Comic Arts Conference at the San Diego Comic-Con: July 23-26, 2009

How does an emerging area of academic interest actually develop into an established field? The Seventeenth Annual Comic Arts Conference (CAC), an academic gathering that occurred in conjunction with the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, provides a fascinating snapshot of Comics Studies' attempts to establish a new academic tradition. This effort shares much with earlier efforts to find a place for Film Studies in the academy. In both periods of early development, a popular object attracted faculty from a variety of perspectives, and this diversity and popularity were both a blessing and a curse to a new academic pursuit. How does one create boundaries to give a field coherence? How do scholars show that a popular object such as comics is worth the attention of established academic venues such as, say, Cinema Journal? And in this particular instance, how does one do this in the middle of hordes of people dressed in Sailor Moon and Hellboy costumes?

A new field of popular culture studies needs to show that it can take advantage of the energy surrounding a popular object while simultaneously defining a coherent shape for the nascent field. It must gain status for the pop art form by demonstrating that scholarship can produce rich insights comparable to those of other academic disciplines. This is a difficult balancing act, particularly during a time when both the academy and the production of comics are undergoing economic retrenchment. And yet comics properties are more visible now than ever in the mainstream cultural conversation, particularly because of a series of highly successful film and television adaptations. This confluence of forces gives Comics Studies both opportunities and challenges, and the 2009 CAC negotiated this cultural terrain in innovative ways.

For anyone who has been to a fan convention, the San Diego Comic-Con has familiar contours. On the exhibit floor, established companies hawk their current and forthcoming properties at slick, eye-catching booths; less mainstream endeavors attract passersby in an attempt to gain new audiences; favorite artists sign autographs or create brief sketches on the spot; and retailers offer merchandise in bins to lure collectors seeking to plug holes in their collections. Special panels provide forums to showcase hot properties and to give opportunities to pose questions to creative personnel. Such panels also revisit important moments in comics history, share professional advice with those hoping to break into the industry, and bring high-profile figures together to discuss the state of the industry. Media coverage of Comic-Con tends to focus on splashy rollouts of new media properties and on attendees wearing costumes, who create impromptu photo tableaus where (for instance) Wolverine appears to attack Hogwarts students. Some fans seek a close encounter with stardom, while others hunt elusive purchases, free tchotchkes, or connections with like-minded fans.

But saying that Comic-Con is much like any other con is a bit like saying that Woodstock was just another concert. The presence of major media corporations such as Fox and Warner in two-story booths towering over the floor, as well as the intense focus by the international press, has transformed Comic-Con from its humble beginnings forty years ago into the most visible public forum for launching cross-platform media properties. Today, more than 125,000 fans attend Comic-Con, which makes traversing the exhibit floor during peak hours feel a bit like riding the New York subway during rush hour. Comic-Con is no longer a Mecca for the comics world alone; it is now the location of the biggest intersection of fandom and mainstream media corporations.

Many of this year's attendees announced that 2009 marked the year that comics were officially "cool" in Hollywood's eyes, that no one needed to justify that comics were a respected source material for the film and television industry. The idea that "comics are the research and development wing of Hollywood" has become a widely circulating platitude, with some comics insiders wondering if large media corporations threaten to reduce comics only to their R&D function. The 2009 Comic-Con displays both the integration...