re: Comic Con 2008

I was just down in San Diego this weekend for some good old-fashioned family fun, and as part of the weekend we hit the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con. This is us, ready to brave the 460,000 square feet of super-nerdom that awaited us inside the Convention Center walls. (C'mon, mom. You are never going to defeat a level 10 dungeon creature with a face like that.)

You may wonder how we ended up there, since although we have seen all the Star Wars films and my dad does speak a little Klingon, we aren't exactly hardcore fans of this stuff. Well. My brother-in-law, Jake, is an artist/illustrator/comiccreator and wanted to wander the sordid halls of the Con, talking to his illustration heroes and showing off a comic of his own:

These are the first few panels of "Peep Show" (a really cute 2 comic collaboration project he worked on and distributed at Comic-Con)

His half of the comic is a little short story including alien abduction, murder, and true love (all of which you can actually purchase for $5 right here).

I was overwhelmed by how big the place was once we got inside. There was nerdy humor for sale everywhere you looked!

Like, I can't believe I don't own this backpack yet.

They also conveniently sold everything you needed to be a super-hero yourself:

It was so thrilling to see real live Jedi Masters in the peak of their physical condition purchasing and testing their new light sabers!

The highlight of my day was seeing the real Hover Board from Back to the Future. This was unfortunately not for sale, or I would have ridden home on one.

Apparently I should have packed a costume, because the thing to do was come dressed as the Comic/SciFi character that you like best. The #1 costume choice seemed to be Storm Troopers. These guys were all over. I am not sure why it is so popular to dress as one of a mindless army, which, despite superior numbers, advanced weapons, and superb training were repeated defeated by small Rebel Alliance forces and cute, furry Ewoks. Didn't anyone tell all these guys that the Empire loses in the end?

Second costume runner-up was all the Cobra Commanders running around. Here they got some poor kid who probably should have known better than to mess around with masked men holding big guns. Maybe 'knowing' is the less important half of the battle.


I also saw a lot of ladies walking around in not much clothing, but was told by a fairly reputable source that the kind of girl that looks good in not much clothing is usually paid to walk around Comic Con.

The kind of girls that don't get paid look more like this:

I really liked the Barf costume on the right, though.


And at least this girl got creative - she made her Wonder Woman costume out of duct tape.

And then we all went home. On the way out, I saw this Storm Trooper walking back to his ship.

I guess they had to park the Death Star some place a few blocks away, because all the parking was taken at the Convention Center.