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You’re listening to Imaginary Worlds, I’m Eric Molinsky.

I love Comic Con in all its varieties. When I lived in L.A., I used to take the train down to San Diego Comic Con almost every year. Once I moved to New York, I always go to New York Comic Con. I even go to Winter Con, which is a quirky little fan convention that’s always held at a casino in Queens.

But I still miss San Diego – that is the mothership of comic cons. When it happens every summer, I spend three days glued to social media looking for announcements, trailers, pictures of cosplayers or collectables that were sold exclusively at Comic Con. Even if I can’t order them online, I like seeing them. There’s a reason why it’s called Nerd Christmas.

This year would’ve been the 50th anniversary of San Diego Comic Con. But it was cancelled because of COVID-19. Then it was announced Comic Con was back on, but it’s going to be virtual and free to everyone. I’ll be watching but it’s just not the same.

Before the virus hit, Comic Con was already at an interesting point in his history, so this is a perfect opportunity to look back at the history of fan conventions to learn how San Diego Comic Con became the high holiday of geekiness, and why the future might look very different.

The first sci-fi fantasy convention was World Con – which still exists today as an alternative to Comic Con. World Con is held in a different city every year. And first World Con in 1939 was held in conjunction with the World’s Fair in New York.

ERIC: They had a place where you could buy paraphernalia, whether that be comic books or pulp magazines that evolved in what was known as the huckster room, it's no longer called up, but it's, it was one of the centerpieces of these big conventions.

Eric Brammer is working on a documentary about the history of fan conventions. He’s also a multi-generational fan. When he was a baby, his Dad brought him to World Con when it came to their hometown of Cleveland. Eric says we have to remember, when World Con began, it was a strange and radical idea because comic books and sci-fi pulp magazines were not the type of media people were used to celebrating.

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ERIC: I mean, it was practically like being seen reading pornography. I mean, you practically had to have a Brown wrapper around this material, and there's a great story of Isaac Asimov, who, whose father had a candy store and they, he would string up these pulp magazines in the front and he was forbidden from even reading them by his father. And so young Isaac, what would pull them off of the string after hours and do the classic like flashlight and under the covers and then very gingerly place them back

In fact, Asimov was at the first World Con in 1939. So was Ray Bradbury.

ERIC: Bradbury was 19. He and, um, Forrest J Ackerman came from L.A. all the way across the country How old was Asimov? ERIC: Also 19. Oh my God. ERIC: Yeah. I just, I don't think they had any sense of the shadow of all of this would be.

That second name he mentioned, Forest J. Ackerman, eventually became a huge literary agent for authors like Asimov and Bradbury. At the time, Ackerman ran a fanzine with his girlfriend Myrtle Douglas. They arrived at World Con wearing hand-made costumes based on the science fiction film, Things to Come.

ERIC: Imagining 1939. This guy is walking around in his silver space suit with his girlfriend who is wearing something similar to that. And that literally was the first what most people consider the first cosplay. And in fact, that became a very big part of the convention is the, the kind of closing denouement of every convention was a Saturday night masquerade ball. And it became very involved with even skits and just fantastically intricate costumes.

World Con slowly got bigger over the years. But it was all things to all fans. In 1961, Marvel launched, and it revitalized the comic book industry. And in 1964 the first Comic Con was held in New York. San Diego Comic Con was created six years later so the artists on the West Coast, like Jack Kirby, didn’t have to travel 3,000 miles.

Rob Salkowitz wrote the book “Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture.”

ROB: I mean, especially for the comic artists, like Kirby, you know, worked alone, he was drawing his pages and stuff like that. And he was very gregarious, and he liked to get out and people would come to his house and his wife would serve them milk and cookies and stuff, and Jack would come out and talk to them and everything. But I think 3 he liked to be around people. And here are these guys that were being chewed out by editors and underpaid and leading these solitary existences and working six, seven days a week could come out and suddenly all these people were like, man, I love your work. Like you changed my life and these creators, like this is a place that they could get respect.

There’s a misconception among the fans that Comic Con started out with a pure focus on comics, but Hollywood took over. That’s not quite true.

In fact, Eric Brammer says filmmakers have been using fan conventions to spread the word for a long time.

