Colleen Doran reports that Tori Amos will be signing the book on Saturday. Tickets for the signing — just 200 of them — will be given to people who purchase the book at the con (limited each day, so that they don’t all go on Wednesday).

She’ll also be on a panel on Saturday from 11:30–12:30. Here’s hoping DC doesn’t schedule a “What’s really happening with the Flash” panel at the same time, ’cause if they do, I’m skipping the Flash news. Someone’ll post it online. (Oh, wait…)

I am so looking forward to this…

I’m putting that off mainly because I need to do make the time to research what I’m going to get. I’ve narrowed it down to a dual-core AMD, but then I have to balance which processor, motherboard, and memory to get.

Also, at this point, I may as well go 64-bit, which is going to mean reinstalling Fedora. Though in theory I should be able to run the 32-bit OS to start with, which means I could do the hardware upgrade one weekend, and the OS reinstall the next.

The other tech upgrade I’m desperate to get is a new phone. While my ideal phone doesn’t quite exist yet, I’d really like something with better mobile internet access than my RAZR V3T — particularly with Comic-Con coming up next month. They’re usually good at keeping you informed of scheduling changes (unlike Wizard World), but now that I’ve got SpeedForce.org, I’d like to be able to do at least minimal blogging from the convention floor rather than waiting until I get back to the hotel. Posting by email doesn’t cut it, and even with the WPhone Plugin providing a stripped-down admin interface, half the time the built-in browser tells me it can’t display the page. I may bite the bullet and pay T-Mobile the extra $20/month for a data plan so that I can run Opera Mini.

On the plus side, I’ve at least found a way to post photos directly using Flickr.

Okay, there’s the usual love-hate relationship between any tourist destination and its clientele. Plus some people get freaked out by anyone in a costume. And sure, some attendees don’t understand basic concepts of hygiene, or bear an uncanny resemblance to the Comic Book Guy. But most of us are normal people (and shower every day). And besides, we’re bringing in all this business, right?

Well, maybe not. The New York Times writes, in an article about Hollywood’s uneasy relationship with the con, that the con is “decidedly low-rent.”

No. 33 on the official tip sheet* lists the grocery chain Ralph’s Market as an alternative to dining out. The Bio International Convention in San Diego, a gathering of the biotechnology industry, with one-sixth as many attendees, produces about double Comic-Con’s $41.5 million in economic impact on the city.

Yes, that’s right. A biotech conference brings the city 12 times as much per attendee as Comic-Con. The city puts up with 6 times the strain on their roads, public transportation, and other infrastructure, for only half the reward?

No wonder they don’t like us.

So here’s a mission for those of you going to San Diego this year: Head down to the reservations pavilion in the convention center lobby at least once, and make a reservation at a nearby restaurant. The Gaslamp District is right across the street from the convention center, so there’s plenty of good food to choose from. Be clean. Be polite. Don’t order the cheapest thing on the menu with a glass of water. Tip appropriately. Overall: make a good impression.

(via Comics Worth Reading)

*Not that I can find this official tip sheet anywhere. Plenty of unofficial tip sheets — heck, we wrote our own a few years ago — but no sign of an official one.

It started after last year’s Comic-Con, when I decided I wanted to go to something a bit less…intense. Last year’s Wizard World LA was nice, but a bit sparse, so I went looking for more comic and general sci-fi/fantasy cons within driving distance of the LA/OC area. Surprisingly, I didn’t find much. Gaming conventions, costuming conventions, Anime Expo, sure, but sci-fi? Pretty much just Loscon, which we both gave up on after 2002 (and from what I’ve heard, hasn’t picked up again). I asked around a bit on some forums, and someone on either Comic Bloc or Newsarama suggested WonderCon, and suggested considering the city as a vacation destination, not just a place to find a hotel for the con.

Since WonderCon worked out so well, I’m looking at what else might be fun. That’s part of why I did my price comparison last month, and Kevin Standlee’s comments got me looking at WorldCons and the like again. Not for this year, but maybe a few years out.

Looking at all these cons, I realized that beyond a certain threshold, distance doesn’t matter. Only the destination. If it’s far enough away that you have to fly, the only thing that distance impacts is the cost of your plane ticket. Whether your flight is 5 hours or 10 hours*, it’s still going to take up most of a day or night when you factor in dealing with the airports. Everything else, from hotel prices to whether you need a passport, a phrasebook, or currency exchange, is a factor of the destination.

WonderCon, I think, was at the boundary of driving distance from here. We could make the trip out in one day, but it was a lot more fun to break it into stages and make it a road trip. San Diego is at the boundary of commuting distance. We could drive out there in the morning and drive back at night (and I did that with my parents for over a decade), but it’s not practical to do for more than one day. Whereas if I wanted to, I could easily commute to Wizard World Los Angeles 2 or even 3 days. (As it was, we only went for Saturday.)

With two cons in Q1, and San Diego coming up in July, any traveling we do later this year is probably not going to be convention-related. As it is, we’ve talked seriously about three possible non-con vacation spots. But it might be worth casting a wider net for cons in 2009 or 2010.

*Katie and I were talking about this, and realized that it’s probably different if you have kids. In that case, a 5-hour flight probably would be significantly harder to manage than a 3-hour flight.

An open mike at a public event has increasingly become a magnet for people who should not be allowed near open mikes at public events. Audiences have begun to dread that portion of the program and to regard it as the signal that the event they came to see has come to an end. Thereafter, they can either leave (many do at that point) or sit there and cringe as control passes from the person they wanted to hear and goes to some stranger who, but for this opportunity, would never be speaking in front of a real audience and/or to someone of importance.

