Having grown up reading comic books, I’d always wanted to attend the San Diego Comic-Con. During my university years, I gradually moved away from reading mainstream comic books, having gotten fed up with the plots and lack of characters I identified with, as well as the sheer expense and the accumulation of paper that the collecting aspect entailed. I eventually stopped buying single issue comic books altogether. I still read and occasionally buy trade paperbacks, but my days of collecting comic books are over. I still enjoy the medium, however.
Work is sending me to Comic-Con this July (21st – 25th), and I’m a bit excited. I’m aware that the convention has changed drastically in the two decades or so since the time I had originally dreamed of going. It’s more of a popular media convention now, than a comic book convention. It should be interesting, and exhausting.