Research for a new six-part podcast on the history of the San Diego Comic-Con is provided by Cinema Studies Associate Professor Erin Hanna. The podcast includes interviews with Hanna and research from her latest book: Only at Comic-Con: Hollywood, Fans, and the Limits of Exclusivity.

Weekly episodes begin June 22, 2021.

In the Summer of 1970, a ragtag group of teenage hippies, proto-punks, artists, and science buffs assembled in a small, obscure town called San Diego to celebrate their pop culture heroes … and each other. They couldn’t possibly have known that the San Diego Comic-Con would over the decades grow into the largest pop culture gathering worldwide. Join original scream queen and cosplay pioneer Brinke Stevens as she, nearly 50 of her childhood cohorts, and a cadre of uber-geeky celebrity guests reveal their most fascinating, funny, and fannish memories of how they brought the Comic-Con together in the “early days” … as well as the profound impact the fandom community it helped spawn has had on our shared culture at large. — Celebrity guests include: Kevin Smith, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Felicia Day, Bruce Campbell, The Russo Bros., Scott Aukerman, Trina Robbins, Stan Sakai, Tim Seeley, Maggie Thompson, Sergio Aragones, Kevin Eastman, Ho Che Anderson, and many more! 

When the San Diego Comic-Con was founded in 1970, it provided an exclusive space where fans, dealers, collectors, and industry professionals could come together to celebrate their love of comics and popular culture. In the decades since, Comic-Con has grown in size and scope, attracting hundreds of thousands of fans each summer and increased attention from the media industries, especially Hollywood, which uses the convention’s exclusivity to spread promotional hype far and wide. What made the San Diego Comic-Con a Hollywood destination? How does the industry’s presence at Comic-Con shape our ideas about what it means to be a fan? And what can this single event tell us about the relationship between media industries and their fans, past and present? Only at Comic-Con answers these questions and more as it examines the connection between exclusivity and the proliferation of media industry promotion at the longest-running comic convention in North America.

My work sits at the intersection of media industry studies and fan studies. I am especially interested in the ways media industry publicity and promotion circulate popular ideas about audiences and shape consumer experiences beyond the screen. My book, Only at Comic-Con: Hollywood, Fans, and the Limits of Exclusivity, examines the connection between exclusivity and the proliferation of Hollywood promotion at the San Diego Comic-Con. In addition to exploring the increased media industry presence at Comic-Con in the twenty-first century, my book places a special emphasis on Comic-Con’s history, dating back to its founding in 1970 and the convention’s roots in comics fandom of the 1960s. My current research continues this exploration of historical fan communities and their relationship with media producers, with a particular emphasis on gendered labor, visibility, and exclusion.