Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Comic-Con Advice and Thoughts

Howdy everyone! As you know, I just finished my first trip ever to a Comic-Con! I thought I would share some thoughts and tips with you in case you ever decide to go yourselves. So here are a couple thoughts...

First, some tips:

1. Get your tickets in advance. We had three days passes, so we had no problems. But Saturday sold out, and many people did get turned away. They had over 100,000 people on Saturday.
2. Bring a bag with some food and water in it. We had a Doctor Who/Tardis backpack! 😊 By and large, there was little food there to buy and the lines were VERY long. It wasn't as expensive as I expected, but getting to it was a pain. Drinks were about $2.50 each. Food was around $9 for a sandwich.

3. We stayed about five blocks away and walked. That was easiest. Parking near the Convention Center was a mess. We also could have taken the light rail, but we wanted to walk. We didn't try to drive in because it was just insane.

4. About half the people were in costume. You will see everything. We saw dinosaurs, daleks (a wheelchair costume), anime characters, movie characters, etc. There were dozens of Doctor Whos. Girls seemed to gravitate toward quasi-sexy anime characters, guys seemed to gravitate toward things in armor. There were people dressed like several musicians -- Prince, David Bowie, Meatloaf, the Beatles. There was a Carmen Sandiego. Tons of Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who, anime. The most common costume was Deadpool for males and Harley (from Batman) for girls. That said, weight, body type, gender didn't matter, everyone was cool with anything. Whatever people wore, everyone liked it... and the self-made costumes were the most popular. I didn't hear one negative word from anyone all weekend about the costumes. And everyone we ask to take their picture was thrilled that we asked.

I would estimate the crowd was about 50/50 male to female, of all races, and there were lots of father/son and mother/daughter combos there -- in and out of costume. One of the cutest moments was a father/son Batman and Robin walking down the hallway together.
5. When you sign up, they should send you a link to an app with a schedule (they also have them in paper at the door). Look through it and figure out if you are interested in anything. We found that the BIG events were hardest to get into, but the smaller ones were no problem at all. My daughter got to meet several anime voice actors, a guy who taught us the basic phonetics of Japanese, and sat through some "how to" classes on cosplay and animation with no difficulty at all. That said, getting in to see Stan Lee proved impossible.

If they have a super special guest (like Stan Lee) and you want to get an autograph, it would be best to buy a VIP pass if they have them. There were only about 20 people around Stan Lee with VIP passes, but then well over 5,000 tried to see him at the public signing.

6. We enjoyed walking through the sale/merchandise floor (I would guess it was six high school gyms wide and three long). The seminars were great too -- wish we had gone to more of those. But the coolest thing was just seeing the costumes. For that, you can walk around, OR you can find some spot in the main hallway and everyone will walk right past you... several times. I estimate we walked about five miles a day, by the way. So keep that in mind. There were girls there doing it in major heels and I felt pretty bad for them by the end of the day. But you really can just find a place to sit and see a large part without all the walking we did.
7. It looks like a lot of the cosplay stuff takes place in the evenings, by the way. We plan to see more of that next time -- we were wiped out by six each night this time.

Finally, some thoughts.

We had an amazing time. It was really neat to see so many people just enjoying themselves. Half the crowd (or maybe even more) was women. A sizable chunk was black or Hispanic. There were some obviously gay people there too. All ages were represented as well. There were parents with kids, groups of friends, and even some single people. And the best thing of all... everyone got along happily. There was no anger. Everyone was polite and courteous. Everyone was happy to see everyone. There was immense creativity too. Not only in the costumes, but in the products people sold or displayed, and in hearing people talk about whatever "project" they had going in their lives (people walking around as well as people on stage).

So I highly recommend going to Comic-Con and just being a part of that world. It's the way society should be, and it shows how society can be.

19 comments:

Anthony said...

Nice impressions. My oldest has been bugging me about attending a local convention for anime fans.

AndrewPrice said...

Thanks, Anthony! This was a lot of fun. I absolutely recommending going at least once. Just seeing the costumes was worth it. Plus, the lectures were really well done.

While an anime convention likely would be narrower, I suspect it would probably be similar.

AndrewPrice said...

BTW, except for the Dalek v. Dinosaur, these are my own pictures. I took hundreds. The Stan Lee line goes about 50 feet deep. That's also only the beginning. They formed a second part as well which ran along the side of the building. I estimate it was 5,000 people, but it could have been more.

AndrewPrice said...

Here's a great link for costume photos:

Denver 2016 Costumes

Kit said...

Sounds like a lot of fun, Andrew.

