Falcon Presto. Alfonso Crept. Frances Ploot. Preston Falco. The four of them crack reporters in a cracked world. These people bring you the stories no one else dares to.
Presto - former Marvel employee, fired for knowing too much. Has a really big nose.
Crept - ex CIA agent and bullshit world record holder. Picks at his feet.
Ploot - sophisticated, buxom, an arse to kill for and an ability that we can only talk about on www.sexmeupbaby.com.
Falco - one of the other three writing under a bad pseudonym.
These are Spoof Central - be afraid or just piss off!
We’re in that wonderful period during the year where Comics Conventions are half a world away. The convention season, especially in the USA and UK, has been referred to recently as ‘The Sweat Bowl’ with San Diego being the ‘Super Sweat Bowl’ – a convention as much about body odour than comics.
Steve Horowitz, a security guard at the San Diego Convention Centre since 1992, said, “Jeez, man. Why do they hold that damned comics thing in the middle of summer in one of the hottest cities in the States? I think someone somewhere is having one God almighty laugh at us.”
It isn’t just the convention centre employees that are finding the annual BO fest tough going. Dick, of Dick’s Last Resort – one of the cities more popular hang outs, said, “We’d never turn away the business, but we feel really sorry for our regular customers, especially during the last week in July. The bar gets invaded by a horde of comics geeks, either sweaty fanboys or lard-assed creators, with huge appetites for Buffalo Wings and fizzy sodas.”
Dave Pantanzian, a resident of San Diego and a self-confessed comics geek, was a little more philosophical about the annual gathering. “There are comics conventions all over the USA, ones that attract all number of fans and creators, but this and the Wizardworld event in Chicago are the two biggest comics conventions the world has ever seen and all of this negative energy is going to have a downer affect on everybody’s feelings. Comics are the lifeblood of our future genre writers and therefore these gatherings are the ideal place for the adoring public to give thanks to these unheralded stars of modern literature and art.”
It is believed that the comics convention was born shortly after the creation of the world’s first comic book – believed by many to be The Yellow Kid #1, but more logically it was probably done by someone else in a foreign country. Just behind a dark and dank alley in Brooklyn, or maybe New Jersey, three guys who all bought copies of The Yellow Kid #1 started to have a discussion about the merits of the medium, how finely rendered it was and if Doc Doom would be a future villain of the Kid’s? Within weeks the world saw a number of these comics speakeasies starting up and by the start of the 20th Century they were being organised in as diverse places as Montevideo, Brighton, Corfu and Melbourne, Australia. According to comics historian E. Warner Spoon, it is possible that Arch Duke Ferdinand might have had a comic book in his possession prior to the outbreak of World War One.
By the 1960s comics conventions had become so big that they had to be held in scout huts. Elias P. Shuggoth, the organiser of the first Dragon*Con – a mixture of comics, Sci Fi and Frog Wrestling – said, “we had to send out for extra chairs and by 1967 we needed a PA so that the tape of Jack Kirby talking could be heard above the chatter of the 17 attendees. These were heady days indeed.”
However, it was after the assassination of Martin Luther King, now believed to be because he was a fan of the Silver Surfer rather than for his racial and political beliefs, that really put the convention on the map. Shuggoth continued, “With King’s death and the rumour circulating underground that it might have been because of comics rather than his political beliefs, comics all of a sudden became as hip and trendy as Afros. We had brothers and sisters queuing up with geeks and white boys and the world was a peaceful place.”
But then things started to go slightly Pete Tong. With comics taking over the cultural world and sales of a myriad of comics exceeding 1million per month, proper organised conventions became the norm and the summer of 1969 also became known as ‘The Summer of Comics’ as well as the Summer of Love. However, during Neil Armstrong’s now famous moonwalk (many years before Michael Jackson ever tried it) NASA picked up the following message spoken privately to Buzz Aldrin, “Hey Buzz, you like comics, don’t you?” “Yeah,” replied Armstrong’s co-pilot. “You are such a sad bastard,” was the Captain’s reply and with that off-hand, and some say humorous, quip comics were banished to the back row as being something slightly dirty and sordid. Forget Seduction of the Innocent, Neil Armstrong effectively destroyed comics’ street cred with one comment.
It didn’t matter how low the industry sank in the 1970s it couldn’t ruin its image any more than Armstrong had on the Sea of Tranquillity. And while comics struggled to be accepted by anyone, the conventions went back underground and with that followed the transformation of the comics fan from respected man about town to misanthropic stink magnets. By the time Frank Miller and Alan Moore had attempted, almost single-handedly, to rescue the comics industry from ignominy most comics fans were locked into their bedrooms with porn movies and heavy metal soundtracks. In fact, by 1985, just prior to the advent of the Internet, comics fans were in danger of becoming as ridiculed and derided as child molesters, train spotters and New Romantics. However, while the Batman movie saved the comics industry, it also gave the newfound keepers of comics the opportunity to further annex the devoted fans and their much-loved conventions.
The Wall Street Journal ran this famous headline in August 1988: All Comics Fans Are Twats. There was an outcry, uproar and something else that had pinko-liberals all in a huff. The United Nations were approached, but refused to be drawn into the debate. Former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros Galli said this, “How could we acknowledge comics fans as a minority and oppressed race, when the majority of comics fans throughout the world, civilised and uncivilised can be fans and live normally, have wives, children, mortgages and most importantly have lives!” This apparently seems to be a problem faced by only US and UK comics fans. In fact, during a scientific experiment conducted at Peterborough Life Sciences Research Centre most non US and UK comics fans were diagnosed as showing signs of life, while the fans from USA and its unofficial 51st State were found to have traces of life on them but very little else. The US government declared that comics conventions could only be held in the Midwest for 11 months of the year, San Diego and Chicago were given special dispensation orders.
In the last decade conventions have become a haven for the unshaven; a Lourdes for the hordes; a massive bash for the great unwashed (OK, so that wasn’t as clever as the first two, this isn’t a alliteration class!). Comics conventions now attract many thousands of excluded people from both these blighted countries. Byron Stott, one-time co-organiser of Nerd Con summed the situation up nicely, “Conventions are now the place to be. Nerds and geeks are high profile and big business. We’re wanted now as possible consumer tools and this is why these twice-yearly mega-cons are organised. Regardless of the health risk there is a great sense of camaraderie. We know of one young man that actually managed to speak to a female security guard this year. We see these conventions as a way forward rather than as a place where normal people can gloat and point fingers.” Even if they do and have a great time doing it.
This brings us nicely back to the smell factor. This year’s major US conventions are to be sponsored by Right Guard, with special can of deodorant issued to any attendee that sets the ‘smellometer’ off. Also staff and non-comics convention attendees with be issued with special face masks and miniature canisters of oxygen in case of any bad smells or offensive body odours.
To sum up this story quickly, The San Diego Tourist Board said this about comics conventions in its yearly brochure: San Diego is a wonderful place. One of the cleanest cities in the United States of America we strongly urge anyone thinking of visiting our fair city to do so during the months of August thru to June. July is very hot and stinky and there are comics geeks in the bars, so it’s best if you go somewhere else that month.
In conclusion, unless these conventions centres provide showers or baths then there will always be some kind of bacterial risk to the health of normal San Diegans. However, Antonia Consuella, the mayor of Old San Diego had an innovative idea of her own. “Let’s not risk the lives of our boys in Iraq, let’s just drop comics fans on them.”
This is Alfonso Crept for Spoof Central.
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