yay, Comic-con!
I had a truly fabulous time at Comic-con. The crowds were enormous, but overall they annoyed me less than expected. I made it in to almost all of the panels I really wanted to see, though this was in part due to deliberately picking only a few to focus on. Generally spent a couple decent but not overly-long chunks of time in the exhibit hall each day, usually quite spread out, which probably contributed to facing the crowds with relative equanimity. Gave blood, which turned out to be quite pleasant. All three of the panels I would have liked to see today were at the same time, the morning slot, so instead I've opted to stay home and sleep and do TA-work and pack. But I would go again in a heartbeat. Assuming I'm in the right country.
Thursday was perhaps the most frustrating day because I didn't make it downtown until about 2 pm, which meant missing the Paramount panel that included Stardust and Beowulf and Indiana Jones and Iron Man stuff, including the presence of Neil Gaiman, Roger Avery, and JJ Abrams, among others. But I probably wasn't making it into the panel anyway, so it was probably for the best. And the TA stuff I had to do was certainly useful to have gotten done. I ended up deciding that it was a good time to go give blood. The San Diego Blood Bank people all seemed thrilled to be there -- several of them told me that they look forward to working Comic-con each year. They were very nice, competent, and efficient. And the freebies given out at the end were quite nice -- I don't think I ever would have purchased a Spike action figure (from Buffy), but I'm certainly happy to have one. Afterwards I met up with yandros and lemurtanis on the show floor and wandered around for awhile before we realized that three people was probably a bit too many to successfully navigate, so we split up again and agreed to meet up after the late-afternoon panel I wanted to attend before heading over to stand in line for the Stardust screening. The panel (DC Comics: Group Therapy, all about the team comics) was fun, and gave me a nice list of comics to be on the lookout for. Afterwards I met up with naohai, who walked with me to Horton Plaza so I could check in with yandros and lemurtanis. It was good to see him, though I feel bad, because we didn't end up having dinner in the end, as yandros and lemurtanis and sirrogue and yoav_y were at the head of the seat-filler line and seemed hopeful. In the end, we didn't get into Stardust, probably at least partially because of some annoying, obnoxious, and stupidly entitled behavior on the part of some of the people behind us in line. Ah well.
Friday involved hitching a ride in from sirrogue and jainamsolo at around 8 am, as sirrogue was scheduled to work. I stopped for breakfast on the way at a place near the convention center that looked like it had really good gelato; perhaps at some point I will go back and try it. The ham, egg, and cheese croissant I had was quite tasty. Then I wandered into the hall for a bit and picked up some of the early freebies, including a ton of manga samplers. Bought the last Strangers in Paradise pocket book so I could speed-read through it before the Terry Moore panel. Said hi to marinarusalka near the Lego booth, though we didn't get to chat long because I had to run off to the panel. Was very near the front of the line for Terry Moore, so I ended up with an excellent seat -- second row, right on the middle aisle. It's a good thing I flipped through to the end of SiP while waiting in line, because he spent quite a while talking about writing the last issue. He also talked a lot about upcoming projects, mostly the two year-long runs he's going to be doing for Marvel -- Spider-man Loves Mary Jane and Runaways. And he kept complaining that DC keeps refusing to give him Supergirl. *grin* Hopefully someday. Anyway, a really great little panel. And now I need to find me some Runaways. Frustratingly, everyone in the exhibit hall seemed sold out of the first volume.
