newjerseynewsroom.com

BY MIRIAM RINN

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

MOVIE REVIEW

Some little boys never outgrow their obsessions. Young girls too have their fanatical interests–horses, Barbie, canasta for some of us–but either girls tend to move on or the culture at large is not as forgiving of their preoccupations; for whatever reason, the latency-age male’s devotion to comic books, fantasy, and tales of adventure among alien species has become the foundation of our popular culture.

A large and growing segment of the American film industry mines comic books for subject matter, and the place they go to find their next project is Comic-Con, the San Diego trade show. This show may have started small, with 500 or so comic aficionados, but it now attracts 140,000 visitors for the four-day event, many of whom come wearing funny clothes.

Morgan Spurlock’s affectionate and enjoyable take on the phenomenon in “Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope,” (available on VOD and iTunes now; opening in NYC theater on April 13) presents five earnest participants who come to the show looking for something more than just an afternoon’s amusement. Spurlock follows the five, who range from illustrators hoping to break into the business to a dealer looking for a big sale, interspersing their scenes with interviews with well-known TV and movie figures, all of whom were comic-book geeks at one time.

Seth Rogen, Stan Lee, Eli Roth, Kevin Smith, and Joss Whelan are among the people who speak about their love for comics and the intensity of that passion. The four men and one woman whose stories we follow are no slouches in the comic love department either. In fact, James Darling, a young man who still looks like a 14-year-old, has brought his girlfriend to the convention to propose to her. The two met at the show, so it seems an inspired idea that he popped the question while standing in line to talk to Kevin Smith. Show veteran Chuck Rozanski owns Mile-High Comics in Denver and remembers when the convention was really all about the books and not the spin-off products those comic books inspired. Skip Harvey is the son of comics-loving parents and is attending with the hope that someone will be impressed enough by his portfolio of drawings to give him an assignment. Another hopeful illustrator, Eric Henson, also brings his portfolio with the dream that he can be a comic-book artist when he gets out of the air force. The only woman in the featured group, Holly Conrad, designs costumes and creatures. She and her co-workers hope that the costumes they have created for a special fashion show at the convention will wow who ever it is who orders such things.