MCM Birmingham Comic Con

Comic Con: A K-Pop Fan’s Perspective

By

Charlie Murray

It has been a while since I last went to a Comic Con, the last one being Manchester in Summer 2017. It’s not that I’ve stopped enjoying them, far from it, but ever since being less invested in the Anime fandom (I’ve completely fallen down the hole of K-Pop), I felt like I would get less out of Comic Con - I would have to walk past the tens of Anime and video games stalls, sadly no longer appreciating it as much as I once did. I would instead be gazing aimlessly for the one (two, if I’m lucky) K-Pop stalls where I would spend most of my time rifling through the BTS and EXO posters and bopping to the cute K-Pop tunes they’d play at the stall. This was one of the only places I would be surrounded by people using and understanding words like “maknae line”, “bias” and others, so it would comfort me. However, I had said no this year. No, I would not spend £14 on a ticket to look around stalls spending money on things I didn’t need.

However, this year, it was my university friend’s first ever Comic Con, so at the last minute I decided to accompany her and her friends, to view her jaw drop at the wonderful costumes, adorable merchandise and special celebrity guests for the first time. And I should have known, that despite being predominantly there for one fandom, I would still end up spending more money than I’d anticipated at this addicting event.

It wasn’t as crowded there as usual, with enough room to move around (despite me having to lug around a large piece of merchandise which I’ll mention later), making it very comfortable for us nerdy fans of our varying obsessions to gather and walk around browsing the colourful and cute stalls. However, it was still very lively, with Star Wars Storm troopers marching around behind calls of “Make way for the Empire!” and large groups of cos-players taking pictures together.

Unlike at previous Comic Cons, there wasn’t one large-ish K-Pop stall per se, with merchandise from a variety of groups (BTS, EXO, Seventeen, BTOB, Big Bang, Twice, Girl’s Generation etc.) but instead there were sprinklings of K-pop in a couple of different stalls. For instance, at a stall for t-shirts with novelty slogans, they had a few t-shirts saying V 95 or Chanyeol 92. At this stall, they were playing some music by f(x). I don’t listen to them myself, but my fellow BTS Radio UK friend Ethan immediately recognised the song and was so thrilled they were playing it!

And the t-shirts weren’t all, to my surprise, at the stall selling body pillows for promiscuous looking anime characters (a handcuffed L from Death Note springs immediately to mind), they also had body pillows for the BTS members! Double-sided, no less - get one with Namjoon, it had Seokjin on the back; get one with Taehyung and it had Jungkook on the back.

And some lucky girls who must have arrived early managed to get their hands on an OT7 one, as I saw 2 different groups lovingly carry ones around that had Seokjin, Hoseok and Jimin on one side, and Jungkook, Yoongi, Taehyung and Namjoon on the other side. These were all from Spring Day era. Well, in all my times scouring the internet for BTS merchandise, I had never seen BTS body pillows before… but no, £30 for a pillow? When I already have BT21 plushies and the like? Surely, this was an unnecessary purchase; I could never be so frivolous with my money…

Cut to me 10 minutes later, walking away with my Taehyung body pillow. Well, what was I gonna do, say no?

My (questionable) purchase was appreciated, however, by someone I met at the Con. I at first recognised her as we were wearing matching outfits (Yandere-Chan from the video game Yandere Simulator), but as she got out her phone to take a selfie of us, I noticed her BTS X ARMY lockscreen - another ARMY! ARMY are indeed everywhere, and I love that at every Comic Con I go to recently, you can easily meet fellow BTS or K-pop fans who will be more than happy to chat to you over your shared obsession. A Seokjin stan, she was very amused when we saw each other later and I was holding my new Taehyung pillow. We got each other’s Instagram usernames, and it was lovely to meet her.

One stall that I must mention was that of an artist, known as Lushie. Walking up to her stall, I saw photographs of BTS members on the wall behind her, although the closer I got, the more apparent it became that these were not photographs at all, but gorgeous paintings. She had paintings of other characters, which I could not help looking at, as her bold use of colour was stunning to look at. She had a book in front of her filled with plastic wallets containing different paintings, and I flicked through to find paintings of every single member (talented and an OT7 stan, I had truly come across an intellectual) and a wonderfully coloured piece of the BT21 characters. I had to stop standing there for so long gawking at her art - so many other people were trying to admire it!

Here are some samples of her gorgeous work:

Next to her, I also saw a stall which had stickers of what could have been Pokemon or anime characters, but also a solitary sticker of all the BT21 characters together, and some gorgeous keyrings of each BTS member stood next to their BT21 character (naturally as a Tae stan, I bought the one of Taehyung with Tata). There were also some beautiful keyrings of chibi versions of the BTS boys in Fake Love era: one of Namjoon with Seokjin, one of Sope and one of maknae line.

One thing I did note at this Comic Con was the lack of other K-pop groups’ merchandise compared to BTS. At the last Manchester one I went to, there was predominantly merchandise of BTS, Twice and G-Dragon, with a reasonable amount of EXO, BTOB and Seventeen hoodies, keyrings and snapbacks. However, at this one, it was mostly BTS, although I did see a few posters for Twice, Blackpink and G-Dragon underneath the BTS ones. However, this could have been due to the lack of Kpop merchandise in general, or the fact that Manchester has more K-pop stallholders and fans as a city than Birmingham; or potentially - a rise of BTS’ prominence in mainstream nerd culture compared to other K-pop fandoms. I’ll let you make your own minds up.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed my Comic Con experience (shocker), and I am very glad I decided to go in the end. Even my friends of friends, who weren’t invested in fandoms enough to think that they would end up buying anything, ended up inevitably finding things to spend their money on. I always say with Comic Con, even if you walk in with a tenner, you’ll somehow end up spending £50. The merchandise is just so addicting, and hey, you have to have that impressive Comic Con haul!

As for the K-pop scene there, it was somewhat subtle, but it was there for sure. There were undoubtedly many K-pop fans that attended, and judging by how quickly the merchandise was sold (I wanted that BT21 sticker, but my friend Ethan bought it first and they had none left!), there is definitely a demand for more representation of K-pop there. Who knows, in the near future I can definitely see more large K-pop stalls as big as the anime and Star Wars stalls!

You can follow Charlie on twitter: @d0ubletae


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