It's Andy Fish!

Image above is actually from the entrance of the Comic Con Museum– all rights reserved © and ™ San Diego Comic Con.

Full disclosure- in 2018 Veronica and I were guests of honor at San Diego Comic Con– they flew us out, they put us up in the official comic con hotel in a stunning suite of rooms with a view of the harbor and escorted us through the show where we did press interviews, panels and made connections with many of the editors in attendance– we were also Eisner Judges that year (Eisner’s are like the Academy Awards for Comics– this was the shop version) and had an absolute blast. My opinions of the show have always been extremely high, but I might be biased.

San Diego Comic Con is so big it’s the only comic book convention in the world that can actually be called Comic-Con. No kidding. It’s gravitational pull is so strong I would have you look closely at any celebrity photos on IMDB or in the news and you’ll notice 90% have the Comic-Con wall behind them. This is not just the biggest show of the year– it is THE show of the year.

Is it truly a comic convention? Not one bit. It’s equal parts Hollywood Studios/TV Production Companies/Comic Publishers/Comic Creators/Toy Companies/Comic Book Dealers and pretty much everything else related to entertainment. If you want a pure comic convention experience I would recommend HEROE’S CON in North Carolina which is generally held around Father’s Day weekend– it’s about 1/5th the size of San Diego Comic Con but it’s all comics.

You can’t tell me SDCC isn’t about comics when one of the rarest comics on Earth is featured there. Detective Comics #35 (January 1940) is from the early pre-Robin period of Batman when the character was far closer to his pulp magazine roots- as you can see from this cover which features a hypodermic needle– Bat Man isn’t afraid to take on the bad guys. This book is set up for auction and estimated to sell for $75,000-$100,000.

Seem like a lot? A single PAGE from this comic recently sold for $1300+ that’s right I said a single page. And most of us who watched the auction thought that was a bargain. These rare golden age books are getting harder and harder to find– but you might find them there.

San Diego Comic Con is so big it takes over most of the city– the TV Stations all show superhero shows and movies, the supermarkets have superhero displays– the area AROUND the convention is often loaded with theme park level rides celebrating new entertainment properties. The year we were there they had the “Jack Ryan Experience” where you could ride on a full size helicopter– land in a replica of a burned out desert stronghold and try to get through the obstacles.

I mention all of this because even if you don’t go to San Diego Comic Con it’s impact is felt so strongly through the industry that you feel like you’re a part of it and when its over you experience “con crash”– a condition of going from the excitement and fever of the events back to normal life.

So for this week and next I’ll be focusing on Comics– all Comics– comic shop reviews, convention reviews, original comic art– we’ll be looking at some things that hopefully we’ll all find interesting.