I then thought about taking marinarusalka up on her offer of hooking me into the Neil Gaiman panel line, but I decided that I'd seen Neil enough times that someone else would probably be more thrilled to see him. So instead I wander the exhibit hall some more, acquiring a couple really cute panda t-shirts and eating pretzel dogs for lunch. Then I went out for drinks with a couple of women I'd met through fandom, who turned out to be exactly as awesome and nice as they seemed. Missed the Alison Bechdel panel because we were having so much fun talking. Was seduced by Mile High Comics and their 10% off everything sign and their numerous, extremely nice clerks. Was thankfully interrupted by a phone call from yandros, so I only bought 5 items (picked out Fables 1 & 2 and Y: The Last Man v. 1, then added Fray and Serenity at the register because they were 20% off and advertising works on me). Then yandros, yoav_y and I went over the Hall H to stand in line for Kevin Smith. Being in line together was actually quite fun, and yoav_y brought bagels, which was very sweet of him. And I think we amused the guy in front of us. Found okay seats for Kevin Smith (far away, but with a good view of one of the screens), who was very much himself -- entertaining and crass and down-to-earth. He showed the really very entertaining pilot for a show called Reaper that he directed and then brought out some of the people involved with it to take questions. It was... rather awkward, as it had been advertised as a Kevin Smith panel, so most of the questions were for him and not for the panel. But all in all, pretty entertaining. I think I startled yoav_y by whooping rather loudly when someone asked about a special edition Chasing Amy dvd. The three of us went to the Cheesecake Factory afterwards before heading home to collapse.
Saturday morning, lemurtanis was a superstar, getting us up early and taking the seekrit stealth route to the convention center such that we got parking in the nearest lot a bit before 9 am. We got in line for Ballroom 20 right away in anticipation of the Heroes panel at 12:45 pm, after a bit of futile fast-walking flurry trying to find the end of the line. But yandros ran and bought muffins, which helped for regaining equilibrium. And we ended up with decent enough seats -- near the edge, so with okay mobility, and with a fine view of one of the screens and not so far away that it was impossible to see the actual stage. The Bionic Woman pilot had its clunky moments, but overall wasn't bad. And the panel afterwards (couple producers, the show owner, the two main actresses) were great. The producers and show owners were especially smart and articulate and engaging. *grin* And Katee Sackhoff is hot. The TV Guide Hot List panel after it was sort of scattered, in part because of the weirdly incompetent and unctuous moderator, but had some fun moments, mostly courtesy of Tim Kring and Masi Oka. The 4400 people seemed smart enough, and the Bionic Women people were fine. Skeet Ulrich (from Jericho) was scruffily hot and seemed like he was forcibly reminding himself to play nice and not be a smartass, which was rather fun to watch. And the Kyle XY star was a complete airhead, but he was totally sweet about the silly questions he got from the audience -- the show seems to be quite popular with kids, so despite the fact that most of the crowd hadn't ever heard of it, he got a strangely high percentage of the audience questions.
Then, Heroes! Unsurprisingly, they were totally charming. It went wonderfully, I think, given how incredibly unwieldly it was having that many people on stage: Jeph Loeb moderating (rather obnoxiously, but with personality), Tim Kring (show owner and creative center), Tim Sale (art), and a ton of actors: Jack Coleman (HRG/Mr. Noah Bennet), Zachary Quinto (Sylar), Ali Larter (Niki/Jessica), Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli), Hayden Panettiere (Claire), Masi Oka (Hiro), Adrian Pasdar (Nathan Petrelli), Greg Grunberg (Matt Parkman), Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder), Dania Ramirez (Maya, starting second season), Noah Gray-Cabey (Micah), Jason Kyson Lee (Ando). [I think I've managed to list these in the order they were seated onstage, from left to right if facing the stage, with Jeph Loeb at the podium on the left, and the two Tims in the middle between Hayden and Masi.] Interesting because there was a not-inconsiderable amount of whispered side-conversation -- I swear Greg and Adrian spent half the panel with their heads together talking about stuff.
