July 24th - 27th, 2008
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Well, it started out pretty rough. All our flights going out to San Diego were delayed - mostly through incompetence. At one point we sat in the plane, on the runway, for 4 1/2 hours due to heavy weather out west. Of course if Continental Airlines didn't suck so bad we wouldn't have been there at that time. We would have been in San Diego. As it was, we left Wednesday morning from RI and arrived in CA Thursday morning - missing Preview Night entirely, paying for an empty room and another in Houston when we got stuck there. When I complained, the lady at the service desk threatened to have me thrown in a holding cell. Now that's service!
Never fly Continental Airlines, folks. Don't take my word for it - ask M...
Things could only get better, right? Actually, yes!
Once we got to San Diego we raced to the hotel, got cleaned up and headed to the con - on less than 4 hours sleep and 24 hours of travelling! The hotel and room were pretty nice!
The staff at the Convention Center were really on the ball and we got through the registration line in no time at all. Here's a few shots of the interior and views from outside...
The first thing we did was head in to Ballroom 20 - the 2nd largest room in the place - to the Stan Lee and Grant Morrison panel. What a pair! A great comedy team is born! They spoke about the emerging trend of movie and TV writers going to comics - and the merging of pop-culture interests at Comic Con (and ongoing debate...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2aqR2yVLAE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbbSE9Hkzs4
Next was the X-Men panel where most of the current writers gathered to discuss their various books and tease upcoming storylines - including the return of Magik in the sequel to Inferno - X Infernus...
We also went to the panel for Eddie Campbell who was there promoting his new book The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UzAi9OyWKU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZADZlJVFCok
And just before the Eddie Campbell panel, I finally met Gail Simone. She was realy cool in person and I wish we had more time to chat...
OK, OK - enough with all this. Where are the costumes, right? Right...