Just to get things straight, I neither fell in love nor died at this year’s sold-out San Diego-based Cannes for geeks, even if both Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni did perform the latter function this weekend. In fact, I’m not sure I have all that much to say about it (or Antonioni’s passing, for that matter — when it comes to films about ennui, I apparently feel mostly ennui). But here I am posting about it anyway.

This year’s event felt different to me in many ways than past years. For one thing, the ever-increasing overcrowding finally got to me. It started when my plan to check out a Futurama panel and stay in the convention’s second largest auditorium for an appearance by Buffy, the Vampire Slayer creator and all around king-of-all-geek-media Joss Whedon was foiled by a gigantic line of people who’d been smart enough to get there before me.

Elite, the company that provides security and crowd control for the con, got into the act at this point and, utilizing the company’s famed human touch, announced that there was no line, though we were standing in one, and, actually, the hall was to be closed for the rest of the day. One of them muttered something about the need to make way for a line for costume contest entrants. It was pretty absurd as most of the crowd would be leaving after the Futurama panel was over and the logistics of the costume contest were no reason to shut people out from an unrelated event. However, the Elite staffers were brooking no disagreement. Feeling a bit bitter, and really not in the mood to stand in a line for an hour anyway, I left.

However, a lifetime of geekdom has taught me to never trust convention security types. Embittered as I was, I nevertheless returned forty-five minutes later to find that, mirable dictu, there was a line and I was allowed to stand in it. I got into the Whedon event without much stress, although the auditorium was pretty much filled up with a typically ultra-enthusiastic crowd.

It wasn’t a bad turn-out for a solo-appearance by a guy who is, after all, still mainly a writer (and who cares about those people?), the creator of one long-lived television show with a silly-sounding name whose show business trajectory lately has been anything but smooth — with one film project still to be reworked (the mysterious horror-fantasy Goners) and another having been outright rejected by super-producer Joel Silver (the very high profile Wonder Woman). Lately, Whedon has taken refuge as the writer of several successful superhero comics and he admits his wife refers to this current phase of his career as his “Merry Marvel Mid-Life Crisis.” Whedon seemed overwhelmed by the continuing audience response (as well as a very few weirdo semi-hecklers who briefly went a bit Kathy Bates-in-Misery on him) and was unusually frank in admitting that he was perhaps a bit emotionally scarred by the career reverses he’s suffered over the last few years. He said, not really joking, that he’d been dealing with the problem via some prescriptions. His phrase, “I’m not entertaining you people enough,” resonates. Heavy lies the head that wears the compulsive entertainer’s cap, or something.

However, Whedon could talk about the tough times because he also had some good news for those of us who think of him primarily as a talented filmmaker (and TV these days is often better filmmaking than film) with the annoucement of Ripper, a long-discussed Buffy spin-off TV movie for the BBC starring the multi-talented Anthony Stewart Head, now long past his days as the romantic lead for a series of instant coffee commercials. And there’s the upcoming special edition of Serenity, which appears to be selling very well on DVD. I’d discuss this some more, but I’m not ready for a Browncoat relapse at this time, maybe later. He also announced an intriguing sounding horror-flick co-written with Buffy writer turned Hollywood up-and-comer Drew Goddard of Lost and this intriguing as-yet-untitled monster-and/or-alien invasion flick. (For fans of show biz confusion, it’s perversely fun to note that Drew Goddard is forever destined to spend his life being confused with another Buffy alum, Dexter writer Drew Greenberg.)

Getting back to my impressions of the con, at least for me there is definitely something lost amidst the con’s vast numbers. Some of this may be the result of the fact that I’m less tied to the comic book world these days than I once was — I learned of the death of Captain America via NPR, as if I was, you know, an adult or something. Nevertheless, I really miss the days when you could just drop in on a panel for something as major as The Simpsons without planning ahead and could run from there to check out something truly obscure but potentially boring with the knowledge that the big panel would still be there if the smaller panel turned out to be a disappointment. Every year the con feels less like the one or two really fun small film festivals I’ve been able to go to, and more like the massive, unfriendly mega event that is Sundance.

I’ll never forget the year — not so long ago and people were already complaining about crowds — when I checked out a presentation given by a guy I took to be a youngish academic, discussing in surprisingly accessible and extremely thoughtful fashion about the basic language and grammar of the comics medium. When he mentioned an upcoming book, I assumed it would be a nicely written tome that would perhaps help comics gain the respect they deserve as a medium as powerful and as flexible and theater or film (i.e., good for more than superheroes and funny animals, not that there’s anything wrong with that).

When I discovered only at the end of the talk that the presenter was actually not an academic but a cartoonist and that the book, Understanding Comics, would be in comic book form — thereby proving his point that comics could convey any type of material — I was flabbergasted. Then the book came out and it was better than flabbergasting and remains one of my all-time favorite comic books, as overly meta as that may be. There was some magic for me and lots of other people in that. Perhaps it’s my own fault for not finding it now.

I grumble and it’s possible I wasn’t in the greatest mood this year and having to leave a day early didn’t help, but I also picked up a really intriguing looking Osamu Tezuka medical-thriller and t-shirts honoring Astro Boy and, I should be embarrassed to say, the Fruity Oaty Bar. Did I say anything about a relapse?

In any case, assuming nothing really weird happens, I’ll be back next year, Lord help me.

P.S. FtY pal/ever-looming presence and should-be superstar cartoonist Randy Reynaldo talks about what the con still means to real live cartoonists like him here. He doesn’t bitch and moan nearly as much as me, but then he never goes to panels.

There’s a “Head” joke in here somewhere….

UPDATE:  Some very cool details about Wall-E, next year’s Pixar film from /film. This is an example of the kind of thing you’re shut out from at Comicon if you don’t want to basically devote your day to Hall H, temple of movie marketing. H/t to Burbanked, who has more on that film’s intriguing early marketing.