I didn’t get to do my traditional, “by the time you’re reading this, I’ll be at San Diego Comic-Con” post this year, mostly because I was busy writing other things and then suddenly it was San Diego Comic-Con and what can be done? I’m still writing this before the show, but literally, just before the show; I got too distracted with work and life to properly plan out blog posts ahead of time for most of July because… well, San Diego Comic-Con requires a lot of planning ahead of time. It’ll just run as I’m traveling back this year, is all.
My relationship with the show changes every year; the longer I’m in the job I’m in, the bigger SDCC becomes in terms of time real estate. By the time the show actually started (starts; I’m writing early, remember?), I’ll have been working on it for weeks, thinking about not just my schedule but all the Popverse writers attending, and sending out emails and messages about whether or not we can get into this panel or that press room, or if embargo X is really intended for time Y, or if we can go with it as soon as it’s mentioned in the room, or some such. What was once just “a convention” becomes a game of intellectual Tetris, trying to make all the pieces fit together without losing sight of the bigger picture.
I also find that the show itself becomes less and less… not important, per se, but central, if that makes sense…? My memories are of the friends I see every year, and of the surrounding areas of the show — the spaces you walk through to get there and back each day. I could walk you through the San Diego Convention Center blindfolded by this point — I’ve been going to SDCC for something like 20 years! — but the actual convention feels like an afterthought more and more with every year. It’s just a job, in a different place, and at a different pace from the rest of the year.
If you’d told me that back when I first attended and felt overwhelmed by it all — even the idea of it all — I wouldn’t have believed you. But then, if you’d told me that I’d have done San Diego Comic-Con for twenty years, I wouldn’t have believed that, either.