San Diego Comic Con, Day One: This isn't what the boy scouts mean by "be prepared"

Welcome to my San Diego Comic Con adventure, where I will try to discover if one weekend is enough to make up for 20 years of being a nerd in a country without cartoons and a world that hasn’t invented Amazon.com yet.

I’ll be writing these reports every night when I get back to my motel room. I’ll try to mail them out every day, but I don’t know what network access is going to be like, so I might end up sending them all after I get back.

We flew out to San Diego this morning and immediately joined the hordes running for the gates of the con. We didn’t plan on getting there till later, but the whole city seemed to stampede in that direction. So what if it's 1:00 and the floor doesn't open till 6:00 This is America - you can’t just stand in line, you have to camp out for everything.

See how big the building behind me is? See the line of people outside? They were both the same length when I got there at 1:30pm.





At 3:30 I finally got a glimpse of the Promised Land, but it was a long time before I was allowed to enter. We were let into the convention center, handed the event list, and kindly asked to hang around till 6:00. At least it was air conditioned. The doors were left open (and guarded), so we could catch tantalizing glimpses of what awaited inside, like this huge Predator poster. The con doesn’t officially open till tomorrow, but if you bought a 4-day pass in advance, you could get in today for 3 hours and have a less crowded shopping experience. If what I saw today was “less crowded”, I’m really scared of what tomorrow will look like.



When I left the motel, I tried to carry as little as I could. Why carry a book, I asked myself as I was preparing my backpack, when will I have time to be bored? And if I do, I’ll just buy a book, right? Wrong. I remembered this decision around 4:00: I’ve already been staring at the stupid Predator for 30 minutes, I’ve already spent two and a half hours in the convention center, and I still had two more hours to sit on the floor near the bathroom. Never, ever go anywhere without a book. Dumbass.

Ah. 6:00 at last. I immediately ran in to hug my friends at the Penny Arcade booth, to tell them about the joy they bring into my life, and here, please take some money from me, and hey how ‘bout that thing that just came out and, uh, yeah, let’s hang out together and… Who am I kidding? I didn’t get into computers and comics because of my incredible social skills. The encounter went precisely like this:

“Hi, uh, yeah, uh, could you uh, maybe, uh, sign this for me? I really like the strip, uh, I mean the comic, and uh, I’m not even a gamer or anything. Yeah! I don’t play games at all. Ever!” I swear, this is exactly how I said it.

Gabe seemed concerned. “Are you serious?” he asked. That’s not something you normally say at a Penny Arcade booth. Plus, it’s kind of surprising that I like his comic so much, which I obviously do, because the thing I’m asking him to sign is a limited edition poster that I just paid $80 for.

I just nod as he gives me the signed poster.

“Shit, I forgot,” I tell him. I said this many times today. Gabe looks a bit confused, because after releasing this statement I don’t say anything or move for about 10 seconds. I finally remember what it was that I forgot in the first place, pull out the Penny Arcade book I brought with me and ask him to sign that too.

“Oh, you have the book.” That’s what he said, but I know he meant was “God, this book came out three years ago, you fucking nerd. Please get the fuck away from me and let me meet some real people.”

I go away, feeling oddly unfulfilled. Remembering that Gabe would do a sketch for me if only I remembered to bring some paper, did not improve my feeling at all, and caused me to forget that I also wanted to get a picture with them. Oh well, when the whole world hits the con, tomorrow I can spend the entire day waiting in line to get back to them.

On with the show!

LucasArts brought a Start Wars Lego display, where they sold a bunch of overpriced shit and had a few cool Lego statues on display. Check out radio-controlled moving-and-beeping R2D2 and Darth Lego. Darth looked more impressive in reality.









And dig this destroyer! It was too big to capture in one picture, and anyway, you can’t get the level of detail unless you look at the original 5MP images. It’s fully awesome.



See the open port at the center of the ship? Everybody’s in there, watching LOTR. Cool.


But what’s that flashing on the camera screen? The batteries are dead?

NOOOOOOOOOO!

The last thing I discovered that I forgot today was to buy rechargeable batteries. Son of a F#$%ing NRRRAUURRGGGUHH! No more pictures till tomorrow.

So today wasn’t a huge success, mostly because of my tendency to be an ass. I’ll go over the whole floor again tomorrow and take pictures of everything. Maybe I’ll even catch a storm trooper!