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Comic-Con Diary: Where the Girls Are

By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago

When I first went to Comic-Con, almost a decade ago, it was purely as a girlfriend. My then-love interest and I had gone to our respective home towns for the summer, and one day he called and asked for my measurements––he was making me an Uhura dress.

I understood then that part of my job at Comic-Con was partially to avoid saying anything too cynical or aggressive to his friends from back home (including the girlfriend of his best friend, who went every year in full Slave Leia regalia). But mainly, my job was to look good. I was young, and I went along with it because I was flattered that anyone would actually want to put me on display. Still, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it, and if memory serves, I wasn’t very good at it. I am a girl of varied talents, but that summer I learned that being passive, high-concept arm candy doesn’t make use of any of them.

Which is not to say that I had a terrible time; when we got to San Diego, I ditched the boyfriend and found my own niche. I remember there being a fair number of a girlfriends, floating around at various levels of excitement or reluctance, but there were also women who were there because they were active members of one of the communities represented, either as educated consumers or as makers, or both, and across generations, they seemed to be talking to one another. My memory could be fuzzy, but I don’t remember a single booth babe. I do remember a lot of preteens in Sailor Moon suits, but that’s another matter.

But blah, blah, blah — times change. From 2000 to 2007, Comic-Con attendance tripled. Studios started to swoop in in earnest around 2001, after X-Men and the ascendancy of sites like Ain’t it Cool taught them the power of the permanent adolescent male market. As long as we’re on the subject of adolescence, if my experience at Comic-Con 2008 is any indication, the options for young girls here have, on the surface, become quite a bit more varied than the either/or between mannequin and active consumer/producer; at the same time, most of these new options seem to amount to little more than one side of that old binary split.

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Comic-Con 2008

Comic-Con 2008: Watchmen Artist Dave Gibbons on Writer Alan Moore

By Kevin Buist posted 1 year ago

dave gibbons

Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons seems to have no trouble riding the wave of popularity his work has received thanks to Watch-Mania here at Comic-Con. In a press conference immediately following the panel discussion where clips of the film were shown, Gibbons and the cast seemed awestruck after seeing many of the images for the first time. One figure is notably absent from the frenzy surrounding the forthcoming film, the graphic novel’s author Alan Moore.

When asked about the apparent schism between Moore and Hollywood, Gibbons said, “It is very simple. Alan doesn’t take the moral high ground on this at all. There’s been some implication that [Alan has said], ‘Hollywood is impure, you really shouldn’t go there, Dave.’ No, it’s nothing to do with that at all. The fact is that Alan has had some very bad experiences with Hollywood, and he doesn’t care to repeat them. Now Alan is not a man who does things in halves. You or I might go, ‘Oh, well, if they want to make a film, that’s alright.’ Alan said, ‘No, I don’t want my name on it, and I don’t want any income from it. I don’t want anything to do with it at all.’ So, consequently he asked me to ask the movie company to send him a piece of paper that he could sign that would make both of those things happen. Which I was happy to do. …That’s what he wanted. He was extremely happy, he said, ‘Now I’ve had the piece of paper signed, I don’t care, I’m indifferent.’ I do speak to him from time to time, and occasionally I’d start to talk about Watchmen, and he’d say, ‘Well, I’m pleased you’re enthusiastic Dave, but I can’t really share it.’”

If Watchmen turns out to be as good as it seems to be (or as good as its source material), it would be a shame for Moore to not be a part of its success. Gibbons went on to say, “My personal feeling, and this is my first real involvement with Hollywood, [is that] it’s bad timing, because I think this is the one where they are going to do Alan justice, where they are going to give his work the respect and the reverence it deserves. And so I think that’s unfortunate. He may well have a change of heart about it. He’s a man of principle, and I admire him for that.”

Previous Alan Moore graphic novels that have been adapted to the screen include From Hell, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

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