In celebration of the biggest geek fest of the year starting today, we'll be visiting Comic Con for This Place Thursday. Up until a few years ago, I had never heard of Comic Con. It's been around for decades but it's seemed to really explode in the last decade or so. For those of you not geeky enough, Comic Con International is the largest Comic/Pop-Culture/All things geek convention in the US which is held in San Diego every year. Hundreds of thousands of nerds, geeks, and all around pop-culture fiends flock to the city to be treated to panels, parties, exhibits, and stars galore. It's a mecca for a lot of people, me being one of them.
So, in 2010 I got the crazy idea to see what the big deal was. Tickets are surprisingly affordable. It's that darn flight and hotel that get you every time! And of course since I couldn't fly across the country alone, I dragged the bestie along.
Now I must be honest, I am a certified nerd. I love The Big Bang Theory. I have a picture taken in front of a prop Stargate. The songs of Dr. Horrible are on my iPod. I'm a Whedon-ite: Go Browncoats! I wrote an entire post on the Higgs-Boson particle. I saw the Lord of the Rings trilogy on their opening days. I know about, understand and LOVE steampunk. You could say I have the geek-cred but I really didn't want to attend for that reason. Seeing that stuff was just a happy by-product! No, the bestie and I were much more interested in the USA Network panels that were taking place on Thursday. For 3 glorious hours we listened as the casts (and semi-casts: BN I'm looking at you!) of Psych, Burn Notice, and my personal favorite, White Collar cracked jokes, told stories and kept every one of the 1500 con-ers in the room rolling in the aisles. It was fabulous! We had great seats, which were to be expected, since, to actually get into this particular room we had to sit in line for 4 hours before hand.
That's the thing about Comic Con. Everyone else is just as big a die-hard as you are. You have to do the work and pay the price if you want to see the greats. You need a solid plan of attack, of which we had none. Due to this pain in the neck, we pretty much spent the majority of the day sitting on the floor twiddling our thumbs and people watching, which just happens to be the other thing about Comic Con. People watching on a regular everyday street can provide about 5 minutes', give or take, of enjoyment. Comic Con people watching should be its own sport. In no other place can you sit and watch Dr. Horrible, Darth Vader, Pokemon, the Ghostbusters, Dexter, the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp was big that summer: Creepy!) and Captain Tightpants himself (not the real one unfortunately) walk by like it's an every-day occurrence. It's magnificent! It would be even greater if I wasn't so afraid of getting caught taking their pictures but I snapped a few so I guess that's progress. I wouldn't say the 4 hours blew right by, but it definitely made them more bearable. (Of course, dreaming of the Neal Cafferey I was about to see didn't hurt either.)
After the panels (which I'm sure can be found on YouTube if you really try. They are well worth the hour!), pretty much everything good had ended for the day, so we trolled the floor for a while, then left. Of course, since the convention takes place over 4 days and most of the stars that come, stay the weekend, if you don't have weekend tickets, you can star watch all over the city. At the hotel I saw Patton Oswalt and Grant Imahara (Mythbusters). And while having dinner on the water, Deidrich Bader and his family strode by. I was kinda hoping to see Nathan Fillion or at least the other 2 dudes from Mythbusters, but not so much.
Overall, it's an experience of a lifetime if you go into that kind of thing. Even if you don't, it's shiny (token Firefly reference) and fun and a super cool experience to have. I would recommend planning your attack very carefully and getting tickets for the whole weekend. San Diego is a beautiful city but I could have roamed the halls of the SD Convention center for hours!
Below: First set are pics of the floor and exhibits. The next 3 are the panels.
