"So, when do you go to your geek convention?" one of my co-workers asked me last week. He knew I was heading off to Comic-Con International, the annual gathering in San Diego that has slowly evolved into not only the largest comic-book convention in North America, but also a major pop-culture event for all sorts of genre entertainment, from anime and manga to videogames to science fiction and fantasy to role-playing games to big Hollywood spectacles. This year's "geek convention" attracted 80,000 people to the San Diego Convention Center, where celebrities including Charlize Theron, Natalie Portman, Jack Black's band Tenacious D and Kevin Smith appeared to push their new products or just mingle with fans.
But my co-worker's casual derision does have a ring of truth to it: Comic-Con is a geek convention, but as it's become as much about mainstream Hollywood entertainment as the niche market of comic books, it's a sign that we've developed into a geek culture. Look no further than the release of the new Harry Potter book, which came right at the height of the convention, to see how obsessive fandom focused on a fantastical work of fiction has bled into the mainstream. LucasFilm's booth at the convention proclaimed "Star Wars is Forever"; Sony Pictures announced its acquisition of Ringers, a documentary about Lord of the Rings fans; and DreamWorks used the convention as a launching pad to start promoting its live-action Transformers movie, directed by Michael Bay and due in theaters in summer 2007.
None of those are specifically comic-book-related, but all were important and notable events. Each project is also reflective of the way popular culture builds on geekdom: While Revenge of the Sith grosses hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, obsessed Star Wars fans demand new content in the form of novels, comic books and promises of a forthcoming TV series. The Lord of the Rings trilogy dominated the movies for three years, but the fans in the documentary had been following the books for years before that, and will be for years to come. The average person won't hear about the Transformers movie until a few months before its release, when commercials and trailers start popping up, but the studio wants to pre-sell it to the die-hard fans of the cartoon and toys who make up their core audience.
As go the geeks, so goes the rest of pop culture. It's no longer enough just to like something, whether that something is a comic book, film franchise or book series. Being a fan in the age of information overload means being an obsessive fan, learning minutiae from the Internet, DVD extras or other fans. And the stereotypes attached to geeky interests such as comic books and anime are breaking down. While the majority of Comic-Con attendees are still men (and more than a few of the fat, balding variety), there are a significant number of women—and not just wives and girlfriends dragged against their will.
The more people like my co-worker mock geeks, the more the geeks will quietly revel in the fact that they've taken over the cultural landscape. You don't need a convention to tell you that; all you have to do is turn on the TV. Whether or not it's a good thing is debatable, but it's impossible to deny that superheroes, hobbits and giant robots are pop culture's most effective weapons right now. For the 80,000 geeks in San Diego, the world couldn't possibly be more inviting.
Josh Bell is proud to be a comic-book geek. Read more of his takes on pop culture at
http://signalbleed.blogspot.com.