As a child, superhero comics felt like a guilty secret – their devotees part of a secret society who found refuge in the musty, cardboard-scented havens of comics conventions. Back then, girls were absent, dressing up was unheard of, and even children weren’t especially welcome. So when a gang of teenage girls not only turned up to Avengers: Endgame but openly wept at Iron Man’s death, I felt something close to vindication – and perhaps a twinge of envy for today’s young fans, who can indulge their obsessions out in the open.
Those same musty rooms of old cardboard and grown men was what I was anticipating when I booked my ticket to the self-styled ‘Brighton Comic Con’ at the Amex Stadium last month. It had, admittedly, been some time since my last rodeo, so I suppose I had no real right to anticipate anything, but still: WHAT. THE. EFF.
Forget about your big halls – the event was held in a long corridor, which would normally only have seen use as a means to funnel football fans into and out of the stadium. A wide corridor, then, but a corridor nonetheless, and one that had seen more than its share of barely voluntary fluid discharge in its short lifetime. So the only smell was of disinfectant, but we could have been in the bleedin’ Ritz and it still wouldn’t have mattered; there was no cardboard/mylar fragrance because there were no comics.
And what was in their place? Merch, obviously, but of a horribly degraded sort. The noble action figures of my youth, which had at least attempted to be accurate representations of their subjects (if with weird bums), have been almost totally supplanted by babyish, balloon-headed caricatures. But it would seem that even the merch is fighting a losing battle now, because the majority of the stalls were actually staffed by people who had no discernible connection to comics whatsoever: crystal healers, creepy Catweazlesque swordsmiths, hawkers of witchy trinkets, Celtic barbarian apologists and a surprisingly large cohort of random people just from the Brighton area who had thought their hobby might somehow be of interest.
Of course, I totally get it – no shame in hustling! But this seemingly quite widespread misconception about what a comic convention is actually for can probably also be traced back to the popularity of the Marvel films. Twenty years ago, most of these jokers wouldn’t have known who Spidey even was, let alone Mr Mxyzptlk – and most of them still don’t. But they’ll turn up anyway because they know there’s money in it (‘There’s going to be a comic convention… and one of my paintings is of a dragon! Isn’t that kind of the same thing?’).
Twenty years ago, most of these jokers wouldn’t have known who Spidey even was, let alone Mr Mxyzptlk – and most of them still don’t
The most striking difference between the conventions of old and their modern equivalents is the fact that teenage girls basically run things now. They are everywhere you look, and most of them are in fancy dress – sorry, cosplay. If the care that’s been taken in the construction of their outfits is anything to go by, dressing-up is the big draw, who are in any case clearly too busy bringing in the selfie harvest to give a rat’s arse about Silver Age grading standards. And their indifference to the joys of ‘proper’ comics is further underlined by the fact that they mainly dress as characters from Japanese manga or anime that very few British adults would even recognise.
But that’s probably the whole point. Why would any self-respecting teen want to dress up as a character from some stupid film their stupid parents went to see? It seems we have come full circle, and Marvel is back to being uncool again. The general uselessness of most of their recent films may well have been a factor but, whatever the reason, my dream of a world united in its appreciation of Marvel’s glory is in tatters. And if no one’s bothering with the films, who’s going to bother with the comics?
As I walked out, I found myself scowling at the life-size replica of the Batmobile parked outside – too little, too late! – and reflecting bitterly on the name of the event I’d just endured. Because the only sense in which it could truthfully have been called a ‘comic con’ was that I’d been conned into thinking there’d be comics there.
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