Apparently the ongoing writers’ strike (and a possible looming actors’ strike) is having an effect on programming:
Damn… this is gonna be another rough year for Comic-Con International. A list of big Hollywood studios are bailing on the event this year. We already reported that Marvel Studios will be a no-show, but now we’ve learned that Netflix, Sony, HBO, and Universal will not be showing up.
Not much else to say about that, except of course this:
Question: Will the venue operators reduce vendor costs to reflect the loss of big name entertainment companies showing up to present their latest stuff?
Answer: …Do you really expect me to answer ‘Yes’ with a straight face?
This year may be a last gasp of status quo. Live by the Studio System, die by the Studio System. The fans will gather other places if/when the time comes.
Comic Con has been sour for years – imposing and enforcing a self-importance to the point of hubris. Their fall can’t come fast enough.
* particularly around the concept of ‘convention exclusives’. Companies that developed really cool things and then only sold them at SDCC all deserve to go bankrupt. Ignoring 90% of the country that doesn’t live within an easy commute of the place or have the spare $100 to even get in the door for the chance to maybe buy a product is the fools gold of exclusivity. You embitter and disgust more fans than you create or keep. They can all DIAF.
Comic books by DC and Marvel are dead. (Ask Frank Castle.)
Movies about comic books are mostly dead. (Thank you, Spiderman.)
TV shows about comic books are pining for the fjords. (Are any left that are even watchable?)
Indy comics and small studios are putting out some quality stories and art.
But as a driver of pop culture?
It’s dead, Jim.
All that said, I still highly recommend Michael Stackpole’s “In Hero Years… I’m Dead!” to anybody who hasn’t read it.
Novels generally don’t work for Supers. This book is the exception. It’s brilliant. Not only is it a ripping good yarn, it’s a masterclass on what makes the genre work. (It has fun with tropes and archetypes, of course. If you don’t want to see an Ironman analog running a twelve step program to help retiring heroes reintegrate into society, I don’t know what to tell you. But a lot of it is a level of abstraction above that. The common tropes and archetypes work for a reason, and demonstrating the reasons, and how the pieces work together to reinforce them, while telling a compelling story… mad props.)
Re: Superhero novels.
Ridley, John. Those Who Walk in Darkness
read it 20 years ago and it sticks. The guy has gone on to…bigger things since.
I had heard that the Hellfire Club event at Comic-Con was going to be rather more lurid than one would expect to see in a public setting.
Now there will be fewer reasons for people to show.
Given the culture wars I am not unhappy at this development.