They showed some clips from season two shooting and handed out DVD boxes in anticipation of the season one box set. And they brought out Kevin Smith, who will be directing one of the Heroes: Origins episodes. Ali Larter hugged him when he came out onstage (perhaps the only thing she did onstage that seemed sincere and genuine -- all her answers to questions sounded weirdly fake), and he blushed a lot and looked adorably pleased by all the applause and cheering that accompanied his appearance. And he tried to keep his language clean. It was cute. I wish I had taken notes during the panel because there were so many great moments and interactions; they clearly had amazing rapport with each other, in general. Greg Grunberg is hilarious, Adrian Pasdar amusing and ridiculously hot (no beard! thank god!), Sendhil almost criminally pretty, Jack Coleman and Zachary Quinto both disturbingly attractive, Masi adorable and fun, Jason Kyson Lee sincerely nice, Noah Gray-Cabey articulate and sweet, Dania Ramirez nice if a bit out of her depth, and Hayden, well, also out of her depth. Someone asked if there were ever going to be strong, positive women on the show who weren't cheerleaders or strippers. I couldn't stop myself from letting out a cheer of support for the question, because it relates so closely to one of my biggest gripes about the show, namely the way all the women on the show are stuck with the good-girl/bad-girl dichotomy. They problematized it some by the end, but it still irritates me. Anyway, I'm really glad someone asked the question. The answer was stuff about defying expectations, and they noted that the new character Maya wasn't either of those. So we'll see, I guess. Anyway, it completely and utterly rocked.
I should have anticipated the end of the panel a bit more, gotten up and moved toward the door earlier, because it took forever to get out of the room. People are so fucking slow sometimes. But I eventually made it out and rushed to stand in line for Supernatural. There were a ton of people in line, but as I had hoped, plenty of Family Guy panel viewers had no interest in Supernatural (not counting the people who were only watching Family Guy in the hopes of getting a better seat for Supernatural, of course), so I got in despite the long line. I was pretty far back, but on an aisle and with a relatively unobstructed view of the stage, so it wasn't too bad. They were showing a making-of the S2 finale mini-doc when I entered, and later showed a pretty darn good clip vid of S2. Panelists, from right to left: Sera Gamble (one of the main writers, seemed nice and enthusiastic and quite chuffed to be sitting next to Jensen), Jensen Ackles (incredibly hot, lovely deep voice, fairly relaxed, amusing and excellent answers), Eric Kripke (show owner and creative force, very articulate, answered many of the questions), and Ben Edlund (one of the main directors, kind of fun and wacky). They were excellent, and the questions from the crowd were really quite unidiotic. No Jared Padalecki, sadly. I didn't catch the explanation, but according to marinarusalka's rather more detailed account (note that she does talk some about the Season 3 spoilers they discussed), he missed his flight due to being up until 6 am filming. Anyway, I enjoyed the panel a lot, and I'm really glad I made it in. It would have been fun to be closer, but getting to see the Heroes panel was worth the sacrifice.
Afterwards I went back down to the floor and wandered around a bit. Managed to snag a Vote Petrelli button, which I had been Went back to Mile High Comics and got the second Y: The Last Man trade and The Sandman Papers collection of essays. Picked up the first volume of the Anita Blake graphic novels, too, just to see what it's like. Couldn't seem to resist buying a couple more t-shirts, Batman and The Flash, and bought a handful of cheap but pretty dice on the way out. Dealer Rooms are very dangerous places for me. Failed to meet up with marinarusalka, because I'd accidentally left my cell phone at home. :( Went to Outback Steakhouse with yandros, lemurtanis, and yoav_y, where we talked and laughed a lot. yandros and lemurtanis had stayed in Ballroom 20 to see the Battlestar Galactica panel, and lemurtanis stayed for Futurama and Joss Whedon as well. And yoav_y caught a lot of Hall H, I believe, so he reported on The Simpsons and Pixar and Marvel Studios. We discussed seeing Hairspray, but decided to go tonight instead.
