As some of you guys may know, here at The Young Folks we are really excited to head back to San Diego Comic Con this year after the amazing experience last year. To those of you who have no idea what it is, Comic-Con is the fourth largest convetion in the world (120,000 approximately attendees every year) and the largest convention in the continent. San Diego Comic-Con showcases not only comic books, but also video games, television shows, anime, toys, movies, and more. This is a place where anyone can geek out about the things they like the most, people dress up, you might encounter celebrities around the floor, you are going to be in an environment where anything you are obessed with or the fantasy world that you’re fascinated about is completely accepted and people from all over the world attend. Since I heard really good things about “Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope“, I decided it to rent it On Demand (for those of you like me who don’t want to go to the movie theater this is a great deal for only $6.99), and let me just say that now I’m just counting down the days until I go back to Southern California.
The film is set up in a way that we follow different fan stories that hope that San Diego Comic-Con of 2010 might be the one that convention that changes their lives. We have two illustrators, Skip Harvey, otherwise known in the film as “The Geek” and Eric Henson, “The Soldier“, both hoping to get reviews on their work and hoping to land a job with one of the top comic book companies at the convention. Then, we have Chuck Rozanski, “The Survivor“, who owns Mile High Comics in Denver, who needs to make a certain amount of sales to keep his business going. “The Designer” is Holly Conrad, who is going to Comic-Con to show her Mass Effect costume in the hopes that this will open doors for her in costume designing for video games or movies. And last but not least we have “The Lovers“, James Darling and Se Young Kang, where James secretly plans on proposing to her at the Convention during Kevin Smith’s panel, same place where he met her a year before.
All of these stories are also accompanied with footage from the convention as well as different actors, directors, writers and comic book illustrators share their experiences about Comic-Con and why it’s so unique. Morgan Spurlock managed to keep me interested enough in each of the fans’ stories all the way through the end, making me hope for them too, and I think that by adding people like Stan Lee, Kevin Smith, Seth Rogen and Joss Whedon to share their own experiences, makes it all the more intriguing for someone who has never been, to get out there to San Diego as soon as they can. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a Comic-Con infomercial, it’s more like showing people that this is the place where people not matter what they like, they will not be judged and they can rejoice on being part of a fandom.
Even though, it is called Comic-Con, in the past few years comic-book sales have dropped and more of the people who are attending seem to go for the television shows, movies or videogames. This is the reason why, Comic-Con is now a major platform for those industries, is like having your own target market and getting reactions from the audience immediately. These are the people who are going to see your movie/buy your game, these are the people who will buy action figures or any type of merchandise related to what you have at your panel. It’s more now focused on pop culture events than it is on comics, which I’m not going to lie it is sad but then again gives Comic-Con a huge role when it comes to big studios promoting their films and choosing Comic-Con over any other place to do so.
In conclusion, with only 88 minutes of running time, for those of you who have been there, you are going to see all the things you love about the convention and all the reasons why you have to go back. For those of you who haven’t been, you’ll see what makes that place so special, a place where fans can escape reality and enjoy their fandoms.
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