Comic-Con Day 2 and part of Day 3

Day two at San Diego Comic Con starts late because my co-conspirator, Brandon, doesn’t arrive in San Diego until 2:30 AM having been cutting the trailer for a talking animal film until late in LA.


We attend a “State of Animation Panel” which portends ill because it is boring. Particularly after the anticipation of standing in line half and hour, and getting yelled at by con staff. The exhibit hall is even more dense than Thursday, and going anywhere is swimming upstream. Con disillusionment rears it’s head.

Then, Guillermo del Toro makes it right with his profanity-peppered intro to teaser footage from the remake of the 70s horror classic remake he’s producing and scripting Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. It looks really cool, and he’s really cool.

Things go good for a bit, and I pick up a cool ERB retrospective illustrated and signed by Mark Wheatley and a pulp art book. Then there’s the Star Wars pavillion where you can take a picture than makes it look like you’re an action figure in blister pack on a Boba Fett card. Rumors of invites to Disney’s TRON sequel party or DC’s party entice us, but Brandon’s friend’s text messages are all over the place, and vague.

We instead end the evening with anime and drinks at the hotel bar.

Day three dawns with a panel on the increasing profile of comics in popular culture. This is interesting, but its our second choice as we would have preferred to attend Warner Brothers film teaser mega-presentation, but for the multiple tents full of eager attendees who arrived way before us . After that we make the rounds in the exhibit hall again and I score an advanced reader’s copy of Tony DiTerlizzi’s new illustrated book The Search for Wondla which looks great.

Then, we’re Brandon’s friend finally comes through and we’re whisked to Wired’s party, where True-Blood is served, and several cast members from Chuck and True Blood are in attendance. DVD sets of season two of True Blood come as door prizes. Did I mention this was all courtesy of Patron, who has a make-your-own Margarita booth? Well, it was.

Gotta go.  I have to find a way to pack the things I've bought and the ephemera I've acquired in my bag for the plane.

Combat at Comic-Con

A friend of mine recorded this footage as we watched the tourney on top of the San Diego Convention Center:

 

Fear and Loathing at Comic-Con

One day down in San Diego, and alright--there wasn't any loathing, and only a little fear, but the title sounded good...

It was a long day, boarding a plan on the east coast a 7:30AM with comics blogger/journalist Chris “Invincible Super-blog” Sims, who has it turns out is afraid of flying (“the takeoffs and landings,” he says) and not afraid of having a Mai Tai before 11pm.

Five hours later, we’re in San Diego, and I have to find the mysterious woman whose name I have only seen in a text message. and try to get my ticket. When I finally talk to her she says I can find her under the purple SyFy balloon and: “I’m tall.”

She isn’t kidding. The pretty, bright-smiling, giantess leads me into the convention center—losing me briefly as the gendarmes detain me at the door, but quickly retrieving me—and I get the passes and associated swag for myself and my as-yet-to-arrive friend from LA.

But what about the con? Well, parked outside is the black beauty, but the outfits of the three Green Hornettes in front of it seem impractical for crime-fighting. People take plenty of pictures, though. Everywhere, people are barking things at you like carnies, conspiratorially handing you dubious ephemera like they’re trying to invite you to a rave, or to a church revival. And everywhere, there’s the press of humanity like a general admission concert.

Of course, you’re not even in the exhibit hall yet.

Inside, well, imagine a carnival if every carnival ride was as commercially-motivated as an 80s toy tie-in cartoon, then combine that with a big trade show of some sort, what ever kind you’re familiar with, as long as it has glitz and plastic-pretty sales folk with big smiles. Then liberally apply cosplayers—teen anime characters being moody in packs, older girls favoring the most revealing superheroine outfits. Guys in multi-color body-stockings.

Then, of course, there’s content. A panel on “genre-bending” where all the authors say they do it because its cool, except contrarian China Mieville who worries it may not be—and Scott Westerfield gets to give a PowerPoint demonstration on his new novel, which argues persuasively that tanks would be better with legs.

Before that, there was a panel on urban fantasy where the last question posed was “which class of supernatural being do you find the sexiest?” The answer involved musing on vampires and the possible downside of no circulation.

And with that, we draw the curtain on day one.