Which means I should really stop blathering on and start doing the TA-work and such for tomorrow. I am mildly regretting not going to the CBLDF Live Art Jam, DC Big Guns, or Super (Natural) Women panels that were this morning, but as they were all at the same time it just didn't seem worth the schlep into downtown. And it felt insanely good to sleep in this morning. But I gotta say, Comic-con really was fantastic. A Zen attitude helped a lot, as did a combination of good planning and build-in downtime. If I'm in the country next year, I will probably try to go again. At the very least, I should go to more conventions in general. I'd really been missing them, as it turns out.
Thursday was perhaps the most frustrating day because I didn't make it downtown until about 2 pm, which meant missing the Paramount panel that included Stardust and Beowulf and Indiana Jones and Iron Man stuff, including the presence of Neil Gaiman, Roger Avery, and JJ Abrams, among others. But I probably wasn't making it into the panel anyway, so it was probably for the best. And the TA stuff I had to do was certainly useful to have gotten done. I ended up deciding that it was a good time to go give blood. The San Diego Blood Bank people all seemed thrilled to be there -- several of them told me that they look forward to working Comic-con each year. They were very nice, competent, and efficient. And the freebies given out at the end were quite nice -- I don't think I ever would have purchased a Spike action figure (from Buffy), but I'm certainly happy to have one. Afterwards I met up with yandros and lemurtanis on the show floor and wandered around for awhile before we realized that three people was probably a bit too many to successfully navigate, so we split up again and agreed to meet up after the late-afternoon panel I wanted to attend before heading over to stand in line for the Stardust screening. The panel (DC Comics: Group Therapy, all about the team comics) was fun, and gave me a nice list of comics to be on the lookout for. Afterwards I met up with naohai, who walked with me to Horton Plaza so I could check in with yandros and lemurtanis. It was good to see him, though I feel bad, because we didn't end up having dinner in the end, as yandros and lemurtanis and sirrogue and yoav_y were at the head of the seat-filler line and seemed hopeful. In the end, we didn't get into Stardust, probably at least partially because of some annoying, obnoxious, and stupidly entitled behavior on the part of some of the people behind us in line. Ah well.
Friday involved hitching a ride in from sirrogue and jainamsolo at around 8 am, as sirrogue was scheduled to work. I stopped for breakfast on the way at a place near the convention center that looked like it had really good gelato; perhaps at some point I will go back and try it. The ham, egg, and cheese croissant I had was quite tasty. Then I wandered into the hall for a bit and picked up some of the early freebies, including a ton of manga samplers. Bought the last Strangers in Paradise pocket book so I could speed-read through it before the Terry Moore panel. Said hi to marinarusalka near the Lego booth, though we didn't get to chat long because I had to run off to the panel. Was very near the front of the line for Terry Moore, so I ended up with an excellent seat -- second row, right on the middle aisle. It's a good thing I flipped through to the end of SiP while waiting in line, because he spent quite a while talking about writing the last issue. He also talked a lot about upcoming projects, mostly the two year-long runs he's going to be doing for Marvel -- Spider-man Loves Mary Jane and Runaways. And he kept complaining that DC keeps refusing to give him Supergirl. *grin* Hopefully someday. Anyway, a really great little panel. And now I need to find me some Runaways. Frustratingly, everyone in the exhibit hall seemed sold out of the first volume.
I then thought about taking marinarusalka up on her offer of hooking me into the Neil Gaiman panel line, but I decided that I'd seen Neil enough times that someone else would probably be more thrilled to see him. So instead I wander the exhibit hall some more, acquiring a couple really cute panda t-shirts and eating pretzel dogs for lunch. Then I went out for drinks with a couple of women I'd met through fandom, who turned out to be exactly as awesome and nice as they seemed. Missed the Alison Bechdel panel because we were having so much fun talking. Was seduced by Mile High Comics and their 10% off everything sign and their numerous, extremely nice clerks. Was thankfully interrupted by a phone call from yandros, so I only bought 5 items (picked out Fables 1 & 2 and Y: The Last Man v. 1, then added Fray and Serenity at the register because they were 20% off and advertising works on me). Then yandros, yoav_y and I went over the Hall H to stand in line for Kevin Smith. Being in line together was actually quite fun, and yoav_y brought bagels, which was very sweet of him. And I think we amused the guy in front of us. Found okay seats for Kevin Smith (far away, but with a good view of one of the screens), who was very much himself -- entertaining and crass and down-to-earth. He showed the really very entertaining pilot for a show called Reaper that he directed and then brought out some of the people involved with it to take questions. It was... rather awkward, as it had been advertised as a Kevin Smith panel, so most of the questions were for him and not for the panel. But all in all, pretty entertaining. I think I startled yoav_y by whooping rather loudly when someone asked about a special edition Chasing Amy dvd. The three of us went to the Cheesecake Factory afterwards before heading home to collapse.