ERIC: Going all the way back to ‘56, there was a regional convention in Charlotte in which Forbidden Planet was premiered in spring of ‘56. So even then there was this awareness that if you appeal to these very ardent fans, that it's likely to have broader appeal and effects, so, well talk about appealing to Hollywood. And in ‘66, Gene Roddenberry with the reels, literally under his arm of the pilot episode of Star Trek showed it to the conventioneers of Cleveland.

Erin Hanna is the author of “Only at Comic-Con: Hollywood, Fans, and the Limits of Exclusivity.”

ERIN: From the very beginning, there was a really vested interest in other media besides comic books. So, like in the seventies, there were panels and blocks of programming dedicated to Star Trek, but also Star Wars was promoted there in 1976. How much Star Wars do they have to show in 1976? ERIN: They just, so they did a little panel, they showed some slides and then they had a table in the dealer's room. This also really anticipates what happens now, but just on a much smaller, smaller scale, they used that table in the exhibit hall to do kind of informal market research. Like they asked fans about like, oh, what's your favorite like manufacturer for toys and collectibles.

Now whatever stereotype you have in your mind about the kind of fans who showed up at those conventions, Rob says, you’re probably right. And he was one of them.

ROB: I was a kid in the ‘70s, I was adolescent in the ‘80s and that's when comic culture was at its most niche, right? Comic Con banished from the newsstand. They were at comic shops. They were no longer like a mass medium. They were just, they were a cult and most of the cultists were guys and they're very nostalgic and very sort of backward 4 looking. So the community of people that bought comics and talk comics and, and was into, and of course went to the conventions was 80, 90% male. And the also the popular perception of the fandom reflected that if you remember, like the, the Saturday Night Live sketch with William Shatner and you know, like get a life and all of that stuff.

He's referring to a famous SNL Sketch from 1986. Shatner is supposed to be at a convention of fans. And after taking all these detailed questions about Star Trek, he just snaps.

SHATNER: Get a life, will you people! I mean, for crying out loud! It’s just a TV show. Look at you, look at the way you’re dressed, you turned an enjoyable little job I did as a lark for a few years into a colossal waste of time, I mean how old are you people?! What have you done with yourselves? You! You must be almost 30. Have you ever kissed a girl?

Fans may have been a target of mockery back then, but only because fan culture was growing very fast. And it was around this time that San Diego Comic Con started overtaking New York Comic Con because New York was falling on hard times. And when Batman came out in 1989, comic book movies became hot, and the studios started to realize:

ROB: If anybody in the world is going to go see a movie like this, it'll be the people that go to San Diego Comic Con. So let's start our marketing efforts with the core hardcore audience in the hopes that if these folks like what they see at these panels, they'll go back and tell all of their friends and then we'll win our opening weekend and then we'll be off to the races, you know? So, the studios would go and then the studios would create the story. It's like, yeah, Brian Singer is coming to Comic Con or, you know, Steven Spielberg or, you know, like big a list people. And you'd be like, Comic Con really. So, then the entertainment press had to go to San Diego to cover this event that all of these people started seeing that this was a star studded spectacular. And so, you got more people coming, which made it more attractive for studio marketing, which made it more attractive for media, which brought in more people. And before long, you've got 150,000 people, you know, in the San Diego convention center and maybe a quarter of a million people on the streets of San Diego that don't even have badges that are just there for the vibe.

Erin says the next major turning point came in 2004, when the convention center expanded to include the gigantic Hall H.

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ERIN: Hall H now is kind of really well known as the place where the huge Hollywood panels happen. Increasingly you have a lot of TV panels happening there, but that's like the really high-profile space for Hollywood studio promotion. You can also fit the entire cast in The Avengers in Hall H. ERIN: Right. And they have several times, um, it seats about 6,500 people. So really just a small percentage of the people that actually attend. Comic Con, it's also kind of like a very exclusive space in that way. Like, even though it's fits a lot of people, it's still really hard to get into. And I really feel like that more than a specific film for me is a moment where you see that shift really happening because it's happening in a physical space.

Even the exhibits started to change.

ERIN: It started off as kind of the dealer's room, which is like the quintessential kind of Comic Con, where people are like sell, you know, dealers and are selling stuff. People are trading books and things like that. And watching it sort of gradually evolve over the years into what looks to me more like almost like a trade show, like an industry trade show now.

In fact, the relationship between San Diego Comic Con and the entertainment industry was becoming so cozy, a lot of people in the industry were arguing that they should move the convention to L.A.

