Hi all. Sorry for the late report on Comic-Con, but after a very long sleepless week at the convention I dove right back in to my regular work schedule, so it's taken me a little longer than I hoped to "bounce back" from the show. For those who don't know: myself and Ralph Miley are the current leaders of the CCAS local group in Southern California that is in charge of organizing the CCAS ministry at the San Diego Comic-Con. Our group has had a presence at the show for over 13 years now -- organizing panel discussions, arranging after-hours meetings for Christian attendees, and running a table in the small press area where we sell Christian comics and give away Christian comic tracts. Here's a quick rundown of my experience at this year's show... Wednesday: Woke up around 3:30 am to pack up and meet Ralph to carpool down for morning setup at the convention. We left for San Diego around 5, arrived a little after 7. Was one of the first to arrive, and got to watch a large parade of forklifts as we waited in line to get into the loading zone parking lot. Unloaded the inventory at the loading docks behind the convention center, had the union guys shrinkwrap our stuff onto the forklift pallets, then we left to park the car, picked up our exhibitor badges (and a temporary setup crew sticker for my wife Heather, who also came down to help) and started the hike over to the small press area. The carpets were still being rolled down, all the big exhibitor booths were still being set up, and those of us in the small press area just sat around waiting for the forklifts to finally arrive and deliver our pallets of material. Once it finally arrived, it was setup time: assemble the banner, spread the tablecloths, fill the display racks with our Christian comics for sale, and spread out the tracts/flyers for the "freebie" half of our table. As we set up, we discovered that our neighbors at the table next to us were fellow Christians Ralph had met during his trip up to Wondercon earlier this year. God always finds a way of bringing his children together! The rest of the day was spent with the boring details of conventioneering: finding lunch, checking into our hotel, picking up guest badges, meeting up with the rest of our team of volunteers, and (briefly) walking around the show on "Preview Night" to see how the rest of the convention hall was set up.
I can honestly say that this was the most crowded convention I ever remember. Regardless of the actual numbers, the crowd control (and lack thereof) on the exhibit hall floor gave the show a very claustrophobic feel. The big media booths (Warner, Sony, Fox, EA, etc.) were always staging different contests, handouts, and other stunts which drew such large crowds that they would completely block the aisles in all directions, leading to gridlock on the convention floor as pedestrians overflowed into neighboring aisles. That part wasn't fun at all, and made me glad I spent most of the show safely seated behind our table in the small press area. Thursday through Sunday at the Table: I spent most of the convention at the table with Ralph. Talked with people who were curious about CCAS, handed out lots of flyers and tracts. We had guest signings at our table with fellow CCAS members Buzz Dixon (whose credits range from writer on the classic GI Joe and Transformer cartoons up to the trailblazing Serenity Christian manga series) and Eric Jansen (whose work at the Foursquare Missions Press is responsible for the majority of comic tracts at our table. He is also a self-publisher of various comics through his "God & Country" imprint, and is the artist on my Tales of Hemlock comic series). This year, I didn't run into anyone who came to our table just to give us a hard time or to argue theology. I did have an interesting conversation with a Mormon cartoonist who wanted to know if his work could have a place within the Christian Comic Arts Society since Mormons considered themselves Christian. I probably stumbled over my words a bit, as I was trying to be as polite as possible in telling him "no". CCAS is open to Christians of the three historical traditions within Christianity: Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. For all their differences, at least those three groups do agree on basic fundamentals of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, etc. Groups like the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses -- full of wonderfully nice people -- don't share that common ground. They may use similar terminology, but their definitions are completely different. If we're going to call ourselves a "Christian" group, we need to draw the line somewhere as to what that word means; we've opted to draw it based on traditional orthodoxy and the historical creeds. But I digress...
Weekend panels: Other CCAS events at Comic-con included a Saturday morning panel discussion on "Spiritual Themes in Comics", with panelists ranging from Chrsitian writer Doug TenNapel to self-described witch Holly Golightly. (I was able to record this panel, and I hope to make the video available online soon!). Another panel was a Sunday morning panel/chapel service, in which Buzz Dixon gave a mini-sermon tailored to creative artists and then introduced a panel discussion between himself, Eric Jansen, and Leo Partible. (I was only able to attend half of this panel, and was not able to get a workable recording of the panel. If anyone else has more detailed notes from the Sunday morning panel, I'd love to see them!) Our other CCAS event this year was a "secret" after-hours fellowship meeting at the convention center, after the hall closed on Saturday night. It was "secret" in the sense that we had asked the convention for permission to hold a meeting there, they said "sure", but then they did not actually mention our meeting in any of their on-site event programming guides. So, the only ones who knew to attend were those who heard about it from word-of-mouth at our table in the small press area. Still, we somehow got around twenty people who showed up for a fun night of Christian fellowship between a wide mix of comic fans, amateurs, and professionals, all of us coming together for laughter, fellowship and prayer. It was a great night. Final thoughts: each year at the comic-con, a pattern seems to emerge. Last year, the focus was readers of Christian comics. We had tremendous sales at the table, and people came by to snap up whole sets of graphic novels at a time. In previous years, the focus was evangelism/apologetics, as we had a large number of people who came by the table just to try arguing with us about the Bible, the existence of God, or some issue relating to the Gospel. This year? This year's pattern seemed to be fellowship. We received a surprising number of people who had been coming to the convention for years, yet this was their first time finding us. There were many sudden shouts of "I thought I was the only one!" or "I'm so glad to see there's a group doing this!". This year, we made a lot of new contacts of people indicating that they want to sign up for the social network site online to meet other Christian fans, writers and artists and -- even more surprisingly -- there were a large number of people from the local Southern California area who expressed interest in getting involved with the local CCAS group and convention ministry. If everyone who expressed interest actually follows up on it, we may end up doubling the number of volunteers working the CCAS convention ministry by the time the San Diego Comic-Con rolls around next year. As always, the path ahead is in God's hands. I'd like to give a hearty "Thank you" to everyone who prayed for us during last week's ministry, and to those who supported us through time and resources. Most of all, I'd like to give praise and thanks to God for his ongoing blessing of this ministry. Unless the Lord builds the house, the laborers labor in vain. God is good.
Loved the update Kev! My son & I are planning on attending next year for sure. Not sure if we'll get a table or not but we def wanna 'fanyboy' out in Christ! Hopefully you can get that vid posted online. Would love to hear about that panel.
"CCAS is open to Christians of the three historical traditions within Christianity: Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant."
Were it up to me I'd just say it's open to anyone who is truly born again and loves the Lord Jesus Christ as his/her personal Saviour, and leave all the denominationalism aside. I could give a dissertation about what Catholic Rome espouses, but won't. The Orthodox aren't much different, and even much of Protestantism offers only dead religion (and extra-biblical teaching), as opposed to a relationship with the living God opened to us through the Messiah's atonement for our sins on Golgotha's cross and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.
Comments
Were it up to me I'd just say it's open to anyone who is truly born again and loves the Lord Jesus Christ as his/her personal Saviour, and leave all the denominationalism aside. I could give a dissertation about what Catholic Rome espouses, but won't. The Orthodox aren't much different, and even much of Protestantism offers only dead religion (and extra-biblical teaching), as opposed to a relationship with the living God opened to us through the Messiah's atonement for our sins on Golgotha's cross and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.
Your friend Alec
bob-