There are no free lunches

        There is no sex in the champagne room

              And there are no comics at San Diego Comic Con.

Well at least that’s how it seems. As the 2009 Comic Con got started I began hearing that few if any publishers were bothering with tables being happier instead to put their forces behind the movie tie-ins or video games based on their comics. By the end of Comic Con 2009 all I heard about was the Tron arcade or how there was a shot of War Machine in the footage Robert Downey JR showed during the Iron Man 2panel. Wow, War Machine, that’s clearly worth four hours of standing in line. I know there were comics somewhere at Comic Con but they weren’t the main focus as the name infers.

For some reason in the last ten years the term “Comic Con” has come to mean “A place to shill your movie or video game” which has forced comic books in the back room like some ugly child in a beautiful family. I guess I find it insulting because it seems like the folks putting together San Diego Comic Con are just giving the art form lip service.

It’s as if the organizers are saying that long as there are comics somewhere in the building they can pretend San Diego Comic Con is an actual comic convention when really it’s a whorehouse that allows the Corporate Serpents to spew their dark semen over the waiting eggs of adoring fans. Spawning from this whorehouse is a non-stop spending spree that will show up on a fiscal sales chart thus ensuring some corporate big wig gets a huge bonus.  

Look at the main attractions for Comic Con and you’ll see what I mean. First up we have the Tron Legacy set-up that, while impressive, has nothing to do with comics at all. There was a full-blown replica of Flynn’s Arcade, a Light Cycle, a trailer and all of it was there to create hype around a movie that has zero basis in comic books.

The same can be said for the Twilight panel, which are teen movies based on teen books. Nope no comics there either. I was also kind of pissed that all the Twilight stars looked annoyed they had to be there. There was also a Dexter panel, which left me scratching my head. Isn’t Dexter a book and a TV show?

Comics are involved in this..um…how?