Saturday morning, lemurtanis was a superstar, getting us up early and taking the seekrit stealth route to the convention center such that we got parking in the nearest lot a bit before 9 am. We got in line for Ballroom 20 right away in anticipation of the Heroes panel at 12:45 pm, after a bit of futile fast-walking flurry trying to find the end of the line. But yandros ran and bought muffins, which helped for regaining equilibrium. And we ended up with decent enough seats -- near the edge, so with okay mobility, and with a fine view of one of the screens and not so far away that it was impossible to see the actual stage. The Bionic Woman pilot had its clunky moments, but overall wasn't bad. And the panel afterwards (couple producers, the show owner, the two main actresses) were great. The producers and show owners were especially smart and articulate and engaging. *grin* And Katee Sackhoff is hot. The TV Guide Hot List panel after it was sort of scattered, in part because of the weirdly incompetent and unctuous moderator, but had some fun moments, mostly courtesy of Tim Kring and Masi Oka. The 4400 people seemed smart enough, and the Bionic Women people were fine. Skeet Ulrich (from Jericho) was scruffily hot and seemed like he was forcibly reminding himself to play nice and not be a smartass, which was rather fun to watch. And the Kyle XY star was a complete airhead, but he was totally sweet about the silly questions he got from the audience -- the show seems to be quite popular with kids, so despite the fact that most of the crowd hadn't ever heard of it, he got a strangely high percentage of the audience questions.
Then, Heroes! Unsurprisingly, they were totally charming. It went wonderfully, I think, given how incredibly unwieldly it was having that many people on stage: Jeph Loeb moderating (rather obnoxiously, but with personality), Tim Kring (show owner and creative center), Tim Sale (art), and a ton of actors: Jack Coleman (HRG/Mr. Noah Bennet), Zachary Quinto (Sylar), Ali Larter (Niki/Jessica), Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli), Hayden Panettiere (Claire), Masi Oka (Hiro), Adrian Pasdar (Nathan Petrelli), Greg Grunberg (Matt Parkman), Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder), Dania Ramirez (Maya, starting second season), Noah Gray-Cabey (Micah), Jason Kyson Lee (Ando). [I think I've managed to list these in the order they were seated onstage, from left to right if facing the stage, with Jeph Loeb at the podium on the left, and the two Tims in the middle between Hayden and Masi.] Interesting because there was a not-inconsiderable amount of whispered side-conversation -- I swear Greg and Adrian spent half the panel with their heads together talking about stuff.
