more” to your friends still lost inside.
For me, it seems the older I get, the quicker I’ve begun to look for the door. I can easily say it’s not because ComicCon is changing for the worst. In fact, ComicCon hardly changes at all—besides this year’s costume contest, everything from the floor setup to the vendors and their products was indistinguishable from what they were the last three years I attended. Of course, the guest list grows and new comic titles come out every year, but to somebody like me—a very casual “superhero fan”— all this madness can turn into novelty in a little under an hour. Maybe it’s because all those juicy little details of the comic/videogame world that, as a kid, I used to obsess over, have revealed themselves to be just a million facets of a very small part of life. And honestly, I’m torn as to whether that comment is supposed to be smug or not, because while it certainly rings true that there ought to be more to life than geeking out in front of a book or computer screen, you also have to hand it to these devotees for being some of the most passionate people on the planet.
Certainly, nerds catch a lot of shit from mainstream society for being people who gorge themselves on Pocky, cosplay as samurai demon lords, and flood message boards with overzealous bitching— things Normal People would not admit to being envious of. But I think if they looked past all the graying ponytails and Incredible Hulk cabana shirts, they’d see a subculture so relentlessly devoted to their hobbies that many have converted them into a lifestyle uninhibited by the rest of the world’s expectations.
Maybe this is why I keep coming back to ComicCon: not because it’s simply a celebration of the comics culture, but because it celebrates intense enthusiasm towards anything at all. This in of itself is something pretty inspiring when you stop to think of how many people you know who probably couldn’t even tell you the titles to their favorite songs.
this exhibit is a must see and will be up at MAP until Jan 9,2010 you can also see the exhibit on STYLE TOUR COMCAST 75 fri .and sat. at 8pm
December 10, 2009 8:12 pm