San Diego Comic-Con: The Report

As promised (at last), here are some of the highlights of my first visit to the San Diego Comic-Con, in pictorial form. As always, I apologize for the crappy quality of my cell phone camera.

--This Batman is made of Legos.



--This is Stormtrooper Elvis.



--Here is a random woman in a Princess Leia slave bikini costume. Thank you, random woman.



--And here is a corpse at the Girls and Corpses Magazine booth. Yes, Girls and Corpses Magazine. Say what you will, at least this is a magazine that found an untapped demographic and went after it.



--And this is Sheri Moon and Rob Zombie at the preview panel for Zombie's Halloween remake. They showed us the theatrical trailer, plus one extended scene of Michael Myers being a badass, before a Q&A session. It was tremendous. August 31, people, mark your calendars now!

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Some other highlights, not in pictures:

--Hanging out with my friend Ian Brill, who knows a lot of the people at this damn thing. Like, a lot.

--Meeting a friend from the interwebs, Greg Burgas, of Delenda Est Carthago. He was every bit as funny and friendly as I would've guessed, and spent much of the day with me and Ian. Plus, he bought us dinner, which is awesome, and which favor I vow to return one day.

--Reacquainting myself with a friend I had lost touch with, comics creator Zander Cannon. (That's right, he's got a Wikipedia page and everything!) Much of his creative output these days is through the Big Time Attic art studio in Minneapolis. I found out he is working on a new Top 10 series, taking over as writer from Alan Moore (no pressure there!) and producing the layouts for finished art from Gene Ha. I also found out he is working toward continuing his excellent fantasy series, The Replacement God, which is one of my favorite comics ever. Woohoo!! And I also found out he is still an incredibly nice and funny and cool guy, and I should not let our friendship languish due to inattentiveness again, as it did over the past few years. My bad.

--Having to push past Matt Groening to pay for a book at the Fantagraphics booth. Hey, he was in the way!

--Meeting and talking to two of my comics writing heroes, Peter David and Mike Baron, at the exact same time.

Why, I tell yas, it's almost enough to make me not hate comics anymore!!

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The disappointing:

--Having to park about a mile and a half away, then, when hiking back to the Convention Center, setting off on not one, but two dead end paths before finding the right way. Oops!

--The preview of The Mist, director Frank Darabont's adaptation of the Stephen King story. Man, that was some crappy-ass CGI.

--Believing Ian when he said I wouldn't be able to sneak liquor into the Con. I totally could've! It's probably for the best that I didn't... but it's nice now to know the option is there. (Unless I just ruined it for next year by talking about it here.)

--Not making it to the Richard Cheese concert after all. Oh well. There was no way we were going to be able to last that much longer anyway, what with a three-hour-plus drive ahead of us. It'll wear you out, looking at toys and comics and video games all day!

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All in all, a tremendously fun and thrilling, if extremely tiring day. And there was still so much to see! If I go next year, I'm getting a hotel room and going for two days. Because I'm that much of a geek.