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Well, our crack Team Beat Elite are swarming all over San Diego, filing reports, having fun, and experiencing the Con in all its glory. (Been there, done that, got the tote bag.)
Meanwhile, back here at Stately Beat Manor, at what we’ve sardonically dubbed “The Undisclosed Location” (just in case someone decides to recreate Lex Luthor’s beachfront plan with a few nuclear missiles aimed at California), we’ve been monitoring the systems, editing reports, and excavating the chest freezer (we’re making a jambalaya of the freezer-burnt meat tonight, to have for tomorrow).
This isn’t quite a “studio coffee run” post, as I tend to ignore the many celebrity sightings at CCI, and because other staff do a better job. (I also don’t recognize most of the boldfaced names, so that’s another layer of disinterest.) But I do love animation, and while I don’t have a television, I am somewhat cognizant of the various media tribes and denominations which comprise the Great Geek Nation.
That said, here are some links of various reports. Stay tuned for reports for panels!
So, here we go!
➠ Nerdy Bird Jill Pantozzi interviews Thor Parker, Midtown Comics’ Social Marketing and Events Director, about National Geographic’s upcoming “Comic Store Heroes”. There’s a special airing on the NG Channel Friday at 8 PM ET.
Jill: And that brings up something the press, and fans, are likely to be talking about. What you just described is similar to what AMC did with Kevin Smith’s Comic Book Men. It had a mixed reaction in the community as to how it portrayed us. I know I certainly had a strong opinion on it. What are your thoughts on that and the inevitable comparisons?
Thor: We all watched Comic Book Men when it came out. We’ve got a lot of big Kevin Smith fans at the store. When I saw it I could help but want more out of it I guess. I know that Kevin Smith’s name doesn’t go hand in hand with highbrow entertainment, but I think, and I beleive a lot of other people thought, the show could be so much more. I don’t blame the show for not providing the things the modern comic fan is looking for. That’s where we’ll come in I suppose. We’re striving to show how positive comics and the comic community as a whole is and can be. I don’t think Comic Book Men had a mission statement, but that would be close to what ours is.
National Geographic. Comics. *sniffle* The dream is coming true…
➜ AHEM… sorry… Elsewhere, the Hollywood Reporter asks, “Are Fanboys Still Worth the Time and Money?”
Here we go again, another July, another parade of movie stars and executives heading south to peddle their wares at Comic-Con. But before we all spend crazy money jetting in talent, booking lavish parties and crafting just the right teaser-trailer package, think for a moment: Is the Comic-Con crowd still the best audience on which to be blowing our marketing budget? A decade after Hall H became Hollywood’s must-stop venue on the path to the multiplex, what if Comic-Con is sort of over?
Lauren, Publicity Assistant
We were thrilled when Brave New Words won the Hugo 
Award. And we were overwhelmed with excitement when Jeff Prucher, freelance lexicographer and editor for the Oxford English Dictionary’s science fiction project, revisited the blog with his picks of words that may seem to come from science, but really originate in science fiction. Now that Brave New Words is available in paperback, we’ve asked Jeff to write for us yet again. Below are his picks of mainstream words with fannish pedigrees, as coined by science fiction and fantasy fans.
Previously, I discussed words coined in works of science fiction that one might think came from the sciences instead. This time, I’m going to look at words coined by science fiction (and fantasy) fans which have entered the broader lexicon. Specifically, these are terms that are part of what is sometimes called fanspeak, the lingo of science fiction and fantasy fandom. This is probably not an exhaustive list, since definitions of what constitutes fanspeak, and what “entering the broader lexicon” actually means are open to different interpretations. I present these in no particular order:
1. Fanzine. This is one of the most successful terms coined by SF fans, and has gone from referring specifically to amateur periodicals relating (however vaguely) to science fiction and fantasy, to periodicals for fans of just about anything you care to name. The term has been around since at least 1940 in SF fandom, and since at least the 1960s in general use. (The earliest clear citation I’ve found for a non-SF usage is from 1968, which is almost certainly too late.)
2. Fanmag. This is another (of many) term that SF fans used to describe fanzines. It’s less common (I haven’t seen it in any mainstream dictionaries), but has also been used for non-SF zines.
3. Which leads me to zine, the other big success story. Zine was originally just a synonym of fanzine, but sometime in the late Twentieth Century, it was adopted to describe amateur publications of all sorts, not just those limited to one fandom or another, and an entire subculture has grown up around the publication of these zines. Zine can also be used as a suffix, to denote a particular type of zine (such as newszine, a zine that publishes primarily news, or mimeozine, a zine that is produced with a mimeograph machine). SF fans used the suffix profligately, and most coinages have stayed within fanspeak, but a few of the -zine words have seeped into wider zine culture as well, notably perzine (short for personalzine, a zine published by a single person, and often containing personal, journal-like content) and crudzine (a cruddy zine).
4. Completism. The desire to possess all of a set of something. Someone afflicted with completism is a completist. These originally referred primarily to the collection of books and magazines (which is pretty much what there was available to collect in the early days of SF fandom), and is now applied to comics, music, you name it.
5. -con. Another suffix. This shows up in the names of conventions and conferences. In use in SF fandom since at least 1942, this spread to related fandoms such as comics and role-playing games, and is now reasonably common in the names of other types of conventions, particularly computer and tech-related ones.
