Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture: What the World’s Wildest Trade Show Can Tell Us About the Future of Entertainment by Rob Salkowitz. Business.
Sort of business. Definitely business? Except maybe not; it’s about comics, of course, their past, present, and several possible futures. Well, what the hell, I don’t have to categorize it properly anyway since I know the author and can’t review it. Lucky save!
Even the biggest film stars who come to San Diego now act as if they are casual comics fans, as steeped in esoteric trivia as the guy in the third row wearing the Ambush Bug costume. I recall the stately Helen Mirren appearing on a panel in 2010 sporting a T-shirt honoring the plainspoken comics memoirist Harvey Pekar, who had died several weeks previously (a very sophisticated choice on the part of her PR staff, I must say). The burden of having to seem geek-tolerant and totally not the kind of popular girl that dissed nerds in high school falls especially heavily on the shoulders of the hot young actresses cast in comics-oriented action movies. Luckily, it doesn’t take much work for them to win over most comics fans. If every star who professed fandom from the stage at Comic-Con actually bought comics, there wouldn’t be a sales problem. But, you know, they’re actors. They can pull it off.
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