I am writing this to you all from the glass-walled business center of the Embassy Suites in downtown San Diego, a place I emphatically should not be. This is not to say that I have anything against San Diego or the Embassy Suites—I don’t—it’s just that I had originally been expecting to be somewhere over Kansas around now. Apparently, JetBlue had some problems with this plan; rather than scrambling to find a connecting flight, I decided to just cool it and take tomorrow’s flight out. I’m in no rush, the hotel room was booked for the extra night anyway, and hey, San Diego’s a pretty nice place.
Anyway: Comic-Con. It happened. It was exciting! It was so exciting, in fact, that I completely forgot to take any pictures! To make up for this, John will recreate the experience for you in astounding, jaw-dropping, colorless and sketchy detail. You already got a taste of this last Thursday, and you can look forward to a little more of it on Tuesday. But to help satiate your surely-excruciating interest, I will attempt to supplement his visual extravaganza with a few humble words of my own.
Pre-Con
I got my first taste of Comic-Con this year before even arriving in San Diego, as both R. Stevens and Jeph Jacques were on my flight! For a couple of dudes whose webcomics I don’t read, I sure do manage to run into them an awful lot. (By “awful lot”, I mean “twice”—the first time being ROFLCon—and by “run into” I mean “awkwardly stare at from a healthy distance”.) If I keep this up, one of them might even start recognizing me as That Tall Creepy Guy Who Keeps Looking at Us. A man can dream, at any rate.
On Wednesday, John, John’s mom, and I went to see Hellboy 2. We agreed that it was a very pretty movie. Then we went to preview night.
Preview night is the night before the convention proper, and they open up the exhibition hall to let attendees roam wide and free. Those who forage successfully are rewarded with exclusive goods and exciting merchandise. The rest either go mad or are devoured whole by inscrutable cosplayers. Happily, I survived, and was rewarded with a set of Final Fantasy plush toys. In fact, I’ve had my eye on those damn plushies for the past two years, so I was downright ecstatic to get my grubby paws on them at long last.
We also went to a Star Trek exhibit at the San Diego Air and Space Museum, where I annoyed John persistently with innumerable dumb questions, found out and promptly forgot what class ship the Enterpirse-C was, and learned from Worf that perhaps today is a good day to die. Good times all around.
Thursday
In the interest of time and space, I’m going to describe the rest of the convention in list format. Anything I fail to mention will be excluded for one of three reasons: (1) it is not interesting, (2) it has been or will be covered by one of John’s comics, or (3) I forgot about it. But if you’d like me to elaborate on anything, you can always just ask.
- Spore: Will Wright gave an excellent and intriguing presentation, and the game looks fantastic. It was a little awkward, however, when he started talking about Nazi slave camps and the people in front of us wouldn’t stop laughing.
- How to Tell a Story: Executive summary: STORIES should have CHARACTERS that DO THINGS.
- Dumbrella: More gawking at R. Stevens, but also a bunch of other webcomic artists (and MC Frontalot, too!) and an officially sanctioned pretext within which to execute my gawking.
- Science of Science Fiction: John went to some Star Trek thing instead of this. What a nerd!
Friday
- Watchmen: I woke up early and waiting in line for 2 hours to get into this panel. The movie looks good, but the panel wasn’t worth the bother.
- Introduction to Webcomics: This was very much like a live edition of Webcomics Weekly (plus Phil Foglio). I recommend the podcast if you don’t already listen to it.
- Penny Arcade: Mike and Jerry have a great rapport; if you ever have the opportunity to see them in person, seize it!
- MST3K 20th Anniversary Reunion: Gah! We missed this! GAH! Missing this panel was by far the biggest disappointment of the convention. Everyone from the show was there. Everyone! Now, if they had hosted this event in a bigger room, maybe we could have gotten in. Instead, the Comic-Con organizers decided to use the largest available space to screen Avatar: The Last Airbender.
- Worst Cartoons Ever: I’ve gone to this show every year for the past three years. I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s some kind of deep-seated self-hate complex? Actually, it’s probably because of Sam Bassett: Hound for Hire, who happens to have a machine gun in his hat.
- Spike and Mike: The Gauntlet: This year’s batch of animation was weaker than in previous years. But it gives me an opportunity to recommend Lone Sausage’s productions, a perennial favorite of the show.
Saturday
- Quick Draw!: Think Whose Line Is It Anyway? meets illustration. Although it’s an annual Comic-Con event, this was the first time John and I went. Fantastic stuff. If you ever attend Comic-Con in the future, definitely go see it. (Sergio Aragonés in particular deserves special mention for his exceptional improvisational talent.)
- Dollhouse: John and I somehow managed to squeak into this one. Joss Whedon is a funny little man and I envy him enormously.
- Mythbusters: To avoid missing the Mythbusters and reliving yesterday’s MST3K disappointment, we camped out in room 6B starting two panels prior. It was necessary. Adam and Jamie were greeted like rock stars, and the energy in the room was as explosive as the show.
- RiffTrax Live: One of the biggest and best surprises of the trip—at the Balboa Theater, we got to see Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy do a live riff on Plan 9 from Outer Space! It definitely helped ease our disappointment over missing the MST3K panel the night before.
Sunday
- Woke Up Late: I slept in until I was woke up with a call from my brother telling me my flight was canceled. Nice!
- Exhibition Hall: My first purchases since preview night: Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes and A Contract with God by Will Eisner.
- Fraggle Rock: I don’t really watch the show, but John does, and I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to see Red Fraggle live, now could I?
And that’s about it. The hospitality of Embassy Suites has enabled me to spend the rest of my Sunday afternoon as I invariably do, wherever in the world I so happen to be: lying somewhere, stuffing my face and watching movies on TV. Beyond grabbing a grilled chicken sandwich at the second-sketchiest Wendy’s in the world and writing this post—this very one that you are reading right now—not much else has happened.
So yeah! That was Comic-Con. Goooooooooooooooooooood times.
AMBASSADOR
WHAT
Post long. Long to read. Was R. Stevens a dick? Sounds like fun. Why don’t you have an avatar?
It was long. Imagine how much longer it would have been if I hadn’t bullet-pointed it! A LOT longer, that’s how much! I didn’t interact enough (or at all, really) with R. Stevens to know if he was a dick or not.
And I don’t have an avatar because… well, because I don’t know. Because I’m lame? That’s probably why. I’ll get one eventually.
…CLASS STARSHIP