AndrewPrice said...

Kit, It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it.

ArgentGale said...

Nice stuff! I'll definitely keep it in mind if I decide to give Dragon Con a shot this year. My friends often tell me I should go (and you'd be surprised how often they offer "You might meet a pretty nerdy girl there" as a reason), though I'm not quite sold on it yet. Then again, Jim Butcher is going to be there and the Dresden Files is one of my favorite book series...

ScottDS said...

I have to go to work but I'll chime in later. Glad you had fun! :-)

Allena-C said...

Always wanted to go to comic con! Thanks for the review Andrew!
I'm glad you had fun! ☺️

Allena-C said...

Also, thanks for the advice. Good to know. 😊

AndrewPrice said...

Daniel, It was fun. It really was. It's best to bring a friend if you do too. In terms of meeting people, they did have speed dating of all things.

AndrewPrice said...

Scott, Be happy to hear your thoughts.

AndrewPrice said...

Allena, You're welcome! It was definitely fun. I totally recommend it.

ArgentGale said...

Huh, interesting on the speed dating. One of my cousins and his wife are regular attendees so if I end up going with anyone it would probably be them, though I also know a few others who go, too. I'll give it more thought and check with him soon, then.

ScottDS said...

Andrew -

Sounds like you had fun! It also sounds like all my advice applied one way or another, especially with regards to driving/not driving and bringing your own food and water. And yes, these things attract all kinds. Now and then I'll hear about a hot female cosplayer who has trouble with one or two rude guys but for the most part, people are respectful.

I did the speed dating thing a while back at the Orlando MegaCon. Here's what I wrote at the time:

There were 53 guys and 50 girls, all of various shapes, sizes, and complexions. We sat with a girl, traded pleasantries for three minutes, then rotated. Multiply that by 50. At the end, we anonymously exchanged phone numbers and I’m proud to say I got two! Some people got bupkes. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t expect anything to happen but I would’ve felt worse getting nothing. How damaging to the self-esteem it must be not to receive any positive attention from the opposite sex at a sci-fi convention! If not here, then where? After chatting with 50 girls, there seems to be a clear dividing line in fandom. Imagine a Venn diagram: on the left are games, comics, and anime; on the right are sci-fi and filmed entertainment; in the middle are Dr. Who and all things Whedon. 98% of the girls in attendance belonged exclusively to one side or the other, with only a few in the middle.

ArgentGale said...

Good to know about the environment, Scott. Maybe it's just the Internet circles I blunder into but people act like harassment of said cosplayers is some kind of epidemic. Interesting on the speed dating, too... If Dragon Con has it, and in the highly likely event I'm still single by then, that sounds like the sort of thing that could potentially go well or very, very badly if I try it. Well, we'll see if I end up going to it.

- Daniel

PikeBishop said...

I find this amusing, as someone who was in high school from 80-83 and read comic books and played D&D in the shadows, to see the entire pop culture completely reinvented. About the time of the last Lord of the Rings film in 2003 Time Magazine (remember that one Grandpa ;-) ) had an essay called "The Geeks have inherited the Earth." I love to point out to my high school students that they spend oodles of disposable income on stuff that would have gotten the snot beaten out of them in my high school. :-) Pirate movies? BAM. Little Boy Wizards? Bam! Superhero movies? BAM! Lord of the Rings? BAM! (in fact in my school regular nerds beat up LOTR nerds..) And my favorite "Transformers" A lame Japanese cartoon has become a multi billion dollar cash cow. I have imagined an SNL skit taking place in 1981 in a high school where the bullies are giving the nerd a toilet swirly and the nerd defiantly points out, "Oh yeah Transformers is awesome. IN fact they are eventually going t make a series of big budget films based on this and your kids are going to spend lots of money on this!" Bully response: "Get his head back in the toilet now!"

ScottDS said...

Argent -

For all I know it is an epidemic but since I don't cosplay (and I'm not an asshole to people), I don't notice! It does exist but yeah, maybe not to the extent that some people report.

ArgentGale said...

Scott, I couldn't tell you for sure one way or another myself since I've never had much interest in attending cons - between the assholes and nuts that I usually encounter online and just not fitting into the gamer type associations at the colleges I went to at all I always figured they would be more of an overpriced headache than actual fun. I guess the frequency would depend on the size of the con, how much bad behavior gets tolerated, and similar factors, while at least a few of the reports carry a "geek culture is misogynist" flavor to them, which I usually regard as dubious. So yeah, who knows. I suppose I'll see for sure if I ever make up my mind on Dragon Con in time.

- Daniel

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