Comic Con Recap... better late than never, right?
The God of Procrastination strikes again! I finally got my Comic Con pics posted on Facebook, so I figured it was time to get around to doing the actual events recap here. Only two weeks late, so I guess it could be worse! So, without further ado (or excuses?) here's the recap of who I saw, what I did, and what I walked away with!
Wednesday: Preview Night!
Preview Night started off well, since the line to get our badges moved super quickly and didn't lag. I'm really liking the fact that this year the Con organizers did off-site badge pickup for people staying at hotels in Mission Valley, it seemed to really cut down on the wait time to pick up a badge. Another cool thing they did this year, which I really liked, was to give all attendees a great big WB bag at registration and badge pickup, instead of making everyone who wants one mob the booth down on the floor or wait in another stupid long line.
After badge pickup, we got to wait in the forever long line to actually get into the exhibit hall; no matter when you get your badge, they won't let you into the hall until 6:00pm. So that line was pretty long, as you can see in the pic below, behind Ninja Boyfriend:
While in line we started talking to a very nice man and woman from Sweden, Tomas and Christina, who had come to the con for the very first time this year. Christina is a journalist, and Tomas does podcasts, so they were covering the con for their respective employers. I like talking to people who are experiencing their first con- they always have so many questions and it's sort of fun to give advice, or to talk about cool stuff from past cons that you saw or did with newbies. They were both really excited about all the movie previews in Hall H, and the TV show panels in Room 20, and had questions about waiting in lines and stuff like that.
Finally, at 6:00 the doors opened and the flood poured in! We made a beeline for publisher's row (although calling it that is sort of silly, since half the book publishers weren't even on that row this year, but the name has just sort of stuck); that is my most frequent haunt during the con, since you can buy books there (from the Mysterious Galaxy booth) and you can get some for free (from the Penguin and Hachette booths on that same aisle). Ninja Boyfriend and I said hi to Anne Sowards, who is awesome- she is a senior editor at Penguin, and more specifically, is Jim Butcher's editor!!- we see her every year, and one of the things I really like about her is how friendly she is, and how even if she really doesn't remember us from year to year, since she sees so many people at the cons and everything, she still treats us like she does remember us. Ninja Boyfriend had a question for her- does Bob the Skull read Jim's wife Shannon's romance novels? and Anne said that yes, she thinks he does. And as we were leaving that booth, Seanan McGuire walks in, and I had to have a fangirl moment, cause she is one of my new favorite authors of this last year- her October Daye urban fantasy series is really good, and I LOVED her zombiepocalypse novel Feed that she wrote under the pseudonym Mira Grant. So she let me give her a hug and tell her how awesome she is.
I also grabbed a couple of the little promo goodies they had for Rachel Caine's Morganville Vampires series, since she was also going to be at the Con (and on the same panel as Richelle Mead!)- Morganville Resident ID cards!
Then I went over to Mysterious Galaxy's booth, and had to pick up a molnija mark t-shirt. They had a limited amount of them, and I knew I really wanted one to wear to Richelle Mead's signing later in the week. I'm really glad I got it on Weds, since I guess they sold out of them super quick after all. Pic below:
Then, I went off on a whirlwind tour of the exhibit hall, making some purchases from the IDW booth- Doctor Who 10th Doctor graphic novels, and then also a True Blood comic, that I got signed by some of the creative people who made it!
Then I wandered by some of the other publisher's booths that weren't on the main row, and it seems like everyone was giving out tote bags this year! Not that I'm complaining, since they are useful and practical. I got a sort of horror-psychedelic Alice in Wonderland one, and also over successive days, I ended up getting three different Vlad Tod ones in different colors from the Penguin Young Readers booth in the Star Wars pavilion:
Then, it was off to the Emily the Strange booth, and then to the Tokidoki booth! From the Emily booth, I got a devil-horns hoodie, and my mom (who has lost a TON of weight in the last couple years) was finally able to buy an Emily hoodie too! She's been waiting years to get one, so it was sort of a cool moment for her.
From Tokidoki, I got one of the Marvel x Tokidoki collaboration hoodies, and also a new purse and makeup clutch. It just seemed fitting to get the Marvel hoodie since I was at the comic con, after all!
At that point, it was pretty much 9:00, which is when the exhibit hall closes on Preview night, so it was time to go home, figure out the schedule and game plan for tomorrow, and sleep.
