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After decades as something close to a shared secret amongst comic industry insiders, Bar Con has become something of a mainstream event at any given comic convention over the last decade or so. Where the deep warmth in the taste of hops and malt and barley were once part of the relief of the post-convention experience for weary pros – a little manna from heaven delivered by the understanding, equally-weary hands of a hotel bartender who sees your Pro badge and knows to maybe count an extra second while pouring the devils’ water – the now-fabled informal BarCon experience has expanded well beyond the professional sphere of Comic-Con International: San Diego and into officially advertised events promising cool drinks with creators, free signings, and cool swag to boast the experience. 

Despite there being one at nearly every big convention across the country, there’s no real explanation for ‘Bar Con’ as a thing, aside from the simple reasoning that, as long as comics have had teams of people creating them, those same people have needed a drink after a long day behind the table.

In so many ways, a public, known Bar Con is only a richer experience for the average SDCC attendee. (Who doesn’t want to share a drink with their favorite creators?) But as I sat at the busy pub discreetly watching the person next to me wearing an Exhibitor badge – clearly believing they had picked a spot that would, perhaps pre-COVID, have been their work-peer drinking spot –  post a photo to their instagram with the caption “If a dude in Deadpool shirt talks to me during this drink I will eat the glass”, I took a sip of my Guinness, chuckling and realize that it’s time to move on. The BarCon that once was is still out there, but finding it requires avoiding the handheld ring lights of boasting phones and finding the under-eye rings of people who just wanted to have a fucking pint after work.

Having a drink after a hard day is undoubtedly a working-class tradition, even for creatives. (One could argue especially for people in creative and creative-adjacent fields, and not even after work, if you were to ask Wally Wood, Ernest Hemingway, etc.) Even as a journalist, after a day of 'people-ing' all day and putting forth a doubled up, audience-ready version of one’s personality for the sake of fans and various inter-work-related charismatic expectations, the promise of a hotel bar or beloved familiar pub feels like a boozy, welcome light at the end of the tunnel. 

That felt particularly funny to me this year, as I walked away from the convention center in search of the right locale for an evening’s decompression. As I made my way back across the throngs of people – store-bought zentai superhero costumes and branded t-shirts now stained with burger sauce and IPA, shouting conversational choices being made about the validity of multiverses lining the streets like some sort of unhinged nerd Mardi Gras – I recognized just exactly how tired I am, and almost immediately choose to ignore that fact for the promise that I will be able to talk about how tired I am with other tired people in my field, who will understand exactly what I am going through. This, frankly, is really the spirit of any Comic Convention BarCon, but especially that of San Diego Comic-Con. 

Arriving at the first proper hotel bar – the immediate stomping ground of BarCon that promises several drinks, easy access to one’s hotel room in a pinch, and in more recent years, a pretty decent threat of COVID exposure – there was a marked absence of the usual suspects. Those present, however – a small hive of scum and villainy from comics, publishers, and journalists – are chipper in their shared, hallucinatory exhaustion; a proud colony of beavers sitting atop their dam of completed signatures, “per my last message” emails, and commission turnarounds.

All seemed pretty pleased to report that the show has either gone “as expected” or “really well” when asked, a sip from a well-worn highball glass paired perfectly with the litter of recognizable faces behind the pages of some of comics’ most popular books, both beloved bygones and current hot names. As talk of “another day down” starts to stir amongst the crowd – it’s always “another day down,” even on the first night of the show – conversation lapses away from more official networking opportunities and into memories of comic cons past, previous shows throughout the year, and, yes: the excitement to lay down in bed. And yet, as the hour progresses and the liquid tension of each glasses lowers little by little, the voices grow louder, and the laughs grow more genuine, a point becomes increasingly clear: any good Bar Con (and especially the Bar Cons at San Diego Comic-Con) is about the shared experience of excelling at showing up to make other people happy with what you do, and subsequently feeling able to reward oneself with a drink or two (or more) for a change in return.

“Post-COVID” – a concept foreign to the people who are still contracting the virus from the show as I write this – the air of Bar Con is something that’s seen a shift, with locations spread out and decentralized more and more each year, or altogether gone. While Comic-Con International: San Diego was once host to a sea of creators big and small connecting over slightly slurred words, industry gossip, fond memories of peers tearing it up with the best of them (and a wry laugh over how we’re all still managing to succeed doing these jobs) over the disinfectant-scented counters of the Hilton Bayfront, Grand Hyatt, and Marriott, the crowds have seemingly dissipated in the post-pandemic pause of SDCC for two years. This doesn’t stop the comics professional crowd from gathering here, of course, but the usual route of bar-crawling has become a humbling experience in trying to find one’s people, lest you brave the last of your energy at an industry party or getting bashed around by rogue cosplay props in the Gaslamp.

The fact of the matter is, Comic Cons, especially the larger scale ones like San Diego, require a lot from people. Whether that person is an exhibitor, a professional writer or artist, a publicist, a journalist, or an agent, that workload that goes into making a convention a worthwhile experience for paying attendees is one that largely goes unnoticed. It’s something I think professionals have come to accept collectively – but, instead of complaining, we join together at the end of the day to down a drink and remember the good parts; the parts that include the comfort that comes from a little buzz with the same people you were bitching and drinking with last year, and the year before that and the year before that, ready to welcome newcomers of the inner workings of the comic con industry into the fold like so many tired, excitable lemmings.

Get a fuller San Diego Comic-Con experience with a full rundown of our SDCC 2024 stories, as well as all the big SDCC 2024 news, how to make the most out of San Diego Comic-Con, and the real burning question: how much does it actually cost to go to SDCC?