Today’s the first day of Comic-Con
International: San Diego, which we old-timers insist is still the San Diego
Comic-Con, or SDCC. When I call myself an old-timer, I’m not kidding. The first
SDCC I attended was thirty years ago, in 1983. Since then I’ve missed...let me
count...oh, yeah. One. Last year, a family situation required us to make a trip
to the East Coast during the week we ordinarily would have been at Comic-Con.
Still, one miss in thirty years? Not a bad record.
When I went to that con in 1983, it was a much different
beast than it is now. It wasn’t held in the gigantic San Diego Convention
Center (which did not, in fact, exist then), but in a far smaller facility in
downtown San Diego called Golden Hall. It was—as the name implies—mostly about
comics. The attendees were mostly males, mostly wearing T-shirts, and they
spent their time pawing through long boxes of old comics, looking for treasure.
I was there as a bookseller, the only person in the room
selling books without pictures in them. Fantasy, science fiction, mystery,
horror—the stuff I liked to read, and which I had learned, when I worked for a
bookstore in the San Francisco Bay Area, could be sold to the people who
attended comic book conventions.
Not that there were any like San Diego’s, then or now.
In the ensuing years, much has changed. The con has grown to
truly gargantuan proportions. This year (as in the past several) there will be
more people in the convention center than live in my county in southeastern
Arizona. Comics are still purportedly the basis of the convention, but the
floor space of the massive exhibit hall is mostly given over to movie and TV
studios and gaming companies, with comics a secondary (or tertiary) presence.
Most of the movies and games have at least a glancing connection to comics—it’s
not coincidental that the amount the studios spend on floor space has
overlapped with the era in which the most profitable movies are about the Avengers
and Batman and Iron Man and Superman and Spider-Man. Comic-Con gets a ton of
press these days, and it’s a great launching platform for the blockbuster films
of the fall or next summer. The audience isn’t just men anymore, either. It’s
probably still a slightly male-heavy crowd, but with proportions that are more
like 60-40 than the 90-10 of days gone by.
My presence there has changed over the years, too. I went
from being the manager of a bookstore in La Jolla, CA, to being an owner of a
specialty bookstore, Mysterious Galaxy
(with locations in San Diego and Redondo Beach, CA) that focuses on science
fiction, fantasy, mystery, and horror (sound familiar?), and which has
exhibited at SDCC for all twenty years of its life. Then I became the vice
president of marketing for a start-up comic book publisher called WildStorm
Productions, owned by comics superstar Jim Lee, which meant that SDCC was the
number one promotional event of the year, eating up vast amounts of time and
energy. When DC Comics acquired WildStorm, I became a senior editor, which
changed by Comic-Con duties to include a lot of schmoozing, wining and dining
artists and writers to bring them into the fold and keep them happy. Then I
became the first editor-in-chief at IDW Publishing—another rapidly growing
start-up—and had to do a little of everything. In all three of those jobs, SDCC
was the event, the one place we had
to put on the best possible face, to meet the fans and impress the media and
entertain the pros.
But I had another task to accomplish, too. When I attended
that 1983 con, I had published some journalism, won a literary award for a
short story, but I was not yet a professional writer. Fast forward to 2013—by
now I’ve published fifty-some books, most of them novels (and some of those
based on comics, like Spider-Man and Superman, Gen13 and 30 Days
of Night). And I’ve written a little more than 130 comic books and graphic
novels. Which means that another goal at Comic-Con is promoting my own work,
talking to book editors and comic book editors, meeting fans and signing books.
So, Comic-Con? Busy week. Once every summer, for the last
thirty years (minus one) I’ve run myself ragged, made myself sick, lost my
voice, all while meeting and talking to and otherwise interacting with about
150,000 of my closest friends.
In the end, that’s really what Comic-Con is about. It
started with lovers of comics having an event where they could hang out
together, talk about their hobby, and score some deals. It is still that
(albeit surrounded by Hollywood megastars and a lot more noise and flash than
in the old days). For me, professional considerations aside, it’s a place to
visit with friends I only see once a year.
And there are other, more sentimental pleasures. I met my
wife Maryelizabeth at SDCC, in 1990. Married her during the con in ’92. My
daughter Holly has been to almost every con since she was born, and my son
David has never missed one (his first, in 1994, attended in utero) except last year, when we all were absent.
This year, for the first time, I’m a Special
Guest. That means I get some special treatment, including a spotlight
panel, at which I’ll be interviewed by the amazing Amber Benson, actress
and author, who I’ve known since she appeared on Buffy the Vampire Slayer while I was writing books based on the
show. Amber and I recently wrote a sick and twisted short story together,
called “Amuse-Bouche,” which won’t see print until early 2014 but which we’ll
no doubt read some of at the spotlight panel. I’ll also be talking about my new
supernatural thriller Season of the Wolf,
my Star Trek novel The Folded World, and whatever else
comes up, including my recent collaboration with the brilliant Marsheila
(Marcy) Rockwell on a novella that will lead into a big fantasy novel, as soon
as we both have the time to devote to it.
Life’s busy. Comic-Con week is busier still. But I hope,
during that week, to see old friends and meet new ones. If you’re at the con, I
hope you’ll attend one of my panels and track me down at the after-panel
signing or somewhere else. It’d be great to see you, along with our 149,999
other closest friends.
Author Info
Jeffrey J. Mariotte is
the award-winning author of lots and lots of novels and comics and other random
things, including a CSI DVD game, warnings on toy packages, and the little
boxes of text on the backs of trading cards.
***GIVEAWAY***
Jeff is hooking one lucky commenter up with a signed copy of Season of the Wolf, a beanie wolf and assortment of wolf cards!
US CONTEST ONLY
1. Your Email Address
2. Do you follow us? If so tell us how and get double entries!
3. At this year's Comic-Con what costumer goer would you love to see Jeff's wolf hang out with?
Ends July 21st at midnight!
