Visiting Secret Lairs

I stumbled across this post I made back in 2012 about the benefit of having a "secret lair" during a convention. Creators will often rent table space for a show and use that as a sort-of home base. A place where they can set down their coat and bag, maybe have a bag of chips and some sodas stashed away. Doing a convention in any capacity requires a fair amount of effort -- particularly for creators -- so having some dedicated space for themselves is hugely beneficial, even if it is in plain view and requires them to be "on" for long stretches. But with some extra money -- usually only amounts that larger publishers have on hand -- you can also get a more exclusive space, separted from the rest of a convention, where you not only drop your bags and rest, but do so away from the relative chaos of the show floor. It's usually only in the form of a conference or meeting room, but the exlusivity of it is what makes it a welcome respite.

In re-reading my older piece, I see I included a note towards the bottom that the REAL draw for me was just being part of an "in" crowd that had that type of access.

Yeah, it would be nice to be able to drop stuff off like that, but that real draw is to be included in an exclusive group like that. They'll let anyone into the convention with an admission fee, but only a select group is allowed in the secret lair. It's not that you have a place to drop your stuff, it's that you've been given a place to drop your stuff. That you're liked and trusted enough to be a part of a group.

That post is from twelve years ago. At the time, I had been blogging for six years and my Comic Book Fanthropology book had been out for not quite two. I was not a complete unknown at the time, but I still very much saw myself as just another rando with a dime-a-dozen blog. And while I still feel very much like an outsider in a lot of ways, in the years since that post, I have been invited into many of those more selective groups. I've dined with comic book legends, hung out in hotel rooms with noted journalists, and been invited into some of those "back door" spaces at conventions that the vast majority of attendees never see.

It's weird to shift spaces like that. I don't know that I can point to a single "You like me! You really like me!" moment or anything, although I do certainly recall all the instances where I got invited to 'special' events. But they still feel like isolated incidents because, afterwards, I would go back home and fall asleep. And the next morning, I'd just go back to whatever my regular grind was at the time. Office cubicle or my WFH space or whatever. The comfort of my own space, with the crap I didn't bother to put away still lying about. Sitting on phone calls about some project I don't really care all that much about and responding to emails about some mundane report that "needs" to be complete within too tight a timeframe. And that's the thing about life in general, isn't it? Even when you have those special and memorable moments, they're only just moments and the ongoing day-to-day business of getting through today or this week or this year remains.

I haven't been to a comic convention since 2019. COVID is very much still a thing, and I haven't seen any convention that I feel is taking anything remotely resembling adequate precautions. I have met with some industry folks in one-off get-togethers of varying capacities in the past five years (and the one time even in which more than two of us were present is the one time I caught COVID) but I haven't been willing to risk my health in a space that has always been notoriously someting of a petrie dish of germs even before COVID. But that rarity -- more rare by choice -- makes those 'secret lair' moments all the more special.

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