As you’re reading this, I’m probably losing my mind. I’m writing it a couple of weeks ahead of time in a vain attempt to try and build up something resembling a buffer of posts before the big event, but on the day this publishes, the annual terror that is San Diego Comic-Con Week is ramping up.
The show itself doesn’t begin for two more days, but basically everything from two weeks out is utterly eaten up by the event itself. Like New York Comic Con in October, San Diego Comic-Con (which has the hyphen, NYCC doesn’t, because “Comic-Con” with a hyphen is apparently a trademarked term; something to bear in mind) is less of a traditional event than an existential happening with an event horizon that consumes everything around it; time gets weird, and it’s probably very likely that I’ve been so nose-deep in planning for the show when you’re reading this that I have already lost track of what day it actually is.
Making things more complicated this year is the fact that I am an editor and not just a writer at Popverse this year, so I actually get to contribute to the planning of everything this time out, and also that we at Popverse have also been dealing with a wholescale switch of behind-the-scenes hosting, organizational tools, and CMS for the last couple weeks. There’s been a lot going on, roughly four or five times what I’m used to at this time of year, so it’s been… a thing.
(Again, I’m writing this weeks ahead, but to give you an idea of how much everything is this year, it’s three weeks until SDCC as I’m writing, and I’m already doing things I usually leave until week-of. There’s no way around it. Light is bending! We’re already on the edge of the black hole!)
The thing that’s keeping me afloat at this point is, unexpectedly, that I keep remembering that I like San Diego Comic-Con. I like seeing friends I rarely see outside of that show; I like the strange feeling that mixes the intense work pressure and the sense that maybe I’m on some kind of holiday just because everything feels so different and unexpected. I’ve been going to the show in one way or another for the past 16 years without fail — aside from the Covid period when it was canceled — and for a handful of years before that more irregularly; I have very strong, complicated but important memories and life events tied to the show. For better or worse, SDCC has become a pilgrimage in its own right for me, and something that almost always feels worth the stress by the time the show is over each and every year. As long as I remember that, then everything becomes easier to work through.
It’s just that, already, I’m having to remind myself to remember that, and not lose my cool. There’s weeks to do that — although it’s probably happened by the time you’re seeing this.
