The Four Color Media Monitor

The John Hopkins News Letter wrote about Baltimore's recent 25th comics convention, which features both old and new products, and says:

The first day of the Comic-Con was likely geared towards comic collectors, an insight shared by my FYS professor, Anna Celenza. Many Friday participants were interested in browsing the huge boxes of thin 1900s comics that were located next to the entrance. The majority of these comics were classic Marvel and DC Comics superhero stories, each comic ranging in price from $1 to a few hundred for rarer editions.

They certainly had the audacity to offer a lot of older items from a time when talented writing and art were more a priority. Of course, those looking for these treasures of the past century would do well to remember many of them are available in paperback and hardcover now, or on the way to being reprinted, especially if we take the Marvel Epic Collections as an example. This can enable one to gather a lot of storylines almost complete. Still, I'll admit that if any pamphlets were being sold for just a dollar apiece, that's certainly being kind.

When looking around, I found that there weren’t as many Comic-Con goers as I thought there would be. The lack of participants can likely be attributed to two factors: First, as it was Friday, many people probably had school or work, and second, all of the cosplay competitions and more engaging events were scheduled to occur on Saturday or Sunday. However, the absence of a crowd did mean that my classmates and I were able to hang around each stand for a long period of time, talking to and learning from the artists and writers manning them.

On this, what if it turns out the reason there weren't so many visitors is because wokeness discouraged pop culture fans, not to mention the price of tickets, which, according to them, is $30-40? That's nothing to sneeze at. Especially if it's just for one day.

I found myself surprised by the sheer variety of art and merchandise offered. I had anticipated exclusively older comics and that the event would pander towards the older comic reading generation. Instead, there was a wide range of comics and graphic novels that covered both old and more contemporary topics. As such, the artists and crowd, too, were quite diverse in age.

I wish they'd actually give a description of what kind of GNs and other comics were available, because what if it turned out they were politically motivated propaganda? And why don't they tell what kind of artists attended? As a result, this appears to be one more superficial form of "coverage" that posits more questions than answers. And didn't they say there weren't as many attendants as they thought? That's why it may not amount to much that the crowd they did find was allegedly "diverse in age".

So all this does is provide an example of how college papers continue to be unreliable, and much too superficial.

Labels: conventions, dc comics, history, marvel comics, msm propaganda