An Involuntary Farewell to Comic-Con

I can already feel the hole in my heart it's gonna leave

We all develop or adopt brands that become part of our identity. MAGA survives because it's a brand. Biblical interpretations are usually based more on the church's and individual's personal brand rather than sticking to just the source material. And my brand, well...Comic-Con was a huge part of it. A part that, short of some near-miraculous and unlikely chain of events, will not be part of my life this year, for the first time in 25 years, and possibly not again. It's a tough pill to swallow.

It's a weird one, too. Anyone reading this who is not in entertainment journalism is probably thinking, “Oh, boo hoo, you don't get to go to the coolest event in the world for free any more!” Anyone who is in entertainment journalism is as likely to be saying, “Lucky! I'd kill not to have to go to that geek convention where I type till my fingers go numb while sitting all day in an uncomfortable chair in that giant hall.” This is one reason why I was a good person to send – sure, I'd complain about the discomfort, but in the end, I loved being there. And I was the best at it.

Dismiss that as braggadocio if you like. I don't make many lofty claims for myself aside from obvious hyperbole (If you think “LYT rules” is anything more than a wrestling-style slogan to boost my own self-esteem, go slap yourself in the face). But I make one claim above all that I have zero doubt about, because I have receipts: I am the best Comic-Con reporter. And now I have no outlet for it, and the world shrugs. Maybe four people posted a hug emoji on my behalf.

I had heard about the San Diego Comic-Con for years before attending, because I read all the magazines about comics and toys. It was a legendary destination, like hearing about Disneyland from Ireland. When my uncle moved to San Diego, I finally realized I could go, and I asked for tickets for my birthday. They were pretty cheap then, something like $15-$25 per day. When I got there, I found out I didn't even need them – back then you could just show a business card from a media outlet, which I was working at, and they'd hand you a press pass in return. It didn't fill the whole convention center yet, and Hall H was not even a thing. All the major panels happened in Ballroom 20, and if you needed to leave to use the bathroom, you'd have to find a new seat.

You could get into anything, too. Panels featuring Neil Gaiman discussing his upcoming movie Mirrormask might only be half-full. A panel featuring WWE's Mick Foley and Undertaker still had a few seats, and their autograph line was entirely manageable. There was no censorship of any clips shown, until the year Borat came and Fox screened the naked wrestling fight – after that, horror movie presentations tended to move off-site. I saw Robert Jordan speak before he died. Virtually every major celebrity who ever made a genre movie from 2000 onward, I saw speak onstage. Schwarzenegger. Jolie. Johnson. Cameron. Spielberg. Stallone. Lundgren. Metallica. Gilliam. Bridges. Shatner. Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood. I could go on.

I've seen it expand to fill the space, then spill over. I've seen it go from being a space for mostly awkward white nerds on the spectrum to a global destination for literally everyone (the main downside of which is that it is not as disabled-friendly as it used to be due to sheer crowd size and density). The first big expansion was because of Twilight; the second due to everyone having smartphones. Those allowed fans beyond the stereotypical computer nerds to really find each other. (Sadly, bigots did too, but that comes later.) I've seen San Diego adjust to make the place more navigable, adding a bridge across the railway so people don't get stuck the wrong way. I saw the Comic-Con museum go from a vague proposal to a cool place to chill on Sunday.

The first few years, I just wrote about it on my personal blog. If I didn't stay with my uncle, I'd stay with my friend Brad, the messiest human being alive (and I should know!), who was a huge help if I ever lost anything or needed some tech help (alas, he died right before COVID). It slowly dawned on me that some of my editors might think Comic-Con worthwhile too, so after a couple of years, I ended up writing a single post-event story. When I moved to OC, I pitched the entire New Times/Village Voice company on the notion that since we were the closest paper to San Diego, I should cover Comic-Con in full for the chain. They agreed, but what happened was more like I took over the OC Weekly blog with Comic-Con stuff, and the regular readers, who already hated me, were annoyed by it. We turned all the blog posts into a feature that came out a week and a half after the con was over, because our new editor insisted that the presses could not be held over the weekend [they could and often did]. The cool thing about the story was that artist Todd Nauck drew me for the cover, and Todd would introduce me to Rob Liefeld, who became the subject of another story.

OC Weekly fired me the following year. And when I got a phone call shortly thereafter from Nikki Finke, I swear I thought it was a prank. The only association I'd had with her – for those who don't remember, she was a Hollywood gossip with a fearsome reputation – was when I'd made fun of her at a roast for my friend Cathy Seipp. Nikki had “sock puppeted” on her blog, which is to say, commented pretending to be her own attorney and leaving a threat, so I made a literal sock puppet video for Cathy. Surely it was a friend of Cathy pranking me this time in response, but no, it was the real deal.

