San Diego Comic Con

Le’ me ‘splain. No, no, no, there is too much; le’ me sum up.

Last weekend I was at San Diego Comic Con as a Special Guest of the convention. I’ve been to New York Comic Con before, but… there’s really no comparison. NYCC has a different character — more corporate, somehow; less eclectic. And it doesn’t take over the whole damn city. SDCC is a city. Guesstimates (this is from one of the con staffers assigned to me as a “handler”) were that 140,000 people were at this one. The convention center’s capacity, note, is 130,000 — but I saw at least one scalper hawking counterfeit badges, so I think the over-max guesstimate is probably correct.

And my verdict? SDCC was stunning, overwhelming, awesome, terrifying, and magnificent. The Guest Relations Team took wonderful care of me, and I did my best to take good care of myself — but I’ve still picked up a touch of con crud, which has been threatening all week to become a full-blown cold. And though, sadly, many of my friends were at Readercon (taking place at the same time on the east coast), I got a chance to see some folks I haven’t seen in years, and be on panels with some of ’em — including Marjorie Liu, Brandon Sanderson, John Scalzi, Seanan McGuire, and more. I got to meet some new people, some of whom I utterly and shamelessly fangirled at, including Lynn Flewelling (fantasy writer whose Nightrunner books I’ve loved) and David Gaider (lead writer for Bioware, and my current favorite game Dragon Age) and Stephan Martiniere (the artist who did the painting that became the cover art for the Japanese edition of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms). Mr. Martiniere gave me a free print of this painting! It’s beautiful and I’m going to be framing it and hanging it in my apartment ASAP.

The goods: the aforementioned meeting of cool people and mooching of Stuff. Reading a never-before-published deleted bit of The Kingdom of Gods to a gigantic, packed room of I’m-guessing 250 people. Doing panels in packed rooms of I’m-guessing 500 people. Doing signings for almost that many; met a lot of cool West Coast fans. Going to a Brazilian steakhouse for the first time with Lynn Flewelling, her husband, and two new friends; holy crap, I’m still full. Using my “guest clout” to get into the Firefly Reunion panel; I tried not to be a diva, but I gotta admit it was nice to pull rank just once. (Ducks flying stuffed animals from people who stood in line all night. Sorry!)

There were not-so-goods. The crowds; holy crap, I’m not generally the type to get uncomfortable in crowds, but I did this time. Fortunately I had a hotel room to retreat to on those occasions when I shunted from “ooh, wow!” into “GRAH, KILL” mode; that helped a lot. I did stand in line for a few events, one of which was the infamous “Black Panel”. I’d heard such good things about that panel from previous years, but this year it was a real disappointment. Shaquille O’Neil was present, hawking a thoroughly unimpressive comic book he’s produced, but that wasn’t really an issue. What annoyed me was that the Black Panel — which had two white members, one of whom was the panel’s only listed woman — had no black women on it. And when questioned about this by an audience member (and me, via Twitter), the moderator blew it off with something completely bizarre: (paraphrase) “We get this question every year. We’ve made a real effort to include women in previous years, so I don’t know why they keep asking it.” Maybe because you gave up the effort, dammit. Worse, the panel was nothing but a banter-and-love-fest between the panelists; there was nothing informative about it. I’d come hoping to get some exposure to new artists, new books, news about cool stuff forthcoming. Other than Shaq’s (repeat: unimpressive) comic book, there was none of that. I left before the panel ended, honestly; I got bored.

And the Firefly Reunion, for all my excitement, was a disappointment too. Half the cast wasn’t there, including the actors who played my favorite characters (Zoe, Kaylee, Inara, and Book). And there was a seriously oogy moment when an Asian fan stood up to ask about Firefly’s infamous exclusion of Asian characters/actors from a supposedly Asian-dominated universe. Whedon’s answer was… less than satisfying.

Also, I almost got a photo with Anthony Bourdain, but the fanboy I gave my camera to took a lovely photo of his thumb. HULK SMASH.

Still, on balance, the con was a hit. Will I be going back? No time soon! It was so overwhelming that I’m not sure I want to make a yearly thing of it; it’s been almost a week and I’m still physically exhausted. If they invite me again as a guest, I’ll consider it, certainly. But maybe in a few years. :)