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NEWS > ENTERTAINMENT > SPIDER-MAN VILLAIN ARRESTED AT SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON
SPIDER-MAN VILLAIN ARRESTED AT SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON
July 24 2011
San Diego, CA – It really is a different type of culture at a place like Comic-Con. It is a time when geeks, generally relegated to basements and bachelor apartments, can allow their true colours to shine. They come out in hordes, dressed as their favourite 
characters, joining thousands of like-minded individuals in celebration. Things have certainly changed over the years in San Diego as the gathering has grown from a small gathering to one of the most watched and analyzed media events in the world. As much as the festival is still a gathering place for fans, Comic-Con has gone mainstream.
What began as essentially a trade show for nerds now draws millions in advertising dollars as mega-corporations use the event to display their latest wares to the world, to even the audiences who would shun the people who have made it so big. As the event has broken into the mainstream, so too has its import in popular culture as a whole. The lifeblood of Comic-Con, superheroes and villains, remains a potent part of the event but such things have also become big business, drawing far more than just dedicated geeks. There is perhaps no better example of how that geek culture has started to bleed into regular culture than the arrest of actor Rhys Ifans at this year’s convention. Ifans, who plays the villain Lizard in the upcoming Spider-Man film, was detained by police after apparently taking his method acting a little too far.
“Rhys Ifans was detained by Comic-Con security after a brief incident backstage prior to and immediately following the ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ panel. Police were notified and a citation was issued to Mr. Ifans, who deeply regrets this incident,” said a police spokesperson. “He was aggressive and belligerent. He was berating everyone from the security staff to the United States of America. He was cited and released, which is a non-custodial misdemeanour arrest.”
Apparently, police and security personnel were able to deal with Ifans unaided. Andrew Garfield, who plays Spider-Man, was not in the area.
“When you look around at an event like Comic-Con you see heroes and villains everywhere, mostly getting along. You could almost look at it as a kind of statement on the parallels between good and evil, something which plays out in movies and comics, but that would be a little dramatic. These are, after all, just people dressed up not people with actual super-powers,” said Scrape TV Media analyst Sarah Piper. “It is interesting to see how far geek culture has really come. You see things like ‘Captain America’ or ‘Transformers’ and ‘Harry Potter’ dominating the multiplexes, making billions of dollars which is something that simply wouldn’t have happened a decade ago. Geek culture has really become popular culture and Comic-Con is really the apex of that cultural shift. These aren’t even nerds dressing up and coming to the cons, they are lawyers and business people. Nerds have gone mainstream.”
The Spider-Man panel was one of the most anticipated of the convention.
“It only makes sense, then, that the actual mechanics that have fuelled the stories would start to play out in real life. I mean Ifans didn’t cause any real chaos or injure anyone, but he could have. He doesn’t have real superpowers, but if he had there would have been no one to stop him. As it is he probably just got a little too into character,” continued Piper. “I’m sure there were more than a few attendees who would have been more than willing to jump in and stop him but it’s probably a good thing they didn’t. The last thing you want to do is aggravate a trained actor if you yourself aren’t trained. It’s best to leave that to the professionals.”
Ifans was released and hasn’t caused any more problems, yet.
Samantha Dryden, Entertainment Correspondent
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