They showed some clips from season two shooting and handed out DVD boxes in anticipation of the season one box set. And they brought out Kevin Smith, who will be directing one of the Heroes: Origins episodes. Ali Larter hugged him when he came out onstage (perhaps the only thing she did onstage that seemed sincere and genuine -- all her answers to questions sounded weirdly fake), and he blushed a lot and looked adorably pleased by all the applause and cheering that accompanied his appearance. And he tried to keep his language clean. It was cute. I wish I had taken notes during the panel because there were so many great moments and interactions; they clearly had amazing rapport with each other, in general. Greg Grunberg is hilarious, Adrian Pasdar amusing and ridiculously hot (no beard! thank god!), Sendhil almost criminally pretty, Jack Coleman and Zachary Quinto both disturbingly attractive, Masi adorable and fun, Jason Kyson Lee sincerely nice, Noah Gray-Cabey articulate and sweet, Dania Ramirez nice if a bit out of her depth, and Hayden, well, also out of her depth. Someone asked if there were ever going to be strong, positive women on the show who weren't cheerleaders or strippers. I couldn't stop myself from letting out a cheer of support for the question, because it relates so closely to one of my biggest gripes about the show, namely the way all the women on the show are stuck with the good-girl/bad-girl dichotomy. They problematized it some by the end, but it still irritates me. Anyway, I'm really glad someone asked the question. The answer was stuff about defying expectations, and they noted that the new character Maya wasn't either of those. So we'll see, I guess. Anyway, it completely and utterly rocked.
I should have anticipated the end of the panel a bit more, gotten up and moved toward the door earlier, because it took forever to get out of the room. People are so fucking slow sometimes. But I eventually made it out and rushed to stand in line for Supernatural. There were a ton of people in line, but as I had hoped, plenty of Family Guy panel viewers had no interest in Supernatural (not counting the people who were only watching Family Guy in the hopes of getting a better seat for Supernatural, of course), so I got in despite the long line. I was pretty far back, but on an aisle and with a relatively unobstructed view of the stage, so it wasn't too bad. They were showing a making-of the S2 finale mini-doc when I entered, and later showed a pretty darn good clip vid of S2. Panelists, from right to left: Sera Gamble (one of the main writers, seemed nice and enthusiastic and quite chuffed to be sitting next to Jensen), Jensen Ackles (incredibly hot, lovely deep voice, fairly relaxed, amusing and excellent answers), Eric Kripke (show owner and creative force, very articulate, answered many of the questions), and Ben Edlund (one of the main directors, kind of fun and wacky). They were excellent, and the questions from the crowd were really quite unidiotic. No Jared Padalecki, sadly. I didn't catch the explanation, but according to marinarusalka's rather more detailed account (note that she does talk some about the Season 3 spoilers they discussed), he missed his flight due to being up until 6 am filming. Anyway, I enjoyed the panel a lot, and I'm really glad I made it in. It would have been fun to be closer, but getting to see the Heroes panel was worth the sacrifice.
Afterwards I went back down to the floor and wandered around a bit. Managed to snag a Vote Petrelli button, which I had been Went back to Mile High Comics and got the second Y: The Last Man trade and The Sandman Papers collection of essays. Picked up the first volume of the Anita Blake graphic novels, too, just to see what it's like. Couldn't seem to resist buying a couple more t-shirts, Batman and The Flash, and bought a handful of cheap but pretty dice on the way out. Dealer Rooms are very dangerous places for me. Failed to meet up with marinarusalka, because I'd accidentally left my cell phone at home. :( Went to Outback Steakhouse with yandros, lemurtanis, and yoav_y, where we talked and laughed a lot. yandros and lemurtanis had stayed in Ballroom 20 to see the Battlestar Galactica panel, and lemurtanis stayed for Futurama and Joss Whedon as well. And yoav_y caught a lot of Hall H, I believe, so he reported on The Simpsons and Pixar and Marvel Studios. We discussed seeing Hairspray, but decided to go tonight instead.
Which means I should really stop blathering on and start doing the TA-work and such for tomorrow. I am mildly regretting not going to the CBLDF Live Art Jam, DC Big Guns, or Super (Natural) Women panels that were this morning, but as they were all at the same time it just didn't seem worth the schlep into downtown. And it felt insanely good to sleep in this morning. But I gotta say, Comic-con really was fantastic. A Zen attitude helped a lot, as did a combination of good planning and build-in downtime. If I'm in the country next year, I will probably try to go again. At the very least, I should go to more conventions in general. I'd really been missing them, as it turns out.