Getting to Comic Con was a little bit more of a trip for me than it ever has been before. Since the move up to San Francisco only happened about a month ago, and wasn’t really expected before then, I had made absolutely no plans in advance for things like flights down to San Diego, or hotel reservations so that I would have a place to stay once I was down there. Being from Southern California up until very recently, these weren’t things that I had to think about before.
Getting flight reservations were easy enough, but finding an available hotel room within about a 20 mile radius of the Convention Center was nigh impossible with only 4 weeks or left until the Con started. Hell, all of the hotels in San Diego have pretty much all been reserved since about a day after last year’s Comic Con. That left me to begging for couches from my friends who still lived in the area. Luckily, my friend Matt Schier was kind enough to put me up for a few nights.
Thank you Matt. The fact that you live a 2.5 mile walk from the closest trolley stop (and up a big ass hill), were prices I gladly paid in exchange for being able to attend the Con.
With travel and accommodations squared away, it was simply a matter of waiting for the day to come when I could fly down and attend the greatest geek event of the year. The weeks went by thankfully quickly, and before I knew it I was boarding a plane bound for SD. Having never had to fly down to SD for Con before, I was completely amused to find that one could fairly easily pick out who else on your plane was also going to SD for the Convention. At least half of the people on my flight were Con bound, if all of the comic book or sci-fi t-shirts, hats and bags were to be believed. The guy in the “Flynn Lives” t-shirt? Totally a Con Attendee. The girl in the Pikachu beanie? Totally a Con Attendee.
I got into SD late Wednesday night, so I missed preview night. Damned new jobs and not having accrued enough vacation time yet to take three days off instead of two is to blame. Therefore, I didn’t get to the Convention Center until Thursday morning. Things were already in full swing by the time I got there. One of the things I love about Comic Con having gotten so big is that it has spilled out of the Convention center and can be seen all throughout the streets of SD. The moment I got off of the trolley, before I even got my badge, I’m already being greeted by the sight of giant robots.
Suck it Michael Bay, this is how Optimus Prime is supposed to look (sort of). This was a giant promo piece for a new animated Transformers animated series called Transformers: Prime or something like that. I don’t know if the show will be any good or not, but the new Design for Optimus is pretty sweet, so I can’t complain so far.
Once my badge was obtained, I made a mad dash upstairs so that I wouldn’t miss what has quickly become a new Con tradition of mine . . . attending the Fans Guide to Comic Con. Yeah, admittedly I’m biased because my friends Matt, Wes and Jesse run the panel, but it seriously is a great time. If you’ve never gotten to see their panel, you should check it out. Aside from dishing out helpful advice to Con newbies, they also entertain with great jokes and visual aids. The jokes change every year too. One of the things I loved about this year’s panel (aside from the constant Rob Liefeld jokes) were the inclusion of fake quotes from past Con attendees. This was one of my personal favorites:
After laughing my ass off at the Fan’s Guide panel, I headed downstairs to check out what is for me, the end-all-be-all of Comic Con. The exhibit hall floor. Sure, a lot of people come to Con to spend hours waiting in line for Hall H or Ballroom 20 so that they can drool over Johnny Depp or Angelina Jolie or whatever. Those people are fools. The bread and butter of Comic Con has always been the exhibit hall. Nowhere else in the known universe will you ever find a more eclectic mix of awesomeness under a single roof.
I’m not joking here. You can find just about everything on the floor. Are you looking for bootleg episodes of some forgotten cult sci-fi show? The floor has those. Need some new Steampunk gear to add to your costume? Jesus, you had about 20 different booths to choose from this year. Looking for out of print trade paperbacks? Got those too.
The hall has become so massively large over the years, that it now takes me two full days to cover all of it. I’ve learned too that if you don’t approach the floor with a specific plan of attack, you’re bound to miss something. My plan? Start in the 100 isle, and then make a back and forth grid pattern moving slowly down every aisle, making sure to stop at every booth to see what cool stuff they have. You really don’t want to miss any of the cool stuff that you can find on the floor. Missing a single aisle could mean you miss something totally awesome, like this . . . .
That’s right, that’s Ecto 1, just chilling out on the exhibit hall floor. Would you seriously want to miss that just because you were too lazy to walk down all of the aisles? Have I made my point yet?
I’m not exaggerating when I say it takes me two days to fully cover the floor now either. By the end of Thursday, I had only managed to make it to about the 2300 aisle, and the aisle markers go above 5000 now. As I said earlier too, the floor isn’t even all there is to see. The Con has spilled out into the heart of Downtown SD. When I walked outside to lunch, these are a few of the sights that greeted me:
After Lunch, it was back to the exhibit hall for more walking around and finding cool stuff. Marvel had some big Thor thing going on over at their booth. They had even built a giant replica of Odin’s throne in Asgard, which situated in front of giant golden doors that were rumored to hold some big secret from the film. Annoyingly though, the doors wouldn’t be opened until Saturday, so all I could do for now was stare impatiently at them and wonder what wonders they contained.
The day was quickly coming to a close though. Nighttime programming was about to begin. I had a panel I had to get to. Geek-tastic and GeekRoundTable were working together to present the first episode of Matt & Wes vs. The Zombie Apocalypse to a live audience.
How did the panel go? Was the film well received? Sadly, that will have to wait for another post as this one has gotten far too long as it is.
Never fear though true believer. That next post will be up soon. Check back tomorrow.
The same Pat time . . .
The same Pat channel . . .
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