Comic Con 2008

So it's a quarter to eleven, and as you could possibly guess, I'm not out at a Breaking Dawn release party and/or standing in line outside of some book store. But having just survived the San Diego Comic Con, wrestling crowds doesn't sound very appealing at the moment. Especially rabid fan crowds. I just did that, and believe me, my ears are still buzzing.

Comic Con was utter madness. Fun, but wow, I've never seen it so crowded. The biggest things there were probably Warner Brother's upcoming film Watchmen, Frank Miller's comic-inspired film The Spirit, and of course the Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the animated film coming out this summer, all of which you couldn't turn around without seeing promos for.

There were promos on everything, too. Bags, shirts, busses, semis. Everything. If you ever have a chance, even if you don't actually go to Comic Con, I'd recommend witnessing San Diego during Comic Con. Though really that would be a bad idea, I guess, as hotel rooms (not to mention parking) are impossible to find that time of year. It's definitely a unique experience, though. I went to the World's Fair in Aichi Japan in its closing days in 2005, and Comic Con is a bit more insane than that, so there you go. Though of course there are no cool rides at Comic Con. Long lines, though... those you can find all over.

Getting back to the above point, I'll admit that Twilight came in about fourth so far as hype goes, but it had a very odd feel about it. As you can probably imagine, Twilight is not your average Comic Con fare. The whole thing about Twilight is that it gets people to read books about vampires who otherwise would never read books about vampires. Most Comic Conners... well... probably would read books about vampires, regardless, so to see the two interact was interesting. Twilight fans were visible, and identifiable, in a sea of thousands, little smatterings of oil in a pool of water, never quite blending. For someone who's a bit between (just the edge of my foot in both worlds) it was a bit bizarre, really.

Personally, the reason I was there was that I was volunteering my time at the Lego booth, which was a blast. Most of the day I watched the kids' building tables, picking up fallen Legos (though my sister, the former Master Model Builder would cut in that Lego is never pluralized) deconstructing whatever kids had abandoned so new kids could come and build. I was (and am always) impressed by some of the things kids managed to make with plastic blocks. My sister did make a few great contacts, so good for her, but more on that in another post, since it deserves one to itself.

Something GREAT about Comic-Con? Most of the big publishing houses have a booth there, and they give out FREE BOOKS! ARC's mostly, but no one complains about that, now do they? I got a total of TEN free books this year, three of which were signed by their authors. Fun stuff! Oddly, Scholastic was not there this year, which saddened me a bit, but Penguin, Bantem, Del Ray... all of them spoiled me liberally.

For the most part, though... I'm glad it's over. I'm very, very lucky that I'm able to go most years, and go as an exhibitor, but it wipes you out!