This year's San Diego Comic-Con was a whirlwind of shopping, waiting in line, and watching panels, necessarily compressed into half the time because of a work conference taking place in Chicago over the weekend (
THANKS, WORK.)
Preview night was an amazing crush of people, for supposedly being capacity controlled. The line to get in extended upstairs, and across the convention center. I was lucky enough to be in front of two guys who spent the duration of our time together complaining loudly about how much they hated "F---ING LINES!!!" It was a special time for all of us.
Once inside, it was the usual hysterical masses of people yearning to take photos with zombies and collect swag. The main drag between FOX and Marvel was chronically stuffed with people to the point where your options were to a) inhale air that just left some stranger's lungs, or b) stop breathing.
Later on in the weekend, over at the Bioware booth, Ben Gelinas and Nick Thornborrow were signing their recent book
Dragon Age: The World of Thedas.
Meanwhile, the Profiles in History Auctions went about their business selling off their usual precious artifacts.
Later that night (much later--like Midnight,) the show Psych screened their musical episode at a nearby theater, with special appearances by series stars James Roday and Corbin Bernsen.
The next day I managed to sprint to the Hilton next door to the Convention Center to catch William Shatner, Roseanne Barr, and Wayne Knight on a panel devoted to comedy in television.
A quick sprint back to the Convention Center, and I was lucky enough to wrangle a seat in the room where the 20th Anniversary of the X-Files panel was going to take place. First, however, I sat through a discussion of the next season of the BBC show Sherlock which seems good enough to go on my Netflix queue.
The X-Files panel was huge, with most of the main writers, Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, and series creator Chris Carter.
They seemed in good, nostalgic spirits, with the actors more positive about the series than they've been in the past.
Chris Carter was, as traditionally, vague on the suggestion that there would ever be another X-Files movie. Nevertheless, the panel ended with him stating that the strong fan showing that day could only help inspire one.
The next panel up was Brave New Warriors, which was kind of like "Heroes of the Season."
Panelists included the leads from Grimm, Teen Wolf, Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and Doctor Who.
There was a lot of screaming during this panel. Like,
a lot. Pretty sure Monstropolis met its energy quota for the year in this one hour.
Next up: Teen Wolf. TEEN WOLF.
If you are not watching this show, I might suggest you start. It's vaguely Buffy-esque, with the same mildly over-wrought teen drama mixed with supernatural homicide. And werewolves.
After the day's programming ended, the activities continued outside the Convention Center with a fairly dull Enders Game walk-through...
And MTV's party at Petco Park.
It was as loud and raucous as you'd expect a party with free booze would be. People seemed to be having a good time however, and there weren't any obvious fatalities, so I think it could be reasonably called a success.
The next day, the last big panel I got into was the preview of the Avengers spin-off, Agents of SHIELD.
As a surprise bonus, we were shown the entire pilot episode which was typical Joss Whedon, which is to say, very entertaining indeed. If the rest of the season can maintain the interest and humor of the initial episode, it's hard to think that this won't be a hit.
After this, it was just the usual flailing around, trying to get to the airport in time to catch a redeye out to Chicago...but that's another story.
