Comic-Con 2007: Come, geek out with me
July 29, 2007
I’ve been home about two and a half hours now, and have only finally finished cleaning up my bags, swag and gifts enough so there’s carpet under my feet again. That includes an exclusive copy of the 300 DVD with a mask and bag that I picked up for my coworker, two tote bags for the coworkers’ birthdays, 4 comic books for BoyDucky (2 are surprise gifts, shhh!), 2 comics for me, some free T-shirts, a Neil Gaiman Neverwear shirt, and a lovely pair of Keds from the ever-gallant BoyDucky.
The logistics and planning for this year’s Con were more unwieldy than I expected and in the furor to get to San Diego before 6 pm, I managed to forget my tennis shoes at home. Yep. The second most important thing to bring to a Con, and I walked out without even giving them a second look. Oh, and I also left the most important thing on my bed as well: my ticket! Luckily, they don’t mind printing badges using ID, though it does waste time, and later on, we happened to be in Horton Plaza in a futile attempt to catch a free screening of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, so BoyDucky and I conducted lightning shopping attacks to find me a cheap pair of comfortable shoes. We struck gold at Macy’s: white slip-on Keds, on sale, and an additional 10% discount because they were the floor models.
My goof cost $26 and a few Band-Aids, and the rest of the weekend was well under budget largely thanks to my friend’s wonderful and accommodating mother. His parents put up six of us “kids” and fed us generously, all for free. They put in stores of food for breakfasts and dinners, and tons of food for us to pack our lunches. His mother even made sure that I packed three times the usual amount to make sure that BoyDucky and his cousin, who weren’t staying with us, were provided for. The woman is a saint.
I set out to have a more experience-oriented Con this year instead of a comic-buying spree. Spending time with BoyDucky in my element rather than his sportsy element was hilarious. He’d never truly understood the hordes we’d face, or the sheer size of the convention. After walking the floor for a couple days, he finally understood why I normally spend all 4 days there.
We brought David Mack cookies and Pocky, and in return he gave us free posters and copies of his single issue comics; visited Sam Logan of Sam & Fuzzy who was nice enough to sketch his characters as ninjas for me and Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content; and were royally entertained by Neil Gaiman “burbling” as he put it when he showed up to his “Spotlight on Neil Gaiman” panel utterly unprepared to … well, anything but burble. No, we didn’t mind. He’s a funny, funny man.
I was disappointed that we couldn’t get into the 9 pm screening of Stardust, but I’ve heard rumors that people’d lined up starting at 2:30 pm, which is just crazy. Ok, I admire their fiery hot dedication to seeing the movie that day, but I simply wasn’t prepared to give up more than half my day at the convention for a free screening. I expect to Love Stardust, as I love most everything Neil Gaiman puts out, but honestly, I’m there for the whole convention. So with my disappointment I shall live.
The convention center holds thousands upon thousands of people and for the first time ever the entire convention was sold out this year. Usually, there is a variety of passes available: 4-day passes (the whole convention), 3-day passes (all but Saturday), and 1 day passes. Your best value, if room, board, and work aren’t considerations, is the 4-day pass, bought three months in advance. BoyDucky’s 3-day pass made the most sense for him since he was only going to be there two full days, and it also granted him entrance to Preview Night on Wednesday evening. Many con-goers who failed to plan ahead were not just hit with a much pricer ticket this time, some of them weren’t even able to get in for any price because even the 1-day passes were sold out.
After 5 days of Con, I’m sleep-deprived and walked out, so I went ahead and splurged on one other item: Airborne! It’s time for a nap. A three hour nap. 🙂
