Camera Obscura: San Diego, Mon Amour

Writing live from the San Diego comic convention 2001, the usually curmudgeonly Alasdair Watson actually finds something to smile about.
23 July 2001

At least it's not a bloody hotel room this time. Still, once again I find myself hammering out a column at the very last minute, a report on the San Diego comic convention, written on the Sunday of the con, so that you people can read it the very next day. See how good I am to you?

I know what you're expecting. I was expecting it, too. I was expecting to rave and curse about the black and terrible things I've seen at this convention - the omens of doom and the signs of sickness and decay in our industry. I mean, that's what I do, isn't it? I've got my reputation as a ranting mad bloke to uphold.

Bollocks to that. Don't get me wrong here, mind you. It's just that for every annoying and infuriating thing I've seen, there's been something else that made me stop and smile. That's why I'm in a really good mood.

For one thing, I've spent far, far too much money. Oh, I know sales are still in the toilet in this industry, but with works like Chynna Clugston-Major's charming and funny BLUE MONDAY: THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT, or Carla Speed McNeil's endlessly inventive FINDER on the market, it's hard not to be optimistic about the future. This is what San Diego has really underscored for me - the sheer variety and quality of the material available. Most of what I bought is stuff I can probably track down more of when I get back to England, but I don't often get the chance to see the sheer volume of it in one place.

I don't get the same feeling at a UK con, because, no matter how much I enjoy them, and no matter how good a time I have, the fact remains: they're much, much smaller affairs. I hadn't understood just how much smaller until this weekend, I admit. The entire floor area of the Comics 2001 Festival would fit into an area only slightly larger than that covered by Artists Alley here. As a friend remarked to me, the San Diego con is so large that you can easily avoid anything you're not interested in, and still have plenty to do. Easily. God knows, my feet are telling me just how easy it is to lose myself on the main floor, even though well over half of it was of no interest to me - stores with booths, artwork by people I've never heard of, badly-concealed porn, and so on. Don't get me wrong - I don't mind it as such - but I don't think that it's appropriate to have it on display on a floor area where young children can walk by, and covering the offending bits with a little bit of tape isn't going to fool anyone, I'm afraid.

I confess, all my usual frustrations were present. Most of the panels I went to were under-attended, as everyone crowded into the big corporate shilling sessions. I still don't see the point in that - this industry is blessed with a fairly extensive press. You'll all be able to hear about the exciting new plans that DC and Marvel have soon enough through them, if you haven't heard already. And yes, I admit, some of it does sound interesting. But not as interesting as hearing Amanda Connor talk about growing up and being encouraged to do comics with the sort of enthusiasm that can't help but make you smile, or Jill Thompson talk about her nieces and why she writes kids books. These are the moments that made the con for me. Little moments of joy, simple human stories like these are what make me think that this industry has a future.

While I was walking the con floor this morning, I was paying a bit more attention to the people around me than I had on previous days, and I was struck by the sheer number of couples that were here together, rather than one partner dragging the other along behind them. The reason I mention this is because it was so different to what I was expecting. Yes, there were a few frighteningly overweight people in bad costumes, and I freely confess that every time one of them wandered by I just wanted to stop and yell at them to bathe and dress like a human, but for the most part, aside from a high level of background geekiness, I saw a lot of people who at least managed to appear to be reasonably well adjusted humans.

Certainly, all the new people I've met and talked to, rather than just seen in passing over the course of this weekend, have been utterly ace. Listing them all would only result in me leaving someone out, so I won't bother. Almost everyone I've spoken to this weekend is someone I would happily spend time with again, and I'm only sorry that I didn't have more time to hang out with some people, or indeed, the time to meet more people.

No, all in all, I've come away from San Diego with a good impression of comics fandom. Yeah, we have our freaks and people dressed as Klingons, but even if their numbers aren't on the decline, it would appear that the number of normal adults that like comics enough to attend the convention is on the rise, making the number of of mutants seem correspondingly smaller. Certainly the number of women attending the convention is up on previous years. I know this thanks to various members of staff at Sequential Tart, who recounted in conversation how for the first time there was a queue for the women's bathroom this year.

Surely that's got to be a good sign.

Alasdair Watson is the author of the Eagle Award-nominated RUST.

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