What I’m suggesting through my analysis of Comic-Con, as a space heavily shaped and informed by the industry, is a critical compliment (I hope!) to those kinds of conversations about relationships in and between fandoms and the agency of individual fans. That is to say, although Comic-Con is experienced in many different ways (some of which work against the grain of industry expectations) by a vast array of individuals, the publicity machine that is also at work there isn’t necessarily invested in making those same distinctions. As coverage of the event moves through the Internet and mainstream media outlets, it is much less about the specificity of the fan experience and much more about how that experience functions in relation to the presence of the industry. Take, for example, the Agents of SHIELD panel: The value of your experience there was shaped by being surrounded by 4500 likeminded fans, but those 4500 bodies signify something very different for ABC, who might see that audience as a kind of tool for measuring responses to the pilot or creating more publicity for the show. In some ways, the material reality (the lines, the confusion, the differing investments) of fans and industry converging in spaces like Ballroom 20 and Hall H, or Comic-Con as a whole, gets collected and managed by the dominant discourse that emerges from the event, which is both a literal marketing discourse (coming from the industry itself) and a publicity discourse (coming from media coverage).

Another important distinction needs to be made, which is that the agency of fans isn’t automatically a good thing and the industry presence isn’t always bad. Take for example, the “Women Who Kick Ass” panel, planted smack dab in the middle of a day of massive promotion (WB’s Superman/Batman announcement in the morning and Marvel’s Avengers 2 teaser at the end of the day). On this panel, Michelle Q, Danai Gurira, Tatiana Maslany, Michelle Rodriguez, and Katee Sackhoff discussed with incredible rigor, candor, and critical thought, the state of women in the industry, their depiction in the media, and distinguished between these issues and specific problems facing women of color. In concluding, they called for fans and industry (particularly women) to be proactive in demanding and producing more and better representations. I think this represented the best and most positive of possibilities for the relationship between the industry and fans I’ve seen at Comic-Con to date. But throughout this entire panel, the lines at the bathroom and concession stand were long, people walked around the room, and the man sitting next to me speculated that the panel was strategically positioned midday in order to clear out Hall H between Warner Brothers and Marvel, so that more people could enter the room. At the end of the hour, a particularly unpleasant man a few rows up suggested an alternate title for the panel, calling out “Women Who Talk To Much.” I think this experience speaks to the danger of painting either the industry or fans with overly broad strokes (and harkens back to some of the gendered discontent about Twilight at Comic-Con). I totally agree that it would be inaccurate to suggest that everyone in that room has the same investments, positive or negative, and a lot more work needs to be done in order to understand how these investments converge and diverge. But I also think it demonstrates just how powerful and structured the expectations about Hall H have become, that a panel that diverged from pure promotion and aimed at productive discourse was the “break” between the “real” content: industry marketing.

Hopefully that (somewhat long-winded) answer addresses some of your questions… and I especially hope it raises more, as I think the issues you bring up are part of a really important conversation for scholars of fan and industry studies alike.

I agree with many of the conclusions you draw here regarding the industry’s engagement and solicitation of fan’s investment/labor, but I think there’s also another side to this. Fans rework these experiences and encounters with the industry—in other words, I think fans have some agency in these moments. Being in Hall H or camping out for it is not only about gaining excess to exclusive content, but is also a way to engage with fellow fans in line or to demonstrate that you are really serious about attending SDCC. The industry might have very specific goals for their fan engagement, but fans have their own goals and contexts for Hall H/SDCC that may or may not align with industry expectations. Speaking for my own decision to stand in line for hours to attend the Agents of SHIELD panel on Friday, I found the prospect of experiencing this panel in the company of 4,500 like-minded fans as significant as having access to the screening of the pilot.

I realize that Antenna’s word limit often means sacrificing additional ideas, so if you have/had any thoughts on how fans negotiate the positions assigned to them by the industry at SDCC, please share them in a comment.