Up next: Comic Con recap, part 2! In which we go to panels, meet authors, have some nerdy moments, and take a ride into the middle of a Klingon takeover!
Wednesday: Preview Night!
Preview Night started off well, since the line to get our badges moved super quickly and didn't lag. I'm really liking the fact that this year the Con organizers did off-site badge pickup for people staying at hotels in Mission Valley, it seemed to really cut down on the wait time to pick up a badge. Another cool thing they did this year, which I really liked, was to give all attendees a great big WB bag at registration and badge pickup, instead of making everyone who wants one mob the booth down on the floor or wait in another stupid long line.
After badge pickup, we got to wait in the forever long line to actually get into the exhibit hall; no matter when you get your badge, they won't let you into the hall until 6:00pm. So that line was pretty long, as you can see in the pic below, behind Ninja Boyfriend:
While in line we started talking to a very nice man and woman from Sweden, Tomas and Christina, who had come to the con for the very first time this year. Christina is a journalist, and Tomas does podcasts, so they were covering the con for their respective employers. I like talking to people who are experiencing their first con- they always have so many questions and it's sort of fun to give advice, or to talk about cool stuff from past cons that you saw or did with newbies. They were both really excited about all the movie previews in Hall H, and the TV show panels in Room 20, and had questions about waiting in lines and stuff like that.
Finally, at 6:00 the doors opened and the flood poured in! We made a beeline for publisher's row (although calling it that is sort of silly, since half the book publishers weren't even on that row this year, but the name has just sort of stuck); that is my most frequent haunt during the con, since you can buy books there (from the Mysterious Galaxy booth) and you can get some for free (from the Penguin and Hachette booths on that same aisle). Ninja Boyfriend and I said hi to Anne Sowards, who is awesome- she is a senior editor at Penguin, and more specifically, is Jim Butcher's editor!!- we see her every year, and one of the things I really like about her is how friendly she is, and how even if she really doesn't remember us from year to year, since she sees so many people at the cons and everything, she still treats us like she does remember us. Ninja Boyfriend had a question for her- does Bob the Skull read Jim's wife Shannon's romance novels? and Anne said that yes, she thinks he does. And as we were leaving that booth, Seanan McGuire walks in, and I had to have a fangirl moment, cause she is one of my new favorite authors of this last year- her October Daye urban fantasy series is really good, and I LOVED her zombiepocalypse novel Feed that she wrote under the pseudonym Mira Grant. So she let me give her a hug and tell her how awesome she is.
I also grabbed a couple of the little promo goodies they had for Rachel Caine's Morganville Vampires series, since she was also going to be at the Con (and on the same panel as Richelle Mead!)- Morganville Resident ID cards!
Then I went over to Mysterious Galaxy's booth, and had to pick up a molnija mark t-shirt. They had a limited amount of them, and I knew I really wanted one to wear to Richelle Mead's signing later in the week. I'm really glad I got it on Weds, since I guess they sold out of them super quick after all. Pic below:
Then, I went off on a whirlwind tour of the exhibit hall, making some purchases from the IDW booth- Doctor Who 10th Doctor graphic novels, and then also a True Blood comic, that I got signed by some of the creative people who made it!
Then I wandered by some of the other publisher's booths that weren't on the main row, and it seems like everyone was giving out tote bags this year! Not that I'm complaining, since they are useful and practical. I got a sort of horror-psychedelic Alice in Wonderland one, and also over successive days, I ended up getting three different Vlad Tod ones in different colors from the Penguin Young Readers booth in the Star Wars pavilion:
Then, it was off to the Emily the Strange booth, and then to the Tokidoki booth! From the Emily booth, I got a devil-horns hoodie, and my mom (who has lost a TON of weight in the last couple years) was finally able to buy an Emily hoodie too! She's been waiting years to get one, so it was sort of a cool moment for her.
From Tokidoki, I got one of the Marvel x Tokidoki collaboration hoodies, and also a new purse and makeup clutch. It just seemed fitting to get the Marvel hoodie since I was at the comic con, after all!
At that point, it was pretty much 9:00, which is when the exhibit hall closes on Preview night, so it was time to go home, figure out the schedule and game plan for tomorrow, and sleep.
Up next: Comic Con recap, part 2! In which we go to panels, meet authors, have some nerdy moments, and take a ride into the middle of a Klingon takeover!