The Comic-Con report

My one day at Comic-Con for this year had ups and downs, but overall I enjoyed it. I'm thinking for next year I am going to want to schedule vacation for the week it will be running in and go more than one day. Discussion of why later in this post.

I had preregistered via the Comic-Con web site. Thanks to doing so, I was pleased to find I could sail right past the extremely long line that was waiting to register by displaying my printed confirmation to Convention Center personnel and proceed directly to the check-in area for preregistered folks. Yay for preregistring!

I decided first thing to do was go to the exhibit halls and wander the aisles for a while. That did not last real long. The numbers of people in the those areas of the Center were just incredible. An example of the problems thus created: All vendors who were selling or displaying anything Star Wars related had been grouped together in one area that was labeled the "Star Wars Pavilion." While I was trying to walk around this area, I found myself in the middle of one spot where foot traffic was so dense I was unable to move in any direction for at least 30 seconds. After that I had had quite enough of the exhibit halls!

So, that is one of the factors in my thinking I'll want to do more than one day of Comic-Con next year; my understanding is that Saturday is always by far the most crowded of the four days the con runs every year. So, I am assuming the exhibit halls will be more reasonable to get through on the Thursday and Friday next year.

This year I wanted to experience a few of the seminars and panel discussions that are held in the many meeting rooms that are on second floor of the Convention Center, above the exhibit halls. So:

• I am a casual fan of the "Teen Titans" animated series. One of the larger meeting rooms had a session for the writers of the series and for the voice actors, in separate panels, one after the other. The room was packed with fans of the series, and sitting in on that session was very enjoyable.
• I visited a room that was showing short animations by independent filmmakers.
• I went to a panel discussion for web comic artists who are associated with the web site Keenspot. I follow a fairly large number of web comics, and several of them are part of Keenspot. So, I was curious to see and hear some of these artists, and to also hear the promised news about corporate developments at Keenspot. This session was lots of fun. For instance, for one question, the panel answered by singing opera; several members of the panel had excellent singing voices! For another question, the panel was required by the moderator to include an "interpretive dance" in their answers; the definitions of "interpretive dance" got pretty bizarre.

So, another reason I'll be wanting to attend more than one day next year will be to simply get to more of these panel discussion sessions.

Here is a quickly put together album of the usable photos I took at the con yesterday.