Many comic creators dreaded the move-in of the film and video-game industry. The center of the convention center is year-by-year sprouting more and more fancy studio spaces as evidenced by towering signs and a hogging of square footage. Meanwhile, fledgling artists with books under arm can barely afford their tables though there’s still a four-year waiting list to get booth space. With maximum occupancy filled by both exhibitors and attendees only one thing can happen…prices will go up. It’s the law of supply and demand.

As I stood within my booth today a huge swarm of convention attendees mobbed a booth. There was a sea of people trying to see someone inside doing a signing. The group was so big that even my six-foot-eightness couldn’t see who it was at the table. I pulled an Elvis-wearing-a-kilt aside to ask who was signing. “Jennifer Love Hewitt.”

In the afternoon I was joined by Electric Playground’s Victor Lucas for my yearly interview. Their show provides top commentary on video games and movies long before mainstream Hollywood media got either of these mediums. They don’t understand their broadest audiences and think people want to hear more about Perez or Paris Hilton than what’s going on with “Halo.” They’re wrong.

Mainstream entertainment news vomits, then trains and audience to consume it, then complain that the audience only wants more vomit. Entertainment news is lazy, they don’t want to dig up real events and only found the Comic-Con after five straight years of the sold-out event. They probably didn’t trust their audience’s interest in comics, and it’s probably unfathomable to them that the convention would be interesting even without Hollywood’s presence.

Comics have been around since the pyramids but video games and movies are relatively new to the scene. The medium of comics will outlive them and the Comic-Con will survive Hollywood’s flavor-of-the-decade interest just fine. In the meanwhile, it’s nice to sell books with Jennifer Love Hewitt signing right next door.

This year they also teamed up with Wired magazine and set up a private green room called the “Wired Cafe,” where select people from the press and the industry are invited during the day. They have a bunch of laptops set up for people to blog and tweet and a cafe with an open bar and great food. I decided to go there for lunch instead of my usual haunts. I had a Smoked Turkey Panini and considered a Dim Sum sampler, which the person at my table ordered with his Burger. Maybe tomorrow.

There were some sponsors there like Patron Tequila and Bustelo Coffee giving out free drinks. I never tried either. Not being a drinker I only had one Patron cocktail, which had grapefruit juice and club soda. It was goood. I gotta say, the Bustelo canned espresso drinks were awesome. I like Starbucks products. Especially when I am driving long distances. But Bustelo is more flavorful. I never had them before. I found out these are advance copies and they will be on sale in a few weeks at Wal-Mart and Trader Joes.

The Con seemed to have the usual Thursday crowds, which were fairly intense. But the next two days will be much worse. I wish I brought my camera. I missed a couple of shots that would have been golden. They have all these pedi-cabs outside carting people between the restaurants and the Con. And I walked by one that had a guy in a predator costume being driven around. It was hilarious.

(I hate using my cell phone; the shots never look good enough.)

There were the usual people in costumes, including the Star Wars variety which are perennial. I remember one year I was sitting on the outside terrace in the back of the Con, which looks out over Coronado island. A friend walked by and we started talking. All of a sudden, about 60 Star Wars Stormtroopers walk onto the terrace and pose for a photo on the outside steps.

“Now I’ve seen everything.” I said. My friend laughed.

This year a lot of booths were scaled down from previous Cons. I’m sure the economy had to do with it. But the movie and TV companies still had impressive set ups.

Marvel Comics has four different life-sized Iron Man costumes with glowing eyes and chest generators. They ranged from the crude version from “Iron Man” to one that may be used in “Iron Man 2.”

SyFy (which used to be the SciFi channel until some rebranding doofus decided to change the name slightly) went so far as to rent a restaurant space right near the Con in the Gaslamp quarter. The coffee shop for the Hard Rock Hotel, usually called Mary Jane’s, is called Cafe Diem during the Con. All the items on the menu are advertisements for Scifi Syfy shows with names like Caprica salads (but not Battlestar Burgers). Lots of cardboard stand ups of their characters. The prices were a little high, like $7 milkshakes, but the place seemed busy.

I got to see a bunch of familiar faces and I was surprised how many people told me they loved my Big Hollywood columns. That’s always nice to hear. I will look for Doug TenNapel’s booth tomorrow. I forgot to write down the number and it’s a huge place. I only got to see about half of the show run today.

Today I parked at the Padres parking lot as the baseball stadium is next door. My mom told me it was free for the Con (disclosure: my sister knows the owner of the team, so I though the info might have come from her). Ha! It was $20. I ended up having to park on the roof because they were almost out of spaces.

Just as I was leaving I noticed I had a really good view of the old El Cortez hotel in the distance, where the Con used to be back in the 70s. It still has that big neon sign on the top with the words “Hotel” lopped off because it went condo. And there was once a restaurant on top called the Skylight Room with a beautiful flashing neon sign below the word “Hotel.” Not anymore. They don’t even turn on the sign at night.

Things change.

In case you’ve been in an Afghanistan cave for the last thirty years, comics are big business. Comics to film projects are in demand at least partially because of the pre-visualization aspect of the medium. Fantasy is an expensive and risky genre and comics offer the cheapest glimpse into the depiction of on-screen events before one dime is spent on production.

Though the medium is gaining visibility, comics aren’t new. They’re simply words combined with pictures that communicate a sequence of events. They’re actually very similar to the silent film where an actor speaks, then his words appear onscreen to read. We’re Chaplin like that. But my favorite part of the medium is due to it’s power, and I love me some power.

What took James Cameron 200 million dollars to communicate on film with “Titanic” or his up-and-coming “Avatar” one could do for 20k in comics. You don’t get the sound, movement or music but the actual story, lighting, acting, character development the logos could be depicted by one man on the cheap. Can’t get your “Star Wars” made for 150 million? With a small group comprised of one writer, one artist and one colorist, we could depict events from the desserts of Uncle Owen’s vaporator farm to the Death Star without resorting to overseas funding. That’s power.

So why are comics so junky? Well, like all things that came into popularity in a post-modern era we don’t exactly have the most literate authors or audiences surrounding the medium. It’s not the graphic novel’s fault that Homer or Da Vinci didn’t made comics. I think we’re in a junk food phase of entertainment where we disrespect the greats of the past to explore our own personal expression and over-the-top stimulation. Comics came into popularity at a generally bankrupt time in entertainment, but this also helps the stand outs in the medium shine all the more.

While I can count the essential graphic novels on two hands the effect of comics on culture is cumulative. There is no single “Batman” that stands up as great literature, but Batman is more of a state of mind than any one book. Spider-Man is like a logo that might as well be an American flag it is so deeply engrained into our culture’s subconscious. When a rockstar wears a Superman shirt or my son wears Hulk underwear or Guillermo Del Toro directs a “Hellboy” movie, I get the feeling we’re stewing more than just ankle-deep in comics. In fact, you cannot separate comics from American culture. It’s where we’re at.

This will be my 20th year of attending the San Diego Comicon. My 10th year of having a booth with my books for sale. Every year, the crowds get bigger, more voracious in their appetite to buy. Now I get daily visits from every studio sending out tendrils looking for cheap IPs to buy and exploit. Hollywood is hungry for material, and this medium has helped me make a good living in a tough town.

I’ll be blogging from the convention all week. Stop by my booth at 1714 if you can find me in the sea of over 110,000 people. I’ll be the comic geek in the Superman shirt–oh, never mind.