The Writerly Reader Goes to Comic Con
Chris with Storm Trooper
Back in January-ish, our friend Chris proposed that we all go to Comic Con. Eric and I have been meaning to take another trip to San Diego, and Chris spiced up the deal promising a comfy air mattress and easy transportation to the convention center via the light rail (or trolley, as they call it in CA). And, lo, after a nail-biter morning spent procuring the possibility to purchase badges, it was so.
(The process of getting Comic Com badges is an adventure in itself. When they say, “Press the Green Button in the email we sent you at exactly 9am on such and such a day,” they aren’t messing around. And the virtual queue of 30,000+ people to get badges was only a taste of things to come.)
Chris was a good as his word: the air mattress was uber-comfy and the trolley station was a block away. Thursday, we had our first taste of what is quintessentially Comic Con: Lines.
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On Friday, we aimed lower and hit some of the smaller panels. And “camped” a couple of rooms. We sat in on a panel about B movies with Leonard Maltin while waiting for the Epic Fantasy panel with Melissa de la Cruz, Christopher Paolini, Daniel Abraham, Brandon Sanderson, Robin Hobb, Raymond Feist, and Django Wexler.
The blurry cast of Vikings.
After dinner and sitting through a rather befuddling panel about an animated series based on the Mahabharata, we saw Vikings! While less blurry in real life, this is the actual panel and not on a big screen. We had a good-ish seat! We did see Travis Fimmel (far left) on the way back from dinner. I might have taken a picture except that it was while we were crossing a not-entirely-closed-off downtown street. I am much more cautious than the other people that did stop him for a photo.
There is a lot to Comic Con beside the panels. The exhibit/merchant hall was full of vendors and artists and other fairly awesome exhibits. On Thursday, I got Brom to sign one of my books! On Friday, we picked up a special edition Vikings comic. On Saturday, I nabbed a few advanced reading copies from several publishers.
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The entirety of downtown San Diego was decked out as well including a bunch of off-site exhibits that we didn’t delve into. Buses were decked out in Dracula ads and the light rail cars shilled for the Agents of SHIELD. One of the trolley stops had all of the signs written in Dothraki (from A Game of Thrones).
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I didn’t take nearly enough pictures.