Nikki must have seen my cover story. Her whole spiel was “I don't DO geek, but you do.” She wanted me to cover Comic-Con any way I wanted. Whatever I was interested in, she was interested in. Even though E! Online had already asked me to write some things, she was okay with that. So I said yes. And I did not have a laptop. I borrowed my friend Brian's, and its modem promptly burned out on day 2. Nikki was furious: “It's a geek convention! Take someone else's!”

I soon learned, though, that Nikki could be furious one day and do a complete reversal the next day if your work was up to it. And though I was still taking notes, then crafting them into stories, and not always on the same day, it didn't matter. Nobody else was doing what I was doing. I also learned that using Nikki's name opened every door, including many I thought closed to me. The business was terrified of her.

A few years into having the Deadline Comic-Con beat for her, she started to get impatient because other sites were covering too, and getting headlines first. I looked to see what they were doing – far less substance, but the headlines were getting up quicker. I adjusted. Previously, I had taken long hand notes during panels and typed them up; I started typing during panels, and taking out the sexiest line or info nugget to be the headline. Usually by the end of the panel, I could hit send. There were wifi issues aplenty, to be sure, but after a few years, San Diego mostly caught up. Took maybe three years to adjust to everyone having smartphones.

When Nikki's recommendation got me my job at Geekhicdaily, which became Nerdist, it came with a condition – they had to give me back to her for Comic-Con. When I moved to Topless Robot, I had to let the gig go, and I found out the hard way that none of the big movie publicists cared about giving access to me if I wasn't at Deadline. I also found out that you could no longer get into Hall H without camping overnight, an innovation made mandatory because of the year Twilight fans joined the party. So I had to rethink my coverage, responding to smaller but arguably cooler press offers, focusing on toys, using my access to Rob Liefeld, and pivoting to video. Thanks to Voice Media deleting their Vimeo account, none of that's up any more.

When Topless Robot folded, I returned to Nerdist, and they had access. It was regularly made clear to me, however, that I was not on a par with their other editors or interviewers. Nerdist at that time was run by people very much like Heathers.

After Nerdist came Superhero Hype, which happily let me do whatever I wanted, and gave me a degree of access. I may not have scored passes to the coveted Marvel Studios panel, but I could score one to something earlier in the day in Hall H, cover that, and stay inside. There's nothing like being in that Marvel room when new stuff is revealed, like RDJ unmasking as Doom, or Mark Ruffalo coming out as Bruce Banner for the first time, or the first scene from Black Panther revealed.

Comic-Con almost always falls on my birthday, and there was often a fun party to attend. This year, I don't know. Though I may still have to monitor the news, it won't be the same. Those of my friends who don’t attend — will they be enough to invite to a counter-party? That said, one of my saddest birthdays ever was at Comic Con, when I went to a Nerdist party and was the only Nerdist editor NOT given VIP area access, so all my coworkers ditched me. Again, Heathers.

I remember the days when celebrities had booths on the floor, and you'd regularly see people like Sid Haig, Lou Ferrigno, or one year, the late Mary Kay Bergman (every female voice on South Park, at the time), desperately trying to lure fans to her table by yelling out in all her various character voices.

As time has gone on, my legs and joints and back have ached more and more. Carrying a laptop around on your shoulder all day is torturous, and for Nikki, I had to have a backup laptop on my back too, after that first one failed and taught me a lesson. I don't regret working for her; it gave me a certain work ethic, in that no excuses would ever be accepted and I had to complete the task come hell or high water. So many writers I have edited have had far weaker excuses – “I'm tired and have to go to bed” does not play.

Nikki was famously reclusive, so when she asked me to come to her home to pick up a laptop, I thought I'd be meeting the Wizard of Oz, practically. And it weirdly was like that – she stayed behind a wall while her maid gave me everything. I could hear her call out instructions to me, but I could not see her. And I was in her home. It was bizarre, but quite a story to tell.

Comic-Con costs around $1500 in hotel rooms. I won't miss that money-suck. It seldom paid for itself, that trip. But it meant the world. The immersion in everything I love started to go by way too fast.

To say I will miss it is an understatement. I feel cheated. I'm better at covering it than anyone who will be – and you can check the time stamps of every report I've filed from there in the last decade or so. I took particular pride in beating Deadline to a headline. Nikki's dead now, so nobody's going to chew them out as badly. But hey, everyone's suffering. And every writer is getting laid off. I'm here on Substack for that reason. I'm not done with this line of work even if it thinks it's done with me. But I know full well their press office will laugh if I apply as ill LYTeracy right now. Building this thing will take time.

For now, I'm just sad. One more thing that defined me...doesn't. I don't want to leave it behind forever, ever. Yet today I have no choice.

And almost nobody notices. That's a heartbreaker.

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