Comic-Con Recap

Man, what to say? I could tell stories of plane and baby stress and hotel room-shared-with-baby stories, which really made up the majority of the trip, but I’m assuming you’d rather hear more about the Comic-Con itself. I will only disappoint most of you who probably would love to hear about my rendezvous with Johnny Depp and the Twilight actors, but, no, I refuse to fly for over four hours just to wait in insane lines, only to have to camp out in a big ol’ hall all day just to see a person who does, well, nothing really except pretend (and some quite poorly, thank you very much) to be someone else on a screen and then most of the rest of the time just walks around having people think they are cool. Have you seen those pictures of the Twilight actors? Try a little harder, why dontcha? Anyway, here’s a recap:
-Walked the exhibit hall floors with way too many bags (Romy toys and diaper stuff, plus our own food and things).

-Romy was a hit with her Leia hairdo. People were taking pictures of her. Let me know if you see any of these posted on the web.

-Saw a bunch of independent comic artists speak about their work, including Lewis Trondheim, Seth, and Richard Thompson. Scratch that. Matt saw a lot of them, I only saw pieces of their panels and then had to leave because Romy was freaking out.

-Walked out on an indie comic panel from someone who shall not be named, but let’s just say she was horrifically boring and didn’t try for an instant to be pleasant or entertaining, even though she was the spotlight of the panel. So rude.

-Got an autographed copy of the new Clique book from Lisi Harrison. She was really nice (Romy in the Leia buns always helps) when I told her my students can’t get enough of her books. I will be giving away the signed book for a contest at work. Have to think of contest idea.

-Loved watching all of the funny costumes. Sometimes it’s just fun to sit and people watch. However, it was SO CROWDED on Saturday that that became impossible. Will post pictures in another post.

-Best panel of the whole Con was the Spongebob one, where all of the voice actors did a live reading of an episode, answered tons of questions, and then debuted a new episode. It was so fun to watch Spongebob in a large group. Plus, Romy slept the whole time so I could enjoy it!

-I got to meet Alex Winter (Bill, from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, who I’ve loved forever), albeit for a much shorter amount of time than I envisioned. Here’s the one blurry picture we got:

-Saw Amber Benson. She was rather beautiful in person.

-Ate a gross, giant pretzel and some really good cookies.

I am now going to sound like a big, honking nerd, but Comic-Con is not nearly as much fun now that it is SO popular. Matt and I went six years ago for our honeymoon, and the attendance number was literally about half of what it is nowadays. Which meant we could get into things we wanted to see, like the Futurama panel, without waiting in lines, and it was just all around a nicer experience. Matt thinks the hoopla will die down over the years, and again it will become more of a comic-lovers place, not a fame-whore expo. I don’t know about that, but I can say that I don’t need to go to Comic-Con for a while. At least for another year.