Fandom

Hi, I’m Lauren, and I’m a Comic-Con virgin. I’m also a graduate student in Fine Art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where I’m currently preparing for advancement to MFA candidacy in the form of my first solo exhibition. I’m attending Comic-Con this year mostly to do research for said solo exhibition. Most of my work in the past year has been concerned with the idea of romantic love— Is it real? If so, how’s it work? How are our perceptions of love influenced by pop culture, or are they even, perhaps, entirely resulting from it?

riiing riiiiiiiiiiiiing riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing

Hi, I’m Ali. And I’m a Comic-Con Virgin. That’s right, next week I’ll be flying out to San Diego for my First Time with the biggest, baddest, craziest, most epic, mother of all comic book conventions. Some how, I don’t think SDCC will be gentle.

In conjunction with the Geppi’s Entertainment Museum, Diamond is helping launch the Fandom Advisory Network, a collecting oriented advocacy network for all kinds of collectors. The organization will launch at Comic-Con of course, with signings and a contest to be named the Ultimate Fan of 2011.

A Facebook page has sprung up to organize a protest march against the new awful designs of the new 52. It seems some folks don't like the new fresh DC designs that are all new:

A licensed massage therapist/cosplayer named Amber is concerned by some Wizard shows where something called cosplay massage has been exhibiting, something she feels is unsuitable for a family convention. and it's not just skimpy costumes. Its the element of fantasy entering into a therapeutic service.

Because that last item was a little gloomy, here's Anita Olin's story of how she got into reading comics, from tis month's Sequential Tart:

Now that Nerd Culture is just regular Culture, thanks to the Internet, you'd think everything would have been settled, but there are still some skirmishes going on. And only this week a new mini-ruckus erupted and oddly enough, it was among the girls.

Now, one of the GOOD things about the internet is that it has allowed girl geeks to be just as proud and out as boy geeks and to, indeed, show that they like geek stuff, something that was doubted for a long time.

Speaking as a lifelong nerd myself, I can testify that back in the neolithic age of nerditry, if you had girls genes you were not taken seriously as a comics fan, wrestling fan, Star Wars fan, or anything else that boys thought was just for them. Oh, the looks I got when I said I had read Robert E. Howard. For a long time, I felt like I was the only one. In fact while I was at WonderCon, I was chatting to Sergio Aragones about the olden days and he said, "Remember when you were the only girl?" and I could only laugh in agreement.

While we were checking out our ego Google alert, we found a response to our brief critique of a piece on the Anaheim Comic-Con that didn't mention a single comics type person. The writer of the piece, one Matt Patches, says he was right to stay mute on comics, because everyone expects to find comics and cartoonists at a comic-con so it is not noteworthy enough to report:

Comic-Con is now like the state fair, as events in Orlando, Memphis, Rockford, WI, and Kansas City took place over the weekend.