In the meantime, other cities wanted in on the action and create their own Comic Con. Rob says the problem wasn’t finding fans in those cities. The problem was that once you rent out a huge space in Denver or Miami, the studios aren’t going to go there.

ROB: Like at San Diego, you're going to see the Lucasfilm booth. That's this gigantic like, you know, 50,000 square foot thing with X Wing fighters and all of that stuff that does not travel like that, that goes to San Diego period.

Even the people making collectables or selling comics tend to focus on San Diego or maybe New York because they can’t afford to travel the country going from con to con. So, what those regional cons focus on is paying talent to come there. Fans will line up for hours to have pictures and an autograph with a celebrity. And they pay hundreds of dollars to do it.

There’s an interesting scene in the HBO documentary Bright Lights, where Carrie Fisher describes going to a comic convention as a quote celebrity lap dance. 6

CARRIE FISHER: A celebrity lap dance where celebrities where all shapes and ages sign autographs for cash prizes, it’s kind of like going to a strip club except they don’t strap cash in your underwear. But that’s kind of it.

Despite her cynicism, we see her in good spirits taking in all this love from the fans.

MONTAGE

With Comic Con culture taking off so fast, there were growing pains for the organizers, the fans, and the studios too.

The first issue was that the old guard, the aging white guys, who were so proud that the world was finally taking them and the stuff that they loved seriously, were starting to see fandom itself change.

Erin says the real turning point was the Twilight panel at the 2008 San Diego Comic Con, which brought in a record number of girls and women.

ERIN: But the backlash to that is really strong was really like people had like little mini protests and signs and anti, kind of Twilight statements happening all around the time that that franchise starts to show up at Comic Con most of that was more like it's couched in an argument about quality or what kinds of content is welcome and accepted at Comic Con. But ultimately it was just like a sexist backlash. I think that it's pretty evident and clear. I've seen it happen. I also saw watched a panel. They have a panel every year called women who kick ass, and I watched it one year in Hall H it was happened right in the middle of the day, between a morning panel where they, which was like a DC Warner brothers panel where they announced Batman vs. Superman, and an evening panel on Marvel movies. And so, when that panel started, people got up and went and got snacks, they went to the bathroom. And then at the end of the panel, some guy in the audience yelled women who talk too much.

And as more women started going to Comic Con wearing cosplay – to give you a sense of what happened next, organizers had to put up signs everywhere that read, “Cosplay is not consent!”

But the younger fanbase is much more diverse in terms of race gender. And when the reactionary members of the old guard leave their social media echo chambers 7 and go to Comic Con, they’re outnumbered. They cannot deny the obvious fact that future is looking very different than the past.

There were also growing pains in terms of the relationship between the studios and the fans. And that gets to a question I’ve often thought about when covering fan culture. Who has the power here? Of course, the studios, directors and stars have lot of money. They make the content that is officially declared in canon. But fans can make or break a movie to the point where the studios started to fear them.

In fact, Rob Salkowitz remembers sitting at a panel in 2003 when DC announced they were making a movie based on the character John Constantine.

ROB: So the character John Constantine was based on Sting, rock star, who was very British and the character is very British and he's like this sort of dark cynical guy. And so, they announced, and there's going to be a John Constantine movie. And everybody was like, yeah! And then they said, and it's going to star Keanu Reeves. It was like silence. And you could feel the temperature in the room go down like, like 10 degrees. Like the people on stage were like looking at each other. They were expecting, this would be this, a big applause moment. Like don't we love Keanu Reeves. He was in The Matrix like that guy? It's like, totally not right for that part. Everybody in the room knew it. You know, like those moments where, where it's like, where it doesn't work can be awful.

Needless to say, that Constantine movie did not do well at the box office, at least in the U.S., and any plans for a sequel were scrapped.

Around this time, the studios started to be interested in fan service, not just making movies they hoped the fans would like but making movies with the Comic Con audience in mind. Again, Eric Brammer.

ERIC: I mean, at a certain point, if you are trying to cater to something that you don't really know, uh, and, and, and thinking that that is what is going to dictate success and not appeal to the best, the best and the brightest and what their tastes are, then it's, it gets watered down. And it is something I think, where the, the tail is wagging the dog.

Rob says a perfect example was Zack Snyder’s 2010 Watchmen film.

