All you need to know about 'Lost' at Comic-Con 2009

We're about to get out first flurry of "Lost" news in a while, people: Comic-Con is upon us! And while the type of person who reads this blog will have at least a vague sense of what this event is all about, it couldn't hurt to drop an FAQ on you so you're more than prepared to learn how to get your fix of "Lost" info this upcoming weekend.

OK, assume I just landed from a distant planet, and the first thing I did was go to an internet café. By happenstance, this entry is the first thing I read. What in the name of Xorythia the Great is "Comic-Con"?

Well, first off, props to Xorythia the Great: he certainly didn't raise no minion dummies. What is now know as Comic-Con started off in 1970 as the "Golden State Comic Book Convention." According to Wikipedia, the driving force behind the initial iteration was a man named Shel Dorf. I'd like to think Wikipedia is mocking me, but that name also sounds completely and utterly correct. If you asked me to mockingly come up with the name of the man who founded Comic-Con, it would have been really close to the actual thing.

Was it always this huge an event?

Nay. The first convention had only 300 attendees. In recent years, parts of San Diego have turned into a dorky demilitarized zone as tens of thousands descend on the epicenter of all things film, television, and comics.

Why did you put comics third on the list? Isn't it called "Comic-Con"?

Well, what's driven the audience up in recent years is Hollywood realizing, "If this demo spends thousands of dollars on collectable figurines and cosplay, they'll prolly drop $10 if we start buying up all these properties they love and turn them into occasionally awesome but mostly mediocre franchises that will fill our financial coffers to the point of orgiastic excess."

But it's not all complete Hollywood cynicism at the expense of the lonely nerd, no?

Yes and no. Some of these projects are obviously borne out of love for the material as well as an eye for the box office. "Iron Man" comes to mind as a project that actually used enthusiasm built from the premiere of a trailer at Comic-Con to propel it to the megablockbuster it became. On the other side of things you have Jessica Alba pimping "Good Luck Chuck" and trying to not look completely terrified at the sea of acne before her.

So what's "Lost" got to do with Comic-Con?

"Lost" does its song and dance on a yearly basis since debuting in 2004. Lostpedia has a nice rundown of what has gone down on a yearly basis, and I won't try and retype all their hard work here for you.

So they give us definitive answers to burning questions at Comic-Con, right?

Let's put it this way: according to the 2006 panel, the producers promised that Kate would choose between Jack and Sawyer in Season 3. That should answer your query.

So we shouldn't listen to what they say this year?

I doubt there's too much they CAN say, really. In lieu of the season finale, the story can now go in approximately 108 ways. Do they tip their hand so far away from the season's premiere? If I were them, I wouldn't. So expect a whole lot of dodgy answers coming from them. And honestly, that's fine: I'm essentially going to start shouting "LA LA LA I can't hear you!" if they start dropping actual answers anyways. Before Season 4, Darlton brought out Harold Perrineau as a surprise guest. Only problem? It basically ruined the surprise of Ben's mysterious man on Widmore's boat. Sigh.

Is "giving cryptic and occasionally false answers" such a crime?

Not at all. I spell crime "A-R-G."

"A-R-G"? Is that easy as 1, 2, 3?

It stands for "alternate reality game," and "Lost" and "Comic-Con" too often produce an ARG baby that makes the one in "The Orphan" seem cute and cuddly by comparison.

Can you explain, briefly?

In essence: there have been three ARGs concocted for "Lost." Two of them ("The Lost Experience," "Dharma Initiative Recruiting Project") were featured at Comic-Con. The first concerned a storyline in which a young woman (Rachel Blake) scoured the globe for signs of Alvar Hanso, and ended up uncovering a huge conspiracy concerning the Foundation that bears his name. The second concerned a modern-day effort to reconstitute the Dharma Initiative.

These sound cool. What's the problem?

The problem concerns the "c" word: canon. After whipping up fan frenzy through the use of ARGs and videos produced specifically for Comic-Con, Darlton later told the masses that the games were fun but really existed outside the show itself.

Why does this irk you?

Because the two games mentioned above, plus a third launched in anticipation of Season 4 ("Find 815"), existed in a fictional world that the show had trained fans to look for every...single...little...clue possible in order to piece together a coherent look at the possible true nature of the show. And by playing coy with the true relationship of these games to the show, they actually did their fans a disservice.

Example?

OK, so in "The Lost Experience," the grand reveal at the end was this video. In it, we meet Alvar Hanso and view a never-before seen Orientation tape that actually reveals the source of the Numbers.

Pretty cool, right? But have you ever heard the phrase "Valenzetti Equation" on the show? Exactly. Some of you have pointed out that the word "Valenzetti" exists on the blast door map, but that seems more like an Easter Egg than canonical confirmation to me. Using the info gleaned in "The Lost Experience," many of us made assumptions about the show that we learned literally years later were false ones. I'm all for being unable to solve a mystery: it would be a poor one if I could predict the answer right now. But I need a chance to be able to solve it, and these ARGs only serve to muddy the waters in an already murky narrative sea.

So this is the Comic-Con produced video to which you earlier alluded?

No: while the ARGs were all produced by third-parties (i.e., not the show's creative staff), the show produced two videos for Comic-Con featuring the one and only Pierre Chang to stoke anticipation for Seasons 4 and 5. Here they are.

You probably scratched your head while watching those. In the first case, you'll note that the in-show version of the Orchid video differed in content from the one above. And in the second case...well, that scene straight up never happened, period. In show canon, Faraday and Chang never attempt to use a pinhole in time to get a message out to the modern day masses.

But c'mon: it's a silly video for a nerdfest. Why are you getting your panties in a bunch?

Had Darlton come out and said that the videos and the ARGs were diversions meant to keep the fan-base happy, but not actual clues to solve the show, then there would have been no problem. The Orchid video gets across the notion of time travel; the Chang/Faraday nominally set up the 1977 storyline in Season 5. But they didn't do that: they set loose a series of non-canon fodder to a frenzied fanbase and then acted all shocked when we used them to derive theories about the show.

C'mon: you're just hatin' on them because you're stuck in Boston this weekend and not on the West Coast, right?

Well, while I am generally averse to crowds bigger than those found in popular elevators, it would be cool to be there for the final in-series "Lost" Comic-Con appearance. However, I'm not sure of the panel's time/location relation to the "New Moon" panel, so maybe it's best I play it safe and stay home.

But the point of all this discussion is not to throw a jealous wet blanket on those that get to attend. It's a cautionary tale in order to properly frame the flurry of information that will come out of the event. We have to take it all with a silo of salt and not do the usual thing when confronted with a new tidbit of info: radically rework our entire understanding of the show's meaning even if said new theory flies in the face of logic. And since I will be covering it live to the best of my ability as it happens, I wanted to try and set up a few ground rules before the info, rumors, and theories start flying about much like all metallic objects after the counter in the Swan went to zero at the end of Season 2.

What I do hope happens, and what the producers have promised, is that the panel this year while be used to honor the fans of the show. If they celebrate the fans, rather than unintentionally mock them through misleading promo material, then this year's panel will be a huge success. But if Rachel Blake comes into the hall, Jacob help us.

Ryan invites you to join the hundreds already in Zap2It's Guide to Lost Facebook group. He also encourages you to subscribe to the Zap2It's Guide to Lost Twitter feed for constant updates from Comic-Con and Zap2it's main feed for all the latest TV, movie and celebrity news.

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Zap2it's Complete Comic-Con Coverage

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