SDCC For You and Me?

I've been reading through the 2009 San Diego Comicon coverage, and have found most of the announcements pretty boring. There's a few spin-offs, a few revivals-- but neither anything original nor even the usual deluge of the same old shit repackaged. Most of the "announcements" had already been made through the Previews catalog, much less the internet. James Robinson's JLA line-up looks more like a Titans revamp, with a super-gorilla on board for added indifference on my part. Reggie Hudlin gets to continue his dumbed down version of Christopher Priest's Black Panther by having T'Chaka and Captain America meet during World War II again. Brother Voodoo is getting Spain's answer to Mike Mignola on art. Geoff Johns on a Flash ongoing came as such a total and complete shock. The JSA is bringing the Super Squad back and calling it the All-Stars. Robert Kirkman's ending the always shaky Wolf-Man series. Dynamite has Alex Ross' latest chance to fuck up Golden Age heroes with the perpetually short-lived Fighting American. Deathlok is getting another opportunity to fail. The cynical Gen-13 cash-in DV8 is reassurting its trademark. Planetary and Ex Machina are finally ending. I still haven't read Phil Hester's work on The Darkness, which tempers my interest in his Vampirella reboot. It's nice to hear Bob Schreck has landed at IDW, even though I didn't much care for what came out under his eye at DC. How sad is it when some of the best news for me was that Jim Shooter would get another shot at reworking the old Gold Key properties Turok, Magnus and Dr. Solar? I wasn't even all that big of a Valiant fan the first time.

The trend of pricing comic book dealers, artists, and small press publishers out of booths has continued, to the point where it's being projected that actual comic books on sale will have pretty much dried up in the next few years. Well, I guess the Twi-Hards needed more room for their waiting lines, or a video game developer wanted a bigger floorshow. I went to SDCC in 2000, and I'm thinking about digging up my memoir of that time. I think I went at just the right period, when the comics and outside media interests were in perfect balance to inspire wonderment, rather than revulsion. Making the trip and staying at the hotel adjacent to the convention center on somebody else's dime couldn't have hurt my enjoyment, either. My girlfriend has been talking about our making the trip next year, but I don't expect I could ever relive anything like my past experience, so maybe we'll try New York instead.