ROB: Watchmen is like a revered property within the comic fold. The graphic novel is a literary masterpiece, and it really works as comics. And they'd been trying to adapt it for 8 like 25 years. So Zack Snyder comes in and says, we're going to be completely faithful to the source material. We're going to adapt it exactly like panel profanity. They kind of missed the forest for the trees there. They got all of the details. Right. You know, in my opinion. And, um, I don't think I'm the only one here that was not really successful with cinema. And it certainly wasn't the kind of mega hit that they thought they were going to get. So I think they did that because they were afraid that they would get booed off the stage if they had done it any other way. But then there is an example of a, of an effort at fan service that didn't translate to the wider world.

2010 may have been the breaking point because Erin says that same year, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World killed at San Diego Comic Con. The studio thought they had a hit on their hands. But the movie fizzled at the box office.

ERIN: That's like one of those moments where it's really interesting to look at, cause all the sort of the narrative and the mythology about Hollywood's relationship to fans at Comic Con kind of like starts to rupture a bit. What came out of that, which is kind of like this idea that if a film isn't successful after Comic Con that the studios might start to like question if it's worth going there at all. And that's where you see like the industry kind of start to try to exert their power and control a little bit more by being like, you got to go see the film, you got to tell your friends to see it. If you don't see it, or you don't support our films, we won't come back.

That attitude did not go over well with the fans, who were feeling empowered, and some were feeling entitled.

ERIN: A lot of the promotional discourses and the way that the industry talks to fans at Comic Con is like, is reinforcing that sense. Like you're part, you're, you're a part of this production. So, it makes sense why then in moments where fans feel like they're not part of that team or they're not being listened to, there are those moments of pushback and they're like, well, they need us, right? So, the, so people the logic and it makes sense. Cause that's what all the discourses in the media are suggesting is that Hollywood needs us. They knew the fans were important now and we're important to the success of a film. So just make them do what we want them to. And that's the moment where it's like, you start to realize, well, there's still like a vast power differential happening.

In the last few years, San Diego Comic Con hit plateau in terms of how many people they could fit into the convention, and how involved the studios want to be. Eric Brammer says some of the longtime convention goers were doing a little soul searching about the purpose of Comic Con. 9

ERIC: You know, now Sao Paulo set a record for, you know, breaking the attendance record of the ones here. There's half a million people go to the one in Japan every year. So I think there was some feeling within the community. Have we gone too far or, I mean, is it just strictly like a publicity play now as opposed to the beginnings, which were the love of these characters and this, these stories and you know, is it strictly just a PR grab?

And now, San Diego Comic Con has gone virtual. Still no word yet on New York Comic Con, which is supposed to happen in the Fall.

What does the future look like for fan conventions? We’ll try to figure that out after the break.

BREAK

It’s possible there could be an effective treatment or vaccine for COIVD-19 by next summer, and everything goes back to normal. But let’s imagine there’s not. They could severely limit the number of people at the San Diego convention center. They could keep re-sanitizing every surface. They could enforce social distancing and wearing masks – not just cosplay masks. I’m sure they’ll get enough fans who’d want to go, but would Marvel want to do a big presentation in Hall H if half the seats are empty?

Now in terms of finances, the organization behind San Diego Comic Con is in good shape for now. They’re a non-profit, and they have a multi-million-dollar rainy day fund. They also never pay talent to show up. The studios do that on their on their own dime. But Rob says the regional Comic Cons, which are for profit and need to pack in as many paying customers as possible, are in trouble.

ROB: Like the entire economy of it has collapsed. And a lot of the companies that invested in it, you know, not just in the fan convention space, but like across the board are losing their shirts. You know, if they go bankrupt day, you know, then they're out of business and it's hard to, it's hard to restart after a disruption like this. You know, I think that the era of big conventions is if not over, certainly like phase one is over and whatever comes next comes next, but it's a real discontinuity from what happened before.

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Erin has been thinking a lot about how San Diego Comic Con changes when it goes virtual, and it’s free for everyone to watch, because part of the appeal of Comic Con was that sense of exclusivity.

