Dubai Comic Con proves it’s no Flash in the pan
▶ Tens of thousands mingle with star guests at the annual celebration of pop culture in Dubai
The Middle East Film and Comic Con descended on Dubai again over the weekend for the city’s annual celebration of all things pop culture.
And fans were not disappointed as the event went into relative middle age with its seventh year.
Among the top celebrity draws this year were Judge
Dredd and Star Trek star Karl Urban, who revealed that he copes with the struggles of keeping on-set secrets by talking to his dog.
Then there was Justice
League’s the Flash, or Ezra Miller in real life, who neatly sidestepped audience questions about the storyline for his character’s standalone movie by simply suggesting that fans “remain excited” about it.
But Comic Con is about far more than celebrities. Among the highlights in the halls this year were Netflix’s dedicated Lost in Space stand, which took visitors through the process of registering for space travel, sitting in a mock-up spaceship for a simulated crash and emerging on a mysterious alien planet.
It is not known if the elaborate set-up won many subscribers but it definitely had crowds queuing all weekend for their very own space odyssey.
Netflix was not alone in its commitment to the show. On Friday night Marvel screened a 20-minute showreel celebrating the 10th anniversary of Marvel Studios, with a packed Roxy Cine Club watching behind-the-scenes footage from the sets of Ant
Man and the Wasp and Avengers: Infinity Wars.
Out in the halls, Montegrappa had a selection of super-exclusive Game of Thrones pens.
The most expensive model, one of only seven solid gold pieces, was selling for some Dh215,075, although staff admitted that the particular model had not found a buyer by last evening.
Further expensive trinkets could be found in the form of an $11,000 life-size metal sculpture of the alien queen from the Alien franchise.
Meanwhile, more affordably, memorabilia maker Funko was selling its Pops models of characters from shows including Stranger Things and Game
of Thrones for the first time exclusively at the show.
It was the first time Pops have been made available at a Comic Con outside of North America.
There were also changes this year. It was the first show since founders Arafaat Ali Khan and Ben Caddie handed it over to international events company Informa, and Mr Ali Khan admitted there was a bittersweet taste to his first show as a mere consultant.
“It’s like waving your kids off to college. You’re sad but ultimately you know you’ve done the right thing,” he said.
“Our ambition was always to be one of the most anticipated cons in the world and we could only go so far with the resources we had. We needed more resources and the manpower to do that.”
He said that, despite the slightly unusual sensation of looking in on his own show from the outside, he is confident of its future under its new owners.
“I think content-wise this show has been the best yet, not just the celebrities, but the artists, these people I’ve been reading since I was a kid – they’re at our show,” Mr Ali Khan said.
“Netflix bringing the whole cast of Lost in Space, that’s huge; the Marvel exclusives’ a proper closed room exclusive like at San Diego – I can’t argue on the content side. I know we’re going in the right way.
“I think this is that transition year to the next level, when people don’t say, ‘Let’s save it for New York or San Diego’. They say, ‘Let’s do it in Dubai’.
“We’re going the right way and I’ll definitely be staying on to grow with the show.”