Comic-Con International 2006: Part the first

Each year in July San Diego hosts Comic-Con International, a gigantic four-day blowout of popular culture. I had attended the previous two years on the Saturday only. As I learned, the Saturday session is always by far the most heavily attended of the four days, and as a result I found the experiences overwhelming, at least partly due to my tendency to get very stressed in highly crowded situations.

So, this year I decided I'd try attending all four days, and hopefully get a better experience by spreading it out. I preregistered through the Con's web site earlier this year. Registration confirmation letters were sent out in June to everyone who registered for the four days up until that point in time. The point of sending such letters at that time only to the 4-day registrants is that those people are admitted (if they wish) to a Preview Night on the Wednesday evening before the Con officially starts.

Preview Night involves admission to the Exhibit Hall.

The major areas of the San Diego Convention Center are exhibit halls on the first floor, and various sizes of meeting rooms and spaces and ballrooms on the second floor. There are eight exhibit halls, designated as halls A through H. Basically, each hall can be used on it's own, or any number of the halls can be used together, all determined by positioning of sliding barriers. For Comic-Con, halls A through G are used together as one gigantic exhibit hall. (Hall H is used for major events about specific topics; during the Con is seats up to 6500. I'll go into more detail about Hall H later, as I did attend one event there.)

On Preview Night (July 19 this year), the Exhibit Hall is open from 6 PM to 9 PM. This Hall is used by all manner of people and businesses that hope to sell their goods and/or show off new material that is not yet ready for sale to people who attend the Con. During Preview Night, they have their booths staffed and ready to make sales. Examples of the businesses:

• Brick-and-mortar vendors of comics and/or book-based comic collections
• Publishers of comics and/or book-based comic collections
• Other book publishers
• Web-based businesses related to comics
• Publishers of board games
• Makers of electronic games hardware
• Artists
• Costume makers
• Jewelry makers
• Cable television channels
• Movie studios

...and more.

I wandered through the Hall and purchased several comic-collection books.

One highlight of the evening was that shortly after the doors opened a woman came on the PA system and said (sounding very irritated): "There is no running allowed in the Convention Center. Yes, I mean you in the green and white baseball cap!" (Approximate quote.) That got lots of laughs.

(Part the fourth)
(Part the third)
(Part the second)

(My photos of the Con are available here.)