Mood:
sadTopic: Comic Cons
It's the END of another SDCC, which marked the 40th Anniversary of this Comic-Con! I would say 'comic convention', but this year even more so than the other ones since 2001, it was more of a pop culture / Hollywood convention. Especially IF YOU had to go to a popular TV Show / Film program. It was like two different cons this year for me... Tina had a few TV Show related programs that she HAD to see, and with more attendees than ever caring just for THOSE same programs, the lines were outrageously long. Multiple attendees were disappointed in not even getting into the back of the rooms! In fact the line for Saturday's 1st program 'LOST' @ 11AM in Hall 'H" was several hundreds of people long already when we arrived at 5AM. There were multiple tents in the first row where they had camped out overnight. This was nothing in respect to those that came only for the IRON MAN 2 program that didn't even START until 4PM later on in the day in the same Hall! That's because the Con folks still don't clear out the room between panels/programs! Sunday's morning line to get in to the building itself was all the way down to the end of the street past Hall 'H'. This is not normal folks! Usually Sunday is a quieter day to get in to the building. Not this year! That was because the SMALLVILLE program was starting in Room 6 BCF @ 10:30 AM. It appeared that most were also there for the following program on SUPERNATUAL that started at 11:45 AM. Which was good for those attendees that they didn't have to wait for one or more programs in between. However the problem here was that after standing in line to get in to the building, they had to semi-run to the staging area on the other side of the 'Sails' pavilion to stand in another line to get into the largest of the regular program rooms... Needless to say, there was a LOT of complaining going on in lines this year. More than I have ever personally heard since the 1990's when the Comic Con first moved over to the San Diego Convention Center. Repeatedly I heard from con goers that the rooms should be CLEARED between programs! (Upon re-reading this post before publishing, that appears to be my 'theme' from this year's Con...) Because of the lines and the non-clearing of the rooms, Tina and I had to forgo attending the exhibit floor as much as we wanted to on Friday and Saturday. Our apologies to those creators that we missed this year! As to the ones we saw, several mentioned how Friday was not as busy as it usually was in their area. I explained what I saw upstairs at the program rooms. However, Tina was very happy with the All of the programs that were TV or Film oriented. She will be blogging about them in the near future in this Blog. Stay Tuned! She was disappointed in the marketing / promotion / industry panels / programs she attended, as there wasn't enough information presented in the ones she attended. They were basically PR programs even though the program titles / topics indicated otherwise. According to her, others that were attempting to break into the industry also expressed similar opinions when leaving the rooms... As for myself, I enjoyed celebrating my Birthday once again at the the Comic-Con! I had to have back-up plans for my back-up programs for the programs I really wanted to see. As several of those were too popular with the other attendees to even get into... Once either we or I got into a a popular room or hall, Tina and I felt we had to stay in it to justify the long wait to get into it! However because of that situation we did get to see the first episode of 'V' which is really good! We are adding that to our 'watch' list for the upcoming TV Season! I've taken many photos of comic creators, costumed attendees, and exhibits, which I will be sharing in the weeks to come, along with my thoughts on those topics. Plus I picked up a lot of hard copy comics that I will be reviewing here! Even thought it was a LOT tougher to make it through Comic-Con this year then pre 2001 years, it is a CON that YOU've got to take in @ Least ONCE in YOUR lifetime! Just to say You've done it! And Yeah, even though we both had problems with this year's Comic-Con, we have already purchased our 4 day + preview night memberships for 2010! (That's more because it's a tradition for me, since this was the first con ever for me as an attendee back in 1970, while Tina has been attending SDCC since we were dating back in 2001.) BTW, unless we are onsite all day and night during a three day or longer comic con... we do blog daily on comic book creators, comic book reviews, and pop culture news and events! Check out our daily blog posts, new listings of comics, graphic novels, Comic Con exclusives and more pop culture items for sale in our online eBay Featured Store! Thanks again to all of YOU reading our current and archived blog posts!! ~ Michael (and Tina)
|
