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Millie Bobby Brown Cancels La Mole Comic Con In Controversy Amidst Earthquake Tragedy

Mexico correspondent Enrique Spike G. Puig writes for Bleeding Cool,

"It has been a very sad week for Mexico. At La Mole Comic Con we hope we can bring you a smile with the guests we'll be announcing starting tomorrow."

This tweet was published by La Mole Comic Con, the largest convention of its kind in Latin America – which happens twice a year in Mexico City – on September 24. Five days after an earthquake hit hard the central part of Mexico. Especially Mexico City, where rescue brigades are still hopeful to find survivors among some of the ruins & are still working hard day and night. From day one the people of Mexico City, specially the young adults, have been volunteering supplies, money and their efforts to heal the city.

A lot of the population are finding difficulty coping with the fear and/or stress this tragedy has caused, while there is also public controversy regarding the monetary assets political parties get from the taxpayers, the country wants to it get back for the efforts of bringing normality back to the Valley of Mexico.

"We are planning something."

Within the replies to this tweet, Mexico City's fan community was asking for cooperation with the relief efforts and giving ideas of how the convention organizers could help using their massive platform. They replied to one of the messages saying they would, but they have not revealed how as of the writing of this article.

Some other fans stated they found the tweet untasteful due to the situation within the vox populi of the Mexican comic book community, but mostly keeping their opinions to their own social media.

Millie Bobby Brown Cancels La Mole Comic Con In Controversy Amidst Earthquake Tragedy

Millie Bobby Brown, better known as Eleven from the cult Netflix series, was revealed to be this special guest for the con. A star with such current mainstream acclaim had never been part of La Mole and this announcement brought the attention of the mainstream media. Something not very common, in spite of it being the largest & longest running comic con in the country. And this, of course, brought the attention of the population at large who might not be versed in how these celeb appearance pricing is set & handled by their agents, usually converting the US dollar fee to Mexican Pesos (roughly $1 = 18 pesos).

Millie Bobby Brown Cancels La Mole Comic Con In Controversy Amidst Earthquake Tragedy

It seems earlier this year she was charging half less in Argentina. ARS and MXN cost around the same.

Considering the cheapest admission price for the con is already 280 pesos, 3.5 times Mexico City's daily minimum wage, and the announced costs for Brown's autograph was 1600 pesos and photos was 1800 pesos, the cheapest form of interaction with the hyped actress would cost around 23.5 times the daily minimum wage here. That's around what myself, an upper-middle class guy living in a two story house in a relatively quiet, residential neighborhood in the south of the Coyoacán borough (which has been ranked as one of the most livable neighborhoods in North America over multiple years) pays in service bills, including a 200 MB bandwidth internet bill.

Is this fee a crime or something objectively bad? Of course not. I've seen comic book guests at this convention sell original pages for thousands of US dollars. But for the layman who watched Stranger Things last year on Netflix who has been volunteering and donating to rebuild our very own own city while fighting our politicking class for a proper use of our money, it sounds like a scandalous proposition for such a high profile visitor.

I was part of this con's staff for years, and if we got complaints with someone just as talented but not as hyped outside of the comic book world like David Finch for his sketch prices, you can just imagine how enraged the people got when Elías Ortiz, content manager of the event, decided to publicly blame the fans for the cancellation saying the public offended Millie Bobby Brown. Considering the comic con has experienced these complaints with a lot of different guests through the years, so much Ortiz actually made a video for their official facebook explaining why those prices can't be helped, saying he handled the situation badly is putting it mildly, while putting the events community manager and Brown herself in a very tight spot. All this could have been easily avoided with a little finesse and consideration of circumstances he has to be very aware of since the building his Diamond-licensed comic book store is located in has a donation center for supplies at the very entrance, not to mention La Mole's twitter account constantly retweeted news & info. regarding the state of emergency. Timing is everything, especially if you want to bring such an announcement into a society who will be struggling with the ruins of an earthquake for years.

On Wednesday night, Millie, through her Instagram account, issued this statement about her decision to cancel her visit:

Millie Bobby Brown Cancels La Mole Comic Con In Controversy Amidst Earthquake Tragedy

To make matters way, way worse, after Ms. Brown showed an admirable level of maturity and grasp of the situation, La Mole Comic Con issued a statement blaming the fans for the cancellation through the following post (which was removed after the community got even angrier at them, specially for implying attacks directed to the actress; which I found five amongst the hundreds of public interactions on her Instagram, Twitter and Facebook timelines combined).

Millie Bobby Brown Cancels La Mole Comic Con In Controversy Amidst Earthquake Tragedy

"Due to the sea of offensive comments expressed on social media, our guest Millie Bobby Brown has decided to cancel her Mexico visit." The other information is for the fans looking for a refund.

Here's an example of the offensive comments. The actual worst I could find combing through hundreds of interactions on Brown's social media. But hey, don't trust me, you can go look yourselves. Facebook translates posts now.

Millie Bobby Brown Cancels La Mole Comic Con In Controversy Amidst Earthquake Tragedy

"Paying this much in Mexico for this bland girl?"
"Nevermind that, she doesn't charges anyone in her country. She only comes here to take advantage."
"Milla Jovovich didn't charge me anything for this photo at the Resident Evil premiere. She took the selfie with my phone and didn't ask for a buck."

It's really sad that we missed the opportunity to meet the mysterious and powerful Eleven here, in Mexico City. But it's a big concern that the largest con in Latin America not only drops the ball that easily for an unnecessary urge to imitate the American cons, the fans who have been able to afford it have made it a sustainable one, but that their first reaction is to antagonize the fandom and lie (it was them who got the garden-variety-troll comments, like they have for years, proving the ban hammer solves nothing and, basically, leaves their thesis unproven) shows us a teenage girl can have more criteria than the staff in charge of a millionaire business venture.

And, if you guys can find it in your hearts, here's a link where international Bleeding Cool readers can send a buck to the children in need of Mexico and the world. 

Enrique "Spike" G. Puig is a writer, journalist, translator, and radio host from Mexico City. Spike started doing freelance script interpreting for Marvel artists in Mexico City and debuted his own story (in both English and Spanish) in Spider-Verse #2.

 


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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