Comic Con Report, volume 1

It's hard to imagine paying so much to advertise something so unpopular. But it's always been that way at San Diego Comic Con. Generally the big ads taking up the whole sides of hotels were of series I'd never heard of before and never heard of again. At least I'd heard of Strange New Worlds.

This is my first Comic Con in six years, the first since coming back from Japan. Wednesday was preview night, I have the four full days to look forward to. So far it's a sad state of affairs. Downtown San Diego is filled with people forced to sleep on the streets and empty, abandoned buildings which people are barred from entering. I'm sure there's some kind of twisted economic rationale for all this suffering and ugliness. I walked past the remains of Horton Plaza Mall, which used to be one of the best parts of Comic Con, at least to me. Last I heard it was being gutted to become office space. Looks like they only managed to gut it and then called it a day.

The old San Diego Central Library building still remains empty after six years. The new building, further to the south and closer to the convention centre, had the first panel I went to for this year's Comic Con, one on using comics in education. Here's a view from the venue, which was on the top floor, whence I could see the Coronado Bridge:

The panel was hosted by a high school English teacher from L.A. and a university media professor from Oregon. They showed a power point on defining the superhero and talked about inviting students to create superheroes who specialised in combating problems in the community. Everyone was tasked with creating their own superheroes. I made a spy superheroine who could stop time and who combated secret organisations bent on manipulating humanity. One elderly woman near the front of the room triumphantly told the hosts how ChatGPT had made a superhero for her. A shy young man told them how Google AI had made a superhero for him. Both seemed pleased to have gotten something over on the system. I guess neither of them appreciated what the hosts said about the activity being an opportunity for self-expression. I suppose they did, though, express their opinion that they'd rather not do any work.