6. ish. An issue (of a magazine or fanzine). My own family has used this shortening for years, and we were completely oblivious to the existence of SF fandom when I was growing up, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this has an SFnal origin. What hasn’t made it into the broader lexicon is the use of ish as a combining form, in words like nextish, lastish, even thish (the next, last, and current issues of a magazine or fanzine, respectively).
7. fan fiction. Most people outside of the fanfic community probably think (if they think about it at all) that fan fiction is the exclusive domain of SF and fantasy fans. While this was once true, it’s certainly not true any more, and both the name and some of the associated terminology of fan fiction originated in SF fandom. Some of these associated terms are slash (fiction that depicts a sexual relationship between two characters) and Mary Sue (a character that acts out a blatant wish-fulfillment of the author or a story featuring such a character), both of which originated in Star Trek fandom. Curiously, fan fiction was originally used to refer to amateur fiction written about fans themselves, rather than amateur fiction written using the characters or settings of an existing work.
8. sci-fi. This is probably the most contentious word in the fannish vocabulary. It was coined as a simple shortening of science fiction by Forrest J Ackerman, by analogy to hi-fi, and originally had no particular connotations. The term eventually came to be viewed with opprobrium by many fans, however, probably in large part due to its perceived overuse by outsiders, especially the mainstream media. It can sometimes serve as a shibboleth, as well, and in some contexts will identify the user as an outsider. (Despite this, many fans have always happily used the term sci-fi; as I said, it’s contentious.) The term has also undergone reanalysis in the SF community, and can now be used to refer specifically to bad SF (especially movies and television shows); in this sense it is usually pronounced “skiffy.”
RUST? Like the Now Comics RUST from the late 80s?
(Been there, done that, got the tote bag.)
You have to admit, though, that Comic-Con back in the ’90s isn’t the third/quarter of what it is NOW.
Hell, compare-and-contrast the SDCC captured in Mark Hamill’s COMIC BOOK: The Movie (filmed during the 2002 Con) and Morgan Spurlock’s COMIC-CON EPISODE IV (filmed at SDCC ‘10): what a difference just eight years make!
It’s a COMPLETELY different experience. And I don’t remember any Comic-Con tote bags from the ’90s; they just had those white plastic baggies with Rick Geary’s old Toucan logo on them… the ginormous WB bags just started appearing in the last 5 years…
Just sayin’.
/SDCCist
/SDCC ‘12 Day 1
“Think [movie one] meets [movie two] by way of [movie three]!”
Okay, I got this comic…
Think BEYOND THUNDERDOME meets WANTED by way of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.
Where do I sign for my millions?
“Think [movie one] meets [movie two] by way of [movie three]!”
Oh, then you’ve overheard my sales pitch at cons when I’m selling copies of THE SAGA OF PANDORA ZWIEBACK, my YA novel series, have you? ;-)
“It’s about a 16-year-old Goth who teams up with a 400-year-old, shape-shifting monster hunter. Think Ellen Page and Salma Hayek in a Hellboy movie.”
(Actually, I get the biggest laugh from that wordy description of the monster hunter, but the Hollywood high concept line is the punch line.)
http://www.starwarpconcepts.com/?page_id=61
Think SHREK meets THE PIANO by way of SUCKER PUNCH.
We could market it as niche Oscar-bait, but I think it has real break-out potential.
Or if you want to do it the easy way:
http://theyfightcrime.org/
He’s a benighted umbrella-wielding paramedic in drag. She’s a radical French-Canadian Valkyrie who can talk to animals. They fight crime!
He’s a war-weary overambitious matador whom everyone believes is mad. She’s a transdimensional gold-digging wrestler who hides her beauty behind a pair of thick-framed spectacles. They fight crime!
He’s a bookish native American rock star living undercover at Ringling Bros. Circus. She’s a blind nymphomaniac pearl diver from aristocratic European stock. They fight crime!
“Think [movie one] meets [movie two] by way of [movie three]!”
Yipee! It’s Mad Libs for movies!
“Yipee! It’s Mad Libs for movies!”
And now you understand the awesome power of the “Hollywood high concept!” :D The most famous one is how SPEED was pitched: “It’s Die Hard…on a bus!”
Actually, this approach does work to get your idea across, especially when you’ve got maybe thirty seconds to a minute to pitch your project (book, comic, etc.) to any visitor to your convention booth.
If you can boil your concept down to one or two sentences, people will remember it. The “Ellen Page/Salma Hayek” line might sound goofy, but I’ve seen people quote it online when they mention my Pandora Zwieback series, and had others recall it when they see me at a show the following year. It’s a very effective method.
2002 was my last Comic-Con.
I don’t remember any totes either, except for maybe some plastic bags. I think Viz might have done a few back then… I have most of the variations. Nowadays, I organize each show by stuffing all the loose papers into whatever free tote I pick up there. Then I toss it in a corner of my apartment.
I’m still searching for a picture of the petite waif who took the big red Smallville bag and turned it into a tube dress.
As for the new totes, it is not uncommon for attendees to sew the Warner bags into clothing. (dagnabbit! I can’t find a single photo! I coulda sworn I posted one from a previous Con!) Not just as as simple dresses, but as full Victorian clothing!
Ah… I see… the site doesn’t exist anymore…
http://www.thewb.com/comiccon/bagswardrobe
Ah ha!
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Y2z8sCcAEC2XMsLS4NLsww
Hey, someone has got to give a shout out to Ashley Lopez in that awesome Superboy costume. Good job, Ashley!
Ashley, yes! Fun, happiness, colour, sexiwholesome. Winner!