He goes on to mention the warning signs, like “On behalf of everyone here…” The people who, instead of just asking a question, need to turn it into the longest. public. statement. of. support. evar, as they pontificate about how this show changed their life, or that show inspired their writing, and can you please answer this stats question about my home-made Star Trek Role-Playing game after I read you a poem I wrote aaaaaall by myself?

No, really. I am not making this up.

As an example, at the Serenity panel at the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con, one “fan” took the floor to make a long rambling comment on behalf of fans who lived in Norway, London, England (“Both London and England?” “He’s got multiple personality disorder.”) etc. and explained that they thought Joss Whedon was “the best thing to happen to television since aerosol cheese.” Then he asked some question about the end of Angel and how they should handle some issue with the RPG. Joss tactfully handed it off to another panelist rather than tell the guy flat-out that it was a dumb (or at least inappropriate) question. (We’ve collected some more quotes from that panel.)

But this sort of thing happens all the time.

(via The Beat)

Update: The photo gallery is up!

The Floor

I spent most of the time on the main floor, hunting down back-issues, bargains and autographs. A lot of dealers had brought their bargain bins (some of them, thankfully, alphabetized!), and a lot of them had trades and hardcovers for half-off or close to it. There were also the booths selling high-grade Silver-Age and Golden-Age books, toys and collectibles, and at least two booths selling swords. Yes, swords.

At one point, I overheard two comic-book dealers discussing whether the show was worth it. One of them said that people here tended to be looking for bargains, so it was hard to sell anything else. They agreed San Diego was a better bet.

I’ve been joking that the logo design for this year’s con (see above) was inspired by the gigantic auto show that shared the convention center witl last year’s con. So I was surprised to find a mini-auto show here: Marvel-themed cars, including Iron Man and Punisher SUVs.

There was a stage set up for Guitar Hero. At one point, I noticed the music was Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” It seemed appropriate.

Costuming

There weren’t quite as many people in costume as I saw at WonderCon last month (also a Saturday). But there was a large contingent of people in Jedi costumes, some of whom seemed to be sparring with lightsabers every time I walked down the right edge of the dealers’ room. And there were Imperial Stormtroopers directing traffic, making sure people could find the one large panel room that was half-way to the other end of the convention center.

They held an informal costume contest at 1:00, with winners chosen by applause volume. To avoid interference from the “awwww” factor, they held two: one for kids, and one for adults. The kids’ entries consisted of two groups, one of DC characters (Robin, Harley Quinn, and someone else), and one of Star Wars characters (a Jawa, Leia, and someone else. Gee, my brain’s really working here). The Star Wars group won handily.

The adult costume contest had closer to a dozen entries, and came down to two: A very detailed, complicated Optimus Prime, complete with working taillights and light-up Creation Matrix, and a pair dressed as Mario and Luigi. The Mario Brothers won. (IMO, Optimus Prime was robbed.)

The weird thing is that the prizes for the kids’ contest were the same as the prizes for the adult contest: mini-statuettes and busts of characters like Hulk, Venom, etc. I can’t imagine the two-to-six–year-olds who won were terribly pleased with their prizes. The parents have probably listed them on eBay already.

Signings and Encounters

At the Avatar booth, I talked with someone who I took for a sales rep. But when I paid for the books I picked up, he offered to sign the Anna Mercury preview. It turned out he was Jacen Burrows, who’d drawn the cover. (Interestingly, over half their table space and nearly all their shelf space was devoted to Warren Ellis books.)

Once again, there were no placards provided in Artist’s Alley, but a lot of the artists had made their own. I finally managed to track down Josh Middleton, whom I’d looked for at San Diego last summer, and got him to sign my copy of All-Flash #1 (the new one, obviously!) We agreed it was really disappointing that DC had printed it so dark, but he said my copy was actually in the middle of the range! Some of them were even harder to see! I seriously considered buying a print (not that I have anywhere to put it), but while I was there he told someone else that only the pieces up on the board behind him were available—and it wasn’t on the board. Though I have to admit considering his River from Serenity: Those Left Behind.

While looking for Marv Wolfman (since I missed my chance to get the Crisis on Infinite Earths novel signed two years ago, I’ve been unable to catch him again at a signing), I saw recognized Mark Evanier standing on the other side of the row, talking to someone who I thought could have been Peter David. I walked around, saw it was him, and pulled out my copy of Fallen Angel #1 to get signed. He asked me if I was still reading the series at IDW. I said yes, I was, and he pointed out that J.K. Woodward was at the table next to him. D’oh! I hadn’t realized he was coming, so when I was putting together stuff to get signed, I only grabbed the first DC issue of the book, instead of the first IDW issue! We talked a bit about the current storyline, and I got to see some of the original art for the next issue. It turns out he’s doing a couple of signings in the next few weeks, so I might try to catch him at one of those.

I met John Wesley Shipp, who played the Flash on the 1990 TV series. After kicking myself for not bringing the Flash TV Special which I’d gotten signed by the show’s creators at another con, I just bought a photo for an autograph. I also got my picture taken with him. (The guy who was with him handling the money took the picture. When I handed him my camera, he asked whether the flash was on.)

I’ve noticed some common threads among the celebrity signing areas. Lou Ferrigno seems to do a full circuit of cons, as does the actor who played the original Boomer on the 1970s Battlestar Galactica. Several of the contestants from Who Wants to Be A Super-Hero seem to be making the rounds this year.

One set of autographs I wanted to get, but couldn’t, was Seth Green and Hugh Sterbakov. I’d brought my copy of the first Freshman trade, and went over to the Top Cow booth 10 minutes before the signing. Only one problem: The program book had neglected to mention that the signing required tickets, which had been handed out at the Top Cow panel 2 hours earlier