If you have a friend or family member who is baffled by con culture, show them the Morgan Spurlock-directed documentary Comic-Con IV: A Fan’s Hope. With sincerity and affection, it explains to the uninitiated and/or judgmental the world that our crowd knows so well. Alas, we live in a society that interprets wearing a giant, plastic cheese on your head as mere enthusiasm, but regards cosplay as weird. Go figure.
Amid all the geeking out, the movie — filmed at San Diego Comic-Con in 2010 — acknowledges the elephant in the room: Comics have been relegated to the background of a giant convention with “comic” in the name, and that is now largely about mass entertainment. It’s unreal to look at old photos of the first Comic-Con in 1970 and compare those images to the huge scene it is today.
