THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER16, 2019 31
or Kathy Bates in “Misery,” based on
the 1987 Stephen King thriller, about a
romance-novel fanatic named Annie
Wilkes, who kidnaps her favorite au-
thor and makes him tailor his latest
novel to her liking.
Annie Wilkes, King told me recently,
was inspired in part by Mark David
Chapman, who assassinated John Len-
non hours after getting his autograph.
As an author, King is familiar with fan
enthusiasm gone awry. “There was a lot
of backlash about the way that the ‘Dark
Tower’ books ended,” he told me, refer-
ring to his multipart fantasy series.
“Those fans were absolutely rabid about
those books.” Not long after “Misery”
came out, King and his son were at a
baseball game when a man broke into
his house with what he said was a bomb,
claiming that Annie Wilkes had se-
cretly been based on his aunt. “My wife
ran out in her bare feet and called the
cops,” King recalled, “and the guy was
cowering in the turret of the third floor
of our Victorian home.” The bomb
turned out to be a bunch of pencils in
a rubber band. Still, it unnerved King:
his novel about a stalker fan had sum-
moned a stalker fan. “People have got-
ten invested in culture and make-believe
in a way that I think is a little bit un-
healthy,” King said. “I mean, it’s sup-
posed to be fun, right?”
Many of the people I met at Comic-
Con spoke about how fandom had
helped them overcome adversity. One
woman, dressed as Thanos, the Mar-
vel supervillain, told me that she got
into comics after her parents died, since
fantasy heroes are often orphans. An
I.B.M. art director said that she became
a “Lost” superfan after falling out of
touch with college friends; at Comic-
Con, she met people who have “be-
come part of my family.” Michael Asun-
cion, an aspiring psychotherapist, told
me, gesturing to the crowds, “There are
three needs that all people have: they
want to be seen, they want to be heard,
and they want to be valued.” That he
was dressed as SpongeBob SquarePants
did not dilute the insight.
The most anticipated event of the
week was a “Game of Thrones” panel.
Two days before the event, the show-
runners, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss,
had cancelled, ostensibly because of pro-
duction scheduling. The fans, many of
whom camped out overnight, were skep-
tical. “They probably saved themselves
from getting tomatoes,” one told me.
As the crowd poured into a cavern-
ous hall, the mood was tense, as if we
were bracing for the Battle of Winter-
fell. Eddie Ibrahim, Comic-Con’s di-
rector of programming, welcomed
everyone, then shifted his tone to that
of a disappointed camp counsellor after
a food fight. “One of the things I think
we all love about Comic-Con so much
is the fact that we all accept each other,”
he said, to groans. “Think about it! We
all accept each other’s fandoms. We all
accept each other’s idiosyncrasies.”
More groans.
Seven cast members came out. After
a few warmup questions, a moderator
asked about the “elephant in the room”:
the finale. Conleth Hill, who played
Varys the eunuch, dismissed the back-
lash as a “media-led hate campaign,” a
phrase that instantly bounced around
the Internet and enraged more fans. But,
inside the hall, the mood brightened.
The actors joked about the modern-daywater bottle that had made an acciden-
tal cameo in the last episode. Jacob An-
derson, who played Grey Worm, pulled
a Spider-Man mask over his head.
The cast members were asked their
favorite lines from the series, and fans
cheered knowingly at the answers: “Not
today,” “Hold the door,” “Nothing fucks
you harder than time.” John Bradley,
who played the lovable geek Samwell
Tarly, chose one of his lines from the
first season: “I always wanted to be a
wizard.” Samwell was himself a kind of
superfan within the show, poring over
Westeros history and confirming fan
theories about who was descended from
whom. “The more you learn about Sam,
the more you realize what a story that
line tells about his childhood,” Bradley
said. “You’re dealing with somebody
whose childhood was so tough and so
hard and so brutal and unforgiving that
he had to create this alternative reality
for himself. And he always wanted to
be a wizard, because he always wanted
to be something other than what he
was.” The fans went wild. “But, if I don’t peel off the entire label, the label wins.”