“It’s difficult to fully capture the scale of this shit show. And I don’t mean to be a wet blanket, or to harp on a broken record about a dead horse, but Comic-Con IS a shit show. We showed up this morning at what we considered to be a perfectly reasonable time, and it turned out that it was not reasonable at all. A reasonable time to wait in line for six hours to watch 10 minutes of a movie that is going to come out in 8 months is 6AM. You can see Harry Knowles wheel himself into Hall H against the backdrop of the rising sun. Of course, Harry Knowles has the last laugh, because he was sitting FRONT AND CENTER for the preview of Megamind. He probably no longer even sees this Matrix: just a bright string of green numbers. “There is no line.” That’s what he says. Of course, being front and center for the preview of Megamind is really just a pretext for seeing the preview of Tron, a sequel to a movie that, let’s be honest, wasn’t that good to begin with. You see, the way the festival works is that once people are inside Hall H (which is where all of the major panels are held), they don’t ever have to leave, and they usually don’t. They pee into Stadium Pals and bring sandwiches their moms packed them. And so, when you do get in line, you will be led across the street from the convention center to a beautiful but very far-away quay along the bay and you will be left there to die. Eventually, this line will loop back around to the street and you will cross the street again, onto the right side of things, and now you are in a cattle corral, at which point you sit down. Everyone sits. You sit and you wait.”

—

Gabe from Videogum proving Comic-Con Is Humanly Impossible.

Which is incredibly and totally true. Normally, no one gives a goddamn about the vast majority of Cons held around the country—save for Otakon or (somewhat) New York Comic Con. Or DragonCon.

Or the fact that Wizard Entertainment owns a vast number of other regional Cons.

Comic-Con is a false nerd Mecca, but the sheer scope of what you find there can make anyone glaze over in awe. When I went last year as minimal back-up for a shoot with the Rotten Tomatoes Show, I just wandered around with my Flip. I wound up with two hours of footage I’ve never used and—after watching it—I couldn’t find a single reason to post or use any of it.

It’s like being at a family picnic and taking home video. And only afterwards do you realize Cousin Rob’s hilarious antics at the BBQ pit are because Cousin Rob has a serious addiction to painkillers and your grandmother is unusually still in the background.

So yeah. Comic-Con. It’s one of the more frightening things to be co-opted into media culture—since it just used to be people buying comics and having discussions. Now it’s waiting in line for two hours to see an eight minute “exclusive" trailer that winds up on Apple.com by August 1st.