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Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Top 10 Takeaways from the Wackiest Trade Show in America: San Diego Comic-Con 2012
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Comic Cons

                                        

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Top 10 Takeaways from the Wackiest Trade Show in America: San Diego Comic-Con 2012
 
By Tina LoSasso!
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TODAY'S FEATURE IS BLOG #3679:  

Top 10 Takeaways from the Wackiest Trade Show in America: San Diego Comic-Con 2012 - by Tina Lo Sasso

I've been attending San Diego Comic-Con since 2001. This year marks twelve straight Cons. Lately, I think, never again. The crowds, the lines, the hours, heck, I'm getting old and I really feel it at the con. This year, I thought never again on Preview night! So maybe we ditch Preview Night next year. But, we'll be back.

Here are my top 10 observations of this year's Comic-Con. I wrote this wearing my Observer hat scored at Sunday's Fringe panel.

#1) Firefly: The Smaller the Viewing Audience, the More Ardent the Fans

10 years after FOX cancelled Firefly after one brief season, the Browncoats blew away Comic-Con with their devotion. The line for the Firefly reunion panel will go down in Con history (I hope!). Tears were shed, the origin of Jayne's hat revealed, and graphic novels by Dark Horse announced. All was recorded for a special Science channel reunion show to air December 2012. If you didn't make it into Ballroom 20 (or to Comic-Con), watch the panel for a look at why we love this crazy convention: Firefly 10th Anniversary Panel.  


#2) The Luckiest Fan at Comic-Con
Big Bang Theory fan Mercedes Becerra of Paso Robles, Calif was the luckiest fan at Comic-Con winning the 'golden ticket' - a space flight from XCOR Aerospace on the Lynx Experience. Mercedes was chosen at random from the group of fans asking questions at the Q&A. Runner-up for luckiest fan at Comic-Con was the tallest questioner who kept shaking his head and looked like he would puke while former Shuttle Commander Richard Searfoss described the flight the lucky winner would take. See some of the panel here. At 2:17 note how he bows down in relief!

#3) The Luckiest Panel at Comic-Con
The creators and cast of ParaNorman lucked into the captive-audience opening timeslot on Friday before The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones panels. From Travis Knight, Sam Fell, and Chris Butler, the makers of Coraline, ParaNorman, described as John Carpenter meets John Hughes, couldn't have asked for a better timeslot. The audience got lucky too. The clips looked fun, the stop-motion animation beautiful, and the concept clever. Kodi Smit-McPhee who voices Norman was adorable revealing that his voice dropped during production - you kinda want to see the movie to hear how he handles it! Chris Butler of Laika inadvertently entertained the crowd with unwittingly racy comments about young girls and things you can do with a goat and a camera.  Most cool: Christopher Mintz-Plasse revealed that Kick-Ass 2 starts filming in September. Big surprise for their PR staff for sure!

#4) The Hottest Line on the Exhibit Floor
Beside the collectable toy lines which are always long and unexplainable to this observer, the line to become one of Michonne's pets was the longest - yes, people stood in line all through the three-hour preview night and didn't get their picture taken.

#5) Biggest Mob on the Exhibit Floor
We suspect the San Diego Fire Marshall wants the hide of the genius who booked AMC's The Walking Dead booth across the aisle from The Hobbit. Fans angling to take pics of the ginormous life-size props from The Hobbit jostled with WD fans watching regular folks becoming zombified 'pets' of katana wielding Michonne. But the biggest mob - the kind that makes you think you just might die by trampling - belonged to the Fox booth, even without the signings. Me thinks they must put Ecstasy on those posters or something...

#6) Lines, lines everywhere a line
Now more than ever, we had lines at the Con. At the Falling Skies panel, Drew Roy who plays eldest son Hal explained that when Dad Tom was taken by the aliens, the boys all went up a notch in the family. Well, the same thing happened to the lines this year at Comic-Con. Perhaps this is also the work of aliens. Obscure panels suddenly had lines, people were shut out of "Cartoon voices", Ballroom 20 lines camped overnight, the Hilton ballroom line sat in the sun for hours, large panel rooms had Ballroom 20-like lines...and Hall H - I can't even talk about Hall H. After 4 hours of sleep Saturday night (or I should say Sunday morning), I got up to camp in the Hall H line to see the opening act: Fringe - and ended up in the last row of the cavernous hall!

#7) Line control
My biggest complaint about this year's Con was the line management or lack thereof. Yes, there were more volunteers and security guarding lines and pointing out where to go. However, when the lines moved, latecomers were able to jump easily. The line management for the Hilton's Indigo Ballroom - site of uber-popular TV Guide Fan Favorites panel (where I laughed so hard, the video I took is pretty much unusable) - was insane. We walked into the building, took the escalator up one floor to the Indigo Ballroom where volunteers frantically waved us away from the doors and shooed us downstairs again outside the back of the building where the line snaked Disneyland-style on the walkway by the harbor. No tents. Thanks for the sunburn, Comic-Con (dis)organizers.

But what really got me PO-ed was being usher into Hall H Sunday morning 20 minutes after the opening panel started. Seriously, there's no excuse for not having the room locked and loaded for any opening panel. The Hollywood folks need to test their tech is NO excuse. Have them get up an hour earlier - we all did - and we're not getting paid for it!

#8) The Con is a study in human behavior
For several years now, students have been getting college credits for hanging out at Comic-Con, studying fan behavior and presenting at one of the educational panels. The students are great, their observations are interesting, but they need to come back next year with colleagues from Psych and Sociology departments. Comic-con is a master class in crowd (mob!) behavior, bystander apathy, anger management and group dynamics. To say nothing of the Con goers who could use a little therapy.

#9) Just because you work at WB doesn't mean you're not an idiot
I'm curious who the nimrod is who planned the WB Extra presence at Bayfront Park. Great idea, really poor execution. Why would anyone rent so much space, haul in so much equipment and spend so much money promoting a free venue only to use it when Con goers had much better things to do? Case in point, Wednesday afternoon the convention area was awash with 15,000 Preview night attendees and tons more Con goers checking in. Thousands and thousands of people milled around the Convention area, Gaslamp district and poured over the only part of the WB exhibit that was set up: the Batmobiles. Thursday and Friday there wasn't much else going on - some gaming in a tent. Imagine the fan connections lost by not utilizing the 60,000 foot space when fans had less to do during the day on Wednesday and Thursday.

#10) What the world needs now is more Jackie Chan
When I married Michael over a decade ago, he introduced me to Jackie Chan movies - not just the Rush Hour stuff - the bootleg flicks from China. Needless to say, I love Jackie Chan. Seeing him Thursday afternoon in Hall H was a Con highlight. Answering a question, Jackie talked about bullying and violence and what he portrays in his movies. It was lovely. What a beautiful human being. We could all use a little more of Jackie Chan's attitude - especially when things get crazy at the con.

 


NOTE FROM Michael D Hamersky On ComicsMy thanks again to all of YOU reading this blog and our archived blog posts, now at 3,679 total posts in number!   I do appreciate your continued reading and support of this Blog!

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Note:  My online 'Loca8' Comic Book Shop (LCBS), carries many different genres of comics, magazines, graphic novels, and comic con promotional items. Possibly even copies of the item(s) that was mentioned here today...!  If I have it, you'll find under the BIG TOP of Comics, at Comic Books Circus.com, including the book 'Gotham City 14 Miles' that I am shown holding to the left. I'm 1 of 14 essayists in that book! !     

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Posted by makeitsomarketing at 6:56 AM PDT
Updated: Tuesday, July 17, 2012 1:20 PM PDT
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