San Diego Comic-Con 2013 was my first year as official press and it was wild. SDCC is the biggest convention of the year but I’ve been used to it as a guest. Finally seeing things from press’ side gave me a whole new perspective and a bunch of new opportunities. The biggest opportunity being all the interviews. I’ll get to those later as I give a quick tour of the general look of this year’s convention with some highlights of what I saw when I wasn’t running to my next interview. Seen above is the great giant Teen Titans Go! inflatable statues.
I saw this flower arrangement before even getting my pass and I knew I wanted it here. Sadly, the creator was nowhere nearby and so I am left wondering who made this awesome tribute to Cap. If this is your work or you know who did this, please let me know, I want to praise this person for how cool this was. A picture of it pales in comparison to how cool it looked in person.
For a place with “Comic” in the name, toys have become the big thing people want from SDCC, beyond having these amazing figures here from Sideshow Collectibles, people were clambering to get all sorts of exclusives. I was glad that none of them really sparked any desire in me cause I heard of some people waiting for hours to get just one figure of some toy or another. Just about everyone was looking for some toy or another, I was looking for Kamen Rider Fourze figures so even I was on a toy hunt.
The Dark Horse booth was where I spent a lot of my time waiting for a majority of my interviews. They ahda really nice set up this year, that TV screen was rotating through a bunch of different comics and they had a bunch of cool stuff on display for what was to be coming out later in the year. There was a seating area kept for the interviews to be conducted, it was really nice.
Outside the convention center they had some pretty cool stuff for everyone to see and not just those of us who had badges to get in. Such as this racist robot head, my favorite part of what I just said is that it’s true. This Sentinel head from the upcoming X-Men movie was huge and you could get rather close to it and I worried about it when it rained. Why do I care about a discriminatory robot so much? Because I’m not the bigot in this situation, the head is, that mutant-hating head.
These statues are made entirely of Lego and they are life-sized. The Robin was my favorite and these reminded me of the Lego sets from Batman Live. These weren’t the only Lego sets available, there was also Bag End from The Hobbit with many of its characters all around. What was impressive with that one was how there was a fully detailed on all sides.
Look at that security guard for scale of that thing! I wanted to go in and would not have been surprised had there actually been a fully formed room in there. These are all made out of normal sized pieces, the detail and dedication is phenomenal! I thought Gandalf would be taller but isn’t that what we always say when we meet celebrities?
Couldn’t find Scoob and the gang but I was really hoping that what I saw nearby was where they were because it was a…
PIRATE SHIP! Assassin’s Creed: Rollins Band Black Flag had a pirate ship that they threw a party on. I was really hoping there were rumors of pirate ghosts (ghost pirates?) so that that was where Mystery Inc. was running around. I’ve shown you plenty of scenery let’s get some people in the mix!
Here we have Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick during the Venture Bros panel (one of the few panels I went to.) Doc had chosen the gentleman holding the shirt to be the best Henchman #21 cosplayer of the bunch they brought up front during the panel. Doc Hammer could not get his camera phone to work so it was a hilarious ordeal of attempting a single shot.
Hey! It’s Boston Metaphysical Society‘s Madeleine Holly-Rosing and her husband! Have you checked out Boston Metaphysical Society? Did a Webcomic of the Month about it and everything, you should go check out the comic at the very least, maybe the interview?
COSPLAY TIME! I didn’t get a chance to take too many photos this year, sadly. I did enjoy these ones especially. Comic Attack’s own Mac is in that first shot as anthropomorphic GLADoS alongside anthropomorphic TARDIS and Rule 63 Joker. What an age we live in! The next shot is of Kid Loki and Clint “Hawkeye” Barton facing off and now I want Fraction and Gillen to write this story. Finally we have Gentleman Ghost and right before taking a picture I watched him straight up shoot a guy. Two ghosts now, sorry dude.
Konami was nice enough to invite me to their gaming suite where they had new games, food and drink. This was really nice and the games they had were fun from what I saw. The latest Castlevania was enjoyable, I am terrible at even the simplest quick time events but if you have me climb a giant robot while fighting demons, I’ll be happy. They had a soccer game but I’ve never been interested in sports video games when I can just play said sport. Upstairs they had the Metal Gear collection that takes the old games and cleans them up to HD quality and it looked amazing. Overall a great time and would love to return whenever they do this again.
I also got to be at the Mega 64 Ten Years of Perfection panel and that was a lot of fun and really sweet with the nostalgia of just how far they’ve come with their work and fun. It’s always great seeing those guys and can’t wait for this year’s Game Days at Disneyland. This was an aside but it’s still SDCC related so get off my back. I’m sorry, that Con is wild and it does things to me.
With that we end what was effectively a slideshow of my vacation/work, hope you liked it and return next time cause from here on out it’s interviews! You should start playing the song “Are You Ready For This” from your Jock Jams album, I got Eisner-winning writer: Paul Tobin, Superhero band: The Aquabats, creator of Dr. McNinja: Chris Hastings, and the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra: Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DeMartino. Hope you liked this and dig these upcoming interviews! I love you! (Like a friend.)
Alexander Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net