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4-day membership badges for San Diego Comic Con '09 is already on sale now, which you can purchase online here.

Adult badges go for $75, an increase from this year. With all the talks of inflated attendance and having to move to a bigger venue in another city, I think the only reasonable way to keep the convention in San Diego is to limit the attendance like they did this year and raise the registration price. It sucks for the fans, but it'll ensure a fun experience and not the nightmarish overcrowding that we suffered in 2007. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I'm go to something fun like Comic Con, I don't want to feel like I'm in the middle of a marketplace during a fire sale. Especially when you're squeezing through over 120,000 sweaty peeps—some of whom I know for a fact don't bathe for the entire duration of the Con.

This isn't the ideal situation, of course. For years now (specifically, since the recent boom of superhero movies) there have been complaints about the commercialization of Comic Con. Originally a venue where comic book geeks can meet fellow fans and comic book authors, it had evolved into a major event greatly dominated by big Hollywood studios and large corporations. Some comic book professionals who rent their own tables (and not paid by DC or Marvel to sit at theirs) and the sci-fi/fantasy novelists have noted that with the arrival of these big guys willing to throw big bucks to erect huge displays, booth prices for exhibitors continue to increase.

Don't get me wrong, I welcome the arrival of Hollywood attention and the content they throw at fans, but when NBC starts peddling prime-time shows like The Office and there are panels for Mythbusters, Ghost Hunters, The Sarah Silverman Program, Death Race and Pineapple Express, you start to wonder if the event had gone astray. Nothing against those movies and shows whatsoever, but what are they doing at a comic book convention? The definition of geek culture dissipates every year as the current pop culture zeitgeist absorbs it and hawks it as the chic trend of the new millennium.

I have to admit that this is why, to some extent, I've always preferred the smaller, more intimate WonderCon, housed right here in San Francisco. It's never too crowded, you can always get into the panels, and you don't exhaust yourself walking from one end to the other.

The ideal situation now for Comic Con would be to have the city of San Diego commission more hotels along the waterfront and expand the convention center in order to house more people. That's the biggest problem right now: not enough hotels near the convention means thousands of people driving to the location, which translates to horrendous traffic jam blocking the downtown area, which means more cost for the organizers to hire detour street signs, police detail, etc.

Come on, San Diego. It's a major tourism event for you guys. Accommodate the geeks and everyone's happy.