I wrote this last year, after the SDCC 2013 and was unable to find a place to publish it, so it's languished on my hard drive ever since. So now, nearly a year after it's writing, I bring it to you in the hopes that you'll think about the con experience you had or have been dreaming about and get motivated to try something different and think something new.
I did not attend the con this year, so I don't know if any of the issues I raise in this piece have been addressed or if things have gotten worse. I welcome your comments and hope that you're kind.
I'm waiting in line for The Black
Panel and I can hear it already. Voices of others in the line,
happily acknowledging that they're only here for some X-Files panel
hours away. This sets off an alarm in my head, an alarm that rarely
stops ringing while walking around the San Diego Comic Con. The alarm
that says something is very wrong here. The San Diego Comic Con is a
microcosm of American inequality. Everything you see outside the
convention center is mirrored within (and what you see is literal
shanty towns of homeless human beings, living in tents blocks away
from the modern celebration of disposable plastic culture that SDCC
has become).
