Comic-Con 2008

When I was a little middle school boy, obsessed with Wolverine, Jim Lee, and all things Marvel, one of my dreams was to attend Comic-Con in San Diego. I'd read about it in Wizard magazine -- fellow nerds dressed up as their favorite superheroes/villains, rows and rows of cool merchandise, and the rare opportunity to shake your favorite artist or writer's hand and get an autograph to boot.

Well, now I'm old. I don't read comic books anymore. I no longer aspire to be a comic book artist. While I can appreciate the effort and detail put into actually making a costume, I find that the people who wear them are a little disturbing. And merchandise? What can't I find on ebay, google, or scour? Ah, but San Diego is so close and my roommate was kind of enough to get me a shiny industry pass.

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We planned on leaving Los Angeles between 7:00 am - 7:30 am and arriving in San Diego sometime around 9:00. Of course we got a late start and ended up in the city around 10:00 am.

The first panel that we wanted to check out was for the upcoming Watchmen movie. Panels are like the meat of the convention -- forums where the creative element hold court, tell stories, and answer questions from fans. And (most importantly) show preview footage of upcoming releases and hand out free swag.

The Watchmen panel started at 11:55 am in the biggest hall the San Diego Convention Center had to offer. Lining up only an hour or so before wasn't going to cut it:

This line snaked up and down, to and fro, all the live long day.

Lesson learned: getting into any panels that were worth checking out would require at least two hours of wait time. Probably more like three or four.

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If you're not checking out panels, you're walking the convention floor. At your own risk. Dodging giant fake swords and guns, whiffs of B.O., baby strollers, and assholes on Segways we perused all the merchandise that the convention had to offer. And perusing is about all we did. Between the three of us, I think we spent about $30 on merchandise. I was very tempted to drop $25 on a glow-in-the-dark Bender piggy bank.

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Costumes make up a major portion of the Con -- the Heath Ledger Joker was predictably popular. An Imperial militia could be made up from all the Stormtroopers, Darth Vaders, and Boba Fetts that were present.

Some character I'm not familiar with (Maverick?) and a chubby Iron Man

I thought there'd be more babes, of both the booth and costumed variety. Sadly, babes were few and far between. But here's a gaggle of Slave Princess Leias:

(I stole this image from someone else's Flickr)

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In conclusion:

-Panels are the way to go (we ended up attending a few, which were fun and informative), but be prepared to wait in line for up to five hours to get into the GOOD stuff. I had planned on attending panels for Futurama, Watchmen, Terminator 4, Kevin Smith, Judd Apatow, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Joss Whedon, World of Warcraft, and The Office. We ended up getting into only one of those.

-Tons and tons of cool merchandise to waste your money on. However, I actually exhibited some self-control and only ended up spending $5 on a Star Wars magnet. Also, note to vendors -- official Comic-Con t-shirts were sold out on the second day. PRINT MORE SHIRTS.

-Roommate's brother had a great suggestion -- in addition to all the keychains, posters, and bags they hand out, maybe Axe or some other deodorant company should hand out free samples. Breathmints would be good too.