San Diego Comic Con 2011

Holy crap. Either SDCC is getting longer every year, or I’m getting too old for this stuff. Maybe both.
Since there is all SORTS of comic con coverage online by people who…you know…get paid to do it, I figured I would just do some personal coverage about what Heather and I actually did while we were there. Here goes!

Preview Night
Heather and I went down Wednesday night for Preview night. Because the show is only open for 3 hours that night, it is usually when I choose to pick up whatever exclusives I can. As i am a ridiculous fan of the Venture Brothers (you should be as well), a large chunk of our time was spent waiting in line at the entertainment earth booth for their amazing Dr. Jonas Venture and Rusty Exclusive.

Meanwhile I sent Heather on a recon mission to the IDW booth for the Turtles Ash Can. Once done with the EE line, we took some ash cans over to the Heavy Metal booth where Kevin was gracious enough to sign a bunch of them for us to give out on this very site at a later date.

Thursday
We started the day off early (I was bouncing off the walls at about 5 in the morning in anticipation — Ask my severely annoyed wife!). As I am trying to get a few comic properties off the ground, I went to a lot of industry “how-to” panels this year. The First was Goal-Setting for Creative Types. I really recommend attending next year if you didn’t get the chance this year. WAY more fun than it sounds, and super informative.

Then it was off to the Fan Boy and Chum Chum panel. This show is bizarre. Not only am I a fan, but my dear friend and TMNTA artist, Ken Mitchroney works on the show, so we were there to hang out with him and show our support. Afterwards, Kenny signed a book for me to submit to the CGC signature series. This is the first con signature that Ken has done since 1992, and the only Ken Mitchroney signature series CGC book. The CGC folks were pretty darn surprised when I said “I have a book to submit for signature series. I brought the artist with me.”

Later, Heather and I walked the floor with Ken for about an hour before parting ways. 3 o’clock rolled around, and it was time for the IDW Panel. While the panel was super fun (they made people spin a wheel to decide what they’d talk about), No new TMNT information for those of you who’ve read any articles on the topic in the last couple months (which I am pretty sure you have…seeing as how you read this blog).

One cool thing about the panel is that the wheel also had prizes on it. One kid even won a cameo in an issue of the new TMNT comic. I won a sketched cover of their new Godzilla book! Woo for winning stuff!

By the time the panel was done, we were both pretty tired, so we milled around the floor for a little bit, then headed back.

Friday
We started our day a little later, since the first panel we wanted to go to (The Venture Brothers) wasn’t till 11:30. That panel was in the Indigo ballroom, which is a fairly large room. For you Venture fans, Doc and Jackson premiered a new music video and confirmed the next two seasons…but the majority of the panel was just them being ridiculous. There were a couple people there…

Since Venture Brothers made us miss the Walking Dead panel, I had some time before the Nickelodeon Turtles Preview. So I did some shopping.

Meanwhile, Heather went a-huntin’ celebrities!

We headed over to the Turtles event at 3:30, which started at four. If you have read our post about the Nickelodeon Preview Event that they had at the studio a while back then chances are there wasn’t any new info for you at this event. The event, while well presented, seemed to be catering to the casual fan, rather than the hardcore fan (who regularly keeps up on TMNT happenings). Here are some pictures though:

Yeeeah, so about the RiffTrax panel. Rifftrax is awesome. If you don’t know what it is, check it out.
This panel is a favorite of ours. But this year, the line got much longer, much faster, than last year. Heather and I waited in line for for about and hour and 45 minutes…and didn’t get in :*-( Sad us. After that disappointment, we decided to call it a day.

Saturday
I had planned on getting up early for the Comic Book Law School panel, but was in no mood for it when I woke up…so we ended up hitting the con about noon. When straight for the Cartoon Voices I panel. Primarily because both Rob Paulsen, Townsend Coleman, and Tara Strong were on the panel. It was a great. After a few general questions, they did an awesome script read of snow white and the seven dwarves (which they made hilarious!). Sadly, it appears that I neglected to take pictures of that panel. Sorry!

After the Cartoon Voices Panel, Heather and I split up. She went to the Joss Wheadon and The Guild panels, and I went to Creator-Owned Comics with Robert Kirkman. Kirkman is one of my favorite current comic writers, and I was also interested in the subject of creator-owned books. It was a great panel. Afterwards, I headed over to Transforming Comic Readers into Writers, which was a panel primarily focused on using Comic books to teach literacy.

After our panels, we met back up at Heavy Metal, said goodnight to Kevin, and headed out.

Sunday
A friend of mine, Ethan, and his brother Malachai, create an awesome book together called Axe Cop. You should worship it. Anyway, they had a panel for Axe Cop first thing on Sunday morning. I didn’t wake up in time, and for that I feel douchy. Sorry Ethan.

But since that was really the only thing on the agenda for sunday except for the Buffy Musical episode at the end of the day, we decided to walk around and take pictures. You can see my entire photo dump on our facebook page.

Lastly, was the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both heather and I are unabashed Buffy fans, and for the last 5 years, the convention has run the Buffy musical episode as their final program of the day. So we sat through the Sons of Anarchy panel (which was before Buffy in Hall H), and then had a lot of fun at the Buffy shindig. It was awesome.

Then it was home to Los Angeles. Like I said before, the con felt it was crazy long this year, and I still feel like I was hit by a truck, but it was all good times.

I will leave you with some pictures of me with people I like 🙂

Thanks for reading! Can’t wait for next year!