ERIN: The core meaning of exclusivity is exclusion, right? Like it means that some, someone can't participate it's only exclusive because not everyone is included that tension of exclusivity being rooted in exclusion is a way to sort of think about just how much control and power is exerted in order to construct this aura of exclusivity. And it goes right down to even just the idea of waiting in line, right? That people waiting in line for Hall H are waiting because there's kind of a sense that there's going to be something valuable waiting for them at the end of that process. So, the, just even the power to make people wait for you. PICK UP: It's funny to think about exclusivity, because when San Diego Comic Con happens, I'm like weirdly living vicariously through the people there over social media, and I actually feel happy for the people in Hall H in that moment who get to see that trailer first, even though those trailers are posted to the Internet five minutes. And it's weird how much that sense of magic or is gone when ironically, I'll be able to view see this year in real time because it’s virtual. ERIN: I know it's so true. I mean, I've been thinking a lot about this too, because how much we forget about how important physical spaces are in our lives or like experiences we have out in the real world, what does it, what does that mean when we just can't have that experience right now at all?

DC decided a virtual Comic Con is useless and declared they’re creating their own virtual convention called Fandome where they’re going to debut their latest stuff. Erin is not surprised but she is disappointed.

ERIN: It seems like after years of kind of benefiting from not even so much the Comic Con fans that are in the crowd, but the, or even the organizers, like working with studios to kind of bring them in and keep them happy that they would so quickly just be like, we're going to do our own thing over here now at a moment where Comic Con is like seriously threatened that its future is somewhat shaky.

In the future, other studios might do the same thing. They didn’t like sharing the spotlight to begin with. In fact, last summer, Disney saved one of their biggest announcements -- The Rise of Skywalker trailer -- for the Disney-focused D23 Expo, which happened only a month after Comic Con.

But Rob thinks the convention scene might become even more fragmented in a COVID-19 world. 11

RON: But instead of being these huge pop culture conventions that are all things to all people, you're going to have stuff that is just for, you know, fans of The Transformers or, you know, just for comics or just for toys or tabletop games of a very particular kind, you know, things that don't scale because you can't get that big. So let's say that's the future. The era of the ginormous cons is over. Uh, is there anything you'll kind of miss about them or do you feel like what, what gets you like, what are the gains and losses of that? ROB: For the exhibitors. They're going to miss. I mean, you know, if you're going to drive to a convention and set up a table and do your thing for a weekend, you'd rather do it in front of 50, 60, 70,000 people than 5, 6 or 7,000 people just because you're putting in the time regardless. And so for exhibitors, it's a, it's a change picture, but the biggest loss I think is just the, um, ephemeral nature of when you walk in there, the minute the door is open, a comic convention, everybody goes flying in there, there's this great sense of, you know, a hundred thousand people that share your interests, all simultaneously having the time of their lives. Like there's so much good energy that comes out of that. That was, that was one of the great things that everybody that went to San Diego or to a big comic convention that was bigger than anything they had ever seen before has experienced that the first time they go and sometimes you never lose it. You just like every time you're, you're just I'm into that feeling. Yeah. You know, for people like me, I like so much different stuff and I can't imagine myself just going to a Star Wars or just going to a Buffy you're just going to a Marvel convention there's not one of them. I love more than all the others, but I love having them all together in the same, you know, and seeing cosplayers show up, you know, picking and choosing from all these different franchises. ROB: Absolutely. And again, all of these brands are now very territorial about this stuff. And if like Hasbro had their way or Marvel had their way or, you know, Disney, you know, they would want, Con this only their stuff. That's a completely walled garden branded experience and you're right. The fans don't really want that. So when you have a big convention, it feels like Switzerland, you know, it's like the giants are there sort of looming around you, but they're all on good behavior because nobody's in control of that experience. They're all fighting for your attention.

I can’t wait for the day when I can go to a Comic Con without fear because I never got tired of the feeling of walking through the doors and seeing all the fans embracing their geekiness. Every time, I sigh, and think to myself, “Ah, my people!” Eric Brammer has been feeling that way ever since his father took him to conventions as a kid.

ERIC: As a young child. I remember seeing wondrous characters, but very sort of outside of the mainstream. And they're very daring to me that they're, they're very 12 smart, sensitive people to the world and very important in, in really what drives the world. And really, I think the sense of wonder that is what brings people in at a young age that is something that is consistent.

Whatever happens, there will always be a demand for some kind of fan convention because we fall in love with this stuff as kids. And to be a fan is to spend part of your adult life searching for that sense of wonder again.

That’s it for this week, thank you for listening. Special thanks to Eric Brammer, Rob Salkowitz and Erin Hanna.

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