New York Comic-Con is an extreme event. It’s easy to forget this, now that Comic-Cons and cosplay have crossed over into mainstream culture, but when you step back and consider the outlandish costumes, massive crowds, huge weapons, and rival factions, Comic-Con sometimes feels like a war zone or a disaster area in a far-away land. Overthinker Shana Mlawski plays off this idea in her special “report” from New York Comic-Con.
This video is partly a commentary on the way that news reporters inevitably distance themselves from phenomena that are wholly foreign to them, both by virtue of their events and their cultural/geographic context, and partly a commentary on our own alienation from Comic-Con. Without speaking too much for Shana, I think we both approach Comic-Con partly as outsiders looking in: although we’re both big fans of various genre fiction properties that are well represented at Comic-Con, we’re not quite participants in “fan culture,” at least not in the way it’s practiced at Comic-Con. We didn’t spend all night waiting in line for the big panels, so we didn’t get to see Patrick Stewart. We didn’t wear costumes, so we looked more like…members of the media reporting on the event, which, appropriately, we were.
So we made this video, mostly to help process our feelings towards this, but also to remind ourselves that Comic-Con is in fact madness. Mostly wonderful madness, but madness all the same.