San Diego Comic Con, Day Two: Now dass what ahm talkin' about!

Shit yeah! This is what I came here for. “Here” being America, of course.

Today was more fun than I can describe. I took a shitload of pictures, but they really can’t explain what’s is like to be here. This place is pure magic, but like other important events in human history, it can’t be fully understood unless it is experienced, and it can’t be properly experienced before it’s understood. I don’t really know what I’m saying here, but it has something to do with me having a really time today.

Where do I begin? The colors (many)? The size (5XL)? The variety (whee!)? The people (all sorts)? The costumes (less of them than I expected, actually)? The booths (billions and billions!)? The familiar names and faces (more than I expected)? The Jedi knights and cosplayers (yeah, baby!)? Hot metal-bikini slave Princess Leia hanging out at the DC booth?

I don’t even think she was working there – I don’t think DC has any Star Wars rights any more. Maybe she's just an attendee celebrating her great skin tone. Oh yeah, she can ride my X-wing any time.
(Update: A bit more of her on iFilm (you should watch their Comic Con coverage in any case).

I could fill many pages with useless attempts to describe everything I saw and thought today, but that will take a week to write and I’m getting tired (it’s just after 1am now). I’m just going to dump a whole lot of pictures here and put a little note on each one. If you want to really know what it’s like, join me next year. I’m either going to have a very difficult time deciding what to put here or end up with a really long mail.

First order of business: Batteries and white paper. Had plenty of those with me today. I went back to the Penny Arcade booth, asked Gabe for a sketch of Div (thanks Gabe!), chatted with Tycho, did not appear to be retarded (I think), got a picture with Tycho and Gabe (aren’t they beautiful?) and felt pretty darn good.

See how cool they are? That’s me, hanging out with them. That means I’m cool too! Right next to my shoulder are the “Jesus is F’ing metal” shirts. I’m just PC enough to resist buying one, but I did buy a Fruit Fucker shirt. Star wars is definitely the big thing this year. Jedis and Imperial storm troopers are everywhere. I took some pictures of these booth troopers that were posing in some booth (I don’t even know which one - everybody seems to have Star Wars products now).

The picture on the right is a HUGE (at least 3 meters tall) poster that hung over the Star Wars pavilion. I just think it’s a cool image. The blur is in the original poster, giving a sense of movement, action, and awesomeness.

There are lots and lots of important guests in the con. The list of events and signings is so huge that it’s impossible not to miss a few items, so I didn’t even know that Stan Sakai would be here. I just noticed him accidentally when I passed through the Dark Horse booth. Stan Fucking Sakai!

Stan drew me a cool Usagi sketch and gave me a couple of free issues. Sweet.
One thing I've learned from asking people to take my picture: Strangers, even nice ones, can't hold the damn camera still.



More Star Wars stuff:
Lego Chewbacca, Star Wars helmets (see my hands and camera on D’s helmet?)

The one and only Bobba Fett, mercenary of the stars.

The main floor. Big and busy.

The Napoleon dude from The Corpse Bride. They brought an actual set and showed how stop motion animation is made: Slowly.

Werewolf thing from Underworld. Where’s Kate Beckinsale?

Cthulhu, devourer of worlds, and Dagon, badass extraordinaire.

I really have no idea.

FEZ!
Fez is starring this year in the movie El Muerto, which is Spanish for “The Muerto”, so the first event I checked out today was with the El Meurto crew.

It turns out that Fez is a pretty funny guy and it was a fun event.The big smiling guy on the left is Javier Something, who wrote the El Muerto comic.

Right after that, there was a Ren & Stimpy event. I’m a big R&S fan.

The weirdo in the glasses in John K, creator of Ren & Stimpy and voice of Ren. He is a god.

Right outside the meeting room, I saw two people re-enacting the scene where a big belly hits on Lara Croft. Both costumes were excellent.

Who you gonna call? This is one of the best costumes I saw today, and I saw quite a few. These small pictures are ruining the wonderful details on their gear. Notice the light saber on the first Buster on the right.

The DC booth. Ah yeah!

Michel Gagne is an incredible and sometimes bizarre artist. Bought book, got sketch, got signature, expressed appreciation, wished luck, had fun.

Jedis haven’t completely taken over the con. There was still a strong presence of cute cat girls.

And, uh, some baby kittens?

Later, at the Bruce Campbell appearance… Bruce is the world’s most famous unknown actor and author. I don’t think this email is going to anybody who has heard of him, but let’s just say this event was on my “don’t miss” list. Bruce talked about B-movies, being a B-movie actor, books, Hollywood and whatever people asked him about. Having only seen him in movies, I never knew he was a good speaker and very, very funny.

If you know anything about Bruce Campbell, you know how funny it was to see that chain saw arm in the audience. If you don’t, I guess you don’t.

A huge Joker, hanging above a booth selling the unmistakable art of Alex Ross. All I could afford was a T-shirt with this picture on it.

The Batman Begins exhibit, part of the DC pavilion.

San Diego is a very nice town, and I did have time catch a few glimpses of it. This is the view from the Convention Center 3rd floor.

After the floor closed, I stayed to watch some movies and at midnight I got on the bus back to the hotel (the con has free shuttles to everywhere all day). But first I pulled this elf off his chick’s face (I guess that’s why the Lady in Dark Clothes seems upset) and asked him if I could take a picture of his band. People in costumes love to pose for photographers - as soon as those elves saw my camera, they dropped all their shopping bags on the floor and assumed the elfish position.

A big day indeed. Network access is hard to come by, so who knows when I’ll actually send this…

More updates tomorrow!