Convention

Thursday marked the official beginning of the annual event known as Comic Con. Each year at this time, San Diego is transformed into Geek Mecca. It's a place where various forms of geek media converge in a massive effort to hawk merchandise and whet the appetites of nerds everywhere.

Comic book creators preview their upcoming stories and take really specific questions from fans. Questions that are asked over and over again. Questions that are asked multiple times only because the readers are unhappy with the answers they've been getting in the past. Look, chances are if they didn't give the answer you wanted at last year's convention, you're not gonna get it this year either.

Television creators, at least the popular ones, preview the exciting programming that's coming up this fall or possibly next January. Movie creators, at least the popular ones, get together and show off what they've been working on recently.

The problem with a lot of the information that comes out of Comic Con is that it isn't really news. Sure, there are a lot of things that get big reveals, but it's mostly visual stuff. Information, generally, is already out there. This is all thanks to the internet.

Because of the internet and the countless entertainment bloggers out there, rumors get leaked all over the place. I remember being a kid and hearing nothing about Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade until about a week before it hit the theaters. Last year, when I saw Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it was basically just to confirm all of the plot details that I had found out about six months in advance.

They're called spoilers for a reason. We've become spoiled by all the information that's readily available. There's no element of surprise anymore. It's not as exciting to see the actual product as it is to see the preview or to read the blurb about the production. I know I'm guilty of that. This summer, I was far more excited to see previews for Revenge of the Fallen than I was to see the movie itself.

And then there's a danger of setting ourselves up for disappointment. How often do you see a trailer for a movie and wonder if they've shown the best or funniest clips in that minute-long preview? How often have you then seen the film and confirmed that thought? That's what I'm afraid of with the upcoming G.I. Joe.

Despite all this, I'll still scour the internet for the spoilers. I'll still keep my eyes peeled when a new movie trailer shows up on the TV or the internet. And I'll keep on saving my pennies so that I may one day make the pilgrimage to Comic Con International. I don't think I'll be one of the geeks that dresses up as a comic book hero. I'll just be one of the regular geeks that gawks at the geeks dressed up as comic book heroes.