Duly noted from a distance

The San Diego Comic-Con International officially starts tomorrow, and obviously there is no way I am going to drop upwards of a thousand dollars on a ticket to the event, airfare across the country, hotel accomodations in town and sundry expenses along the way. Even if money (and time) were no object, I still most likely would not be westward bound tomorrow, solely due to the rumors and reports I have heard over the past few years that the sheer physical scale of the weekend means the most common experience (for non-press and non-industry types, aka fans like me) is long lines for everything and no guarantee of even gaining admission to a coveted auditorium seat for a panel even if you do stand in a long line for hours and hours. Pass, thanks.

But oddly enough I’ve begun to look forward to Comic-Con’s arrival each year because that is when the entertainment news feeds I follow light up with high-profile project announcements. In addition to the comic books implicit in the event’s name (which, believe me I know, at this point only nostalgically hearkens back to when it was genuinely a comic book convention and not the media frenzy it is today), SDCC encompasses the other major pillars of my pop culture interests as well: toys, books, television, and movies, and usually (though not always) with a strong geeky/genre thread running throughout as well. So just from a pure information junkie perspective, in terms of wanting to know which big or small screen adaptations based on horror novels or Saturday morning cartoons (or vice versa) are forthcoming in the next year or so and can be looked forward to with appropriate glee, dread, or snarky indifference, it’s basically Christmas in July.

Something I would not mind getting for Christmas!

I’ve mentioned before (I think) that I’m on the GoodReads site, and I belong to a couple of mailing lists associated with it, including one dedicated to discussion of the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss (a fantasy trilogy that I’ve gone into at length here and there). I’ve joked that I never post to the list and often delete the message digests after a quick skim, and the only reason I don’t unsubscribe altogether is that I am fairly convinced that the very moment an official announcement is made as to when the unbearably anticipated third and final volume of the series will be published, the mailing list will explode with the news and I will get the word thusly. I skimmed the messages today and found that someone had heard there would be a “major announcement” from Rothfuss at Comic-Con. So there’s one solid example right there (assuming that the hearsay holds up).

I’ve been in a bit of a lull lately with my popcult consumption, between national holidays and family birthdays and major real estate transactions and purgatorial work projects and baseball season and so on and so on, and this is what I tend to do in lull times: look farther down the road to where things get interesting. I’m already looking forward to the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. tv series and Stephen King’s new Shining sequel novel in September, and the Thor 2 movie in November, but if all goes as well as it usually does I’ll have even more things to count down to by early next week. It's the little things, as always, that bounce me along day by day.