SDCC 2012: One Geek’s Journey Through The Madness Of Comic-Con (Part I)
San Diego Comic-Con 2012 is now over and I’ve been trying to get back to some semblance of a life, which has proved to be mildly difficult to do. See, this was only my second time ever going to SDCC. My first time was back in 2010 when I went for a single day. This time I was able to get my geek on for the entirety of SDCC thanks to Geekscape. Let me just say that going from one day to every day is a giant leap. To say that my ass was beat by Sunday would be an understatement. Regardless, it was still one hell of a ride. I’ve decided to just break down my experience into one article as opposed to doing multiple articles. It’s mainly due to the fact that some of the panels I went to were more entertaining than others and therefore
Preview Night: Myself and Shawn Madden arrived into the heart of Whale’s Vagina at around 2 pm. We made our way over to the Hyatt where Shawn was staying with Mr. London and Geekscape’s own Rarity cosplaying brony, Shane O’hare. Once the luggage was dropped off I headed over to the convention center to pick up my badge. Seeing as it was only 3 pm and the floor didn’t open until 6 pm, Shawn and I decided to head into the Gaslamp District and grab some lunch and check things out. Lionsgate was going to show a free screening of Dredd later that night so we went by the theater to see if there was a line forming yet. There wasn’t so we went to TGIFriday’s for happy hour. After some much needed 1/2 priced appetizers and a long island iced tea (I was on vacation, don’t judge me) we headed back by the theater and found that there was a line forming but it was still early so we weren’t too worried. We killed some time until 6 pm rolled around, at which point I headed back to the convention center to check out Preview night while Shawn decided he would go grab us a prime spot in the line for the movie.
Upon setting foot on the convention floor my first thought was “where the hell is the Geekscape booth?” I knew it was booth #3919 but I had no idea where that was. Luckily, SDCC has giant banners hanging above the aisles letting you know what aisle number you’re on. Unlucky for me though was the fact that the floor was packed with people trying to get their hands on all the exclusives available. It was mass chaos on the floor with people pushing and shoving trying to get around, it was a nightmare. After what seemed like an eternity I finally found my way to Geekscape’s home for the duration of SDCC met some of the other writers for the site. It was good to finally put faces to names for the first time and after pleasantries had been made I decided to leave the madness of Preview Night behind me and head back to the theater to meet up with Shawn. It was 7:30 pm by the time I got there and a small but decent sized line had started to form. We had a good place in line for the movie…or so I thought.
Lionsgate had been advertising this free screening of Dredd all over twitter for at least a week but what they failed to advertise was the fact that it was press screening of the movie and that seating was super limited. This was a fact no one in line knew until about 9:30 that night when a second line started forming next to the one we were waiting in. To say that the whole thing was a giant clusterfuck and was horrible organized would be a huge understatement. Needless to say, after they let in every member of the press only about 20 people from our line were let in. Yeah, we waited for about 3 and a half hours only to not get into the movie. Sucks to be us. After we let our geek rage subside we decided to call it a night and get some rest for day one of SDCC.
Day One: First stop was booth 1515 to pick up a 50 Shades of Grey button for a friend back east. Why they were giving out 50 Shades buttons at SDCC I have no idea but picked one up I did *Yoda voice*. After that I did some wandering around the floor and took buku photos of everything. Then I made my way to the Geekscape booth to say my hellos and meet up with Eric Diaz and our friend Noah. While waiting in the booth I did manage to snap a pic of Katniss Everdeen as she attempted to assassinate Jonathan. Luckily for Jonathan’s sake, brony extraordinaire Shane O’Hare was close by and able to use his magical pony powers to defeat Katniss and save Jonathan’s life. True story.
Most of my day was spent wandering around the convention floor and taking a shit load of pictures like a Japanese tourist at Disneyland. I even made an impulse buy that I am in no way shape or form ashamed of despite the fact that perhaps I should be. What was that impulse buy you ask? It was a Wampa hat of course! You know, because every person really needs their own Wampa hat. All I’ve got to say about this is that I think I look absolutely fabulous in it and that it will keep my noggin warm the next time I find myself on the frozen tundra of Hoth.
There was a press conference for Disney that afternoon that I was fortunate enough to attend. It consisted of 3 seperate Q&A press conferences for Frankenweenie, Oz: The Great and Powerful, and Wreck-It Ralph. First up was Frankenweenie with Tim Burton there to answer questions about his latest stop-motion movie. Burton said that this movie was something that was very near and dear to his heart and he was very glad to be able to return to it and expand on his original idea. When asked what it was like to walk out onto the stage at Hall H and feel the love from the huge crowd, “It’s amazing you know, I wish my family treated me that way. I walk in the door and no one says anything, so it’s nice for a change to get that sorta thing (laughs). I remember coming here back in the late 70’s when it was at the Holiday Inn. It’s amazing what it’s turned into.”
Next up was the press conference for Oz: The Great and Powerful. It featured director Sam Raimi and stars Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams. Let me just say that I’m usually not one to get star-struck but when I saw these two beautiful women walk on stage I instantly fell in love twice. My jaw damn near hit the floor but being as I was about 10 feet from them I had to forcibly keep my jaw closed and make sure I didn’t start drooling. Yeah, they are that gorgeous in the real world. This was a good press conference in which some good questions were asked. When asked what it was like to step into the world of a beloved classic Rami had one of the single greatest responses I’ve heard. “We all love The Wizard of Oz movie but we were careful to respect it. But really ours is a different story, it’s a story that leads up to The Wizard of Oz. It’s a story about how the wizard came from Kansas to the land of Oz and how a slightly selfish became a slightly more selfless man. And its the story of how he became the Wizard. It’s a fantastic story that answers that question… It’s not really a remaking The Wizard of Oz, so it’s not really something we had a problem we had to deal with.”
The final panel of the day was for Wreck-It Ralph and was just a lot of fun. John C. Reilly and Sarah Silverman were in attendance and both of them just hilarious. Naturally video games were a hot topic through out this press conference. When asked what their favourite games were growing up Reilly’s answer was “I am dating myself by saying this but I was the test audience for Space Invaders. I spent a lot of money on Space Invaders.” Silverman loved Pitfall, Joust, and was big on Centipede. Everyone was eager to know how hard it was to get video game companies to license out their characters and as it turns out most of them were all too eager to let their characters be used in the movie. Wreck-It Ralph just reminds me so much of my youth and I can’t wait for this one to come out.
My first day at SDCC may have been over but the was just beginning. Thursday night was the Geekscape party that we co-hosted along with Stan Lee’s Comikaze, I’d tell you all about it but then Jonathan would have to kill me. All I can say is that I saw a Predator crumping, Dark Helmet win the costume contest, and that I saw Geekscape’s own Shawn Madden get in a break-dance battle with the red Power Ranger. I’m not making that up, that really happened!
Come back tomorrow for part II and find out where my journey through SDCC lead me next.
