Is Comic-Con Even Interested in Comics?

Since its founding in 1970, San Diego Comic-Con International (SDCC) has grown from a small gathering of old-school comics fans and collectors in the US Grand Hotel to an unstoppable juggernaut of media, drawing every vaguely nerdy scrap of entertainment into its vortex like some sort of black hole in a Batman costume. For five days a year, San Diego is overrun by a horde of superhero freaks, otaku, gaming junkies, cosplayers, collectors, movie buffs, aspiring artists, and the press that documents their collective experience. This is the new face of pop culture that communications and media guru Rob Salkowitz so meticulously describes in his new book, Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture: What the World's Wildest Trade Show Can Tell Us About the Future of Entertainment. Using his own experiences with SDCC and the 2011 show in particular as a backdrop, Salkowitz deftly illustrates where comics have been, where they've arrived, and how we can predict where they might go in the near future.