Comic Con 2012

I attended Comic Con for the first time ever this year.  As I was warned, there were a LOT of lines.  However, getting to catch up with your best friend from college, Mi-chan, made the time fly by.  I only bought tickets for Saturday and Sunday, so my tales will be from the crazy weekenders.


The drive down to my friend's place in Oceanside was a nightmare on Friday night.  My folly was underestimating Friday afternoon traffic and only leaving 4 hours for a slightly-over 2 hours drive.  My crankiness was improved, however, once we had a lovely breakfast the following morning in Seaport Village.

Crab and asparagus omelette.

Unfortunately, this 2 hour meal meant that we were very delayed for the start of our journey to Middle Earth (the Hobbit preview, which would have been followed by the Iron Man 3 preview, in Hall H).

This is roughly 2 hours into our 4 hour wait.

As one of my friends pointed out, this would probably be approved by hobbits.  However, it was not approved by the con nor reality, and thus we failed to get into Hall H (seats 6000, which is but a fraction of the 125,000 con goers).  We gave up when it was time for the panel to start and we were still several hundred people away from the entrance.

There was a high point in the middle near lunch time when this SUPER TALL redhead, some skinny dude in a hat and sunglasses, and another skinny man with a horribly ugly sweater thing exited one of the boats to come onto the pier roughly two meters from us.  People were taking lots of photos; I was wondering who the hell these people were.  Mi-chan and I largely ignored them, until the sunglasses man spoke.  My head whipped around, for I knew that voice!  Just then, the hat and sunglasses dude was facing a fan just so that I could see a cheekbone.  I knew that cheekbone!  It was Matt Smith!!!  Therefore, the redhead must be Karen Gillan, and the ugly sweater man Arthur Darvill!  I was in too much shock to do anything except stare before they were ushers away to IMPORTANT CON THINGS (or just to see more of San Diego).  My conclusion were that Matt was nice, Karen was tall, Arthur needed fashion help, and I clearly don't have any shot at working as paparazzi.

To make sure that Saturday had more than line-waiting, my friend showed me the Exhibit Hall.

Sounds, colors, people, largeness!  I think I need to go to a proper casino to compare, but it was unimaginably busy and crowded and caused sensory overload.  Highlights are below.

Amazing how a public work of art stayed PG.

Kingdom of Loathing!  Or how Mi-chan and
I  took our frustrations out during college.

I laughed for an inappropriately long time after
seeing the beauty of Lego Tony Stark's face.

Sunday was more fruitful as we left early enough on Saturday to make getting up on Sunday before 5am (slightly) less painful.  Arriving at 6am still put us all the way down the pier in terms of line to get into Hall H.  Not completely unexpected since it was going to be a triple threat of: likely last Fringe panel EVER, Supernatural, and Doctor Who.  I have never seen Fringe, but the cast members were the most adorable and sweetest bunch of people.  They were crying, the fans were crying, so I was crying?

Supernatural panel, as usual, was a belly of laughs, although Misha Collins was far quieter than normal.  I think it is because they were warned about children in the audience, haha.  I managed to resist the urge to go wait in line to ask Steven Moffat a question about Sherlock during the Who panel, thus likely saving my life.  It was a proud moment.

Misha's humor is rated at least PG-13.

The Rorys shall be missed...

Finally, no con time is complete without cosplayers.  So here are some of the ones that I deemed worthy of being captured.

Melody Pond's dream.

There were some pretty fit people at the con.

I don't know what this is from, but cosplaying family deserves kudos.

It was weird how much Batman there was, it's almost like
the franchise was doing something big soon...

No weed in that pipe!

In conclusion, I had an awesome time and will definitely be returning next year (especially since season 3 of Sherlock being in production in 2013 raises my hopes of a panel).

Edited 8/04/2012: Now that I bought tickets, I can say that I will definitely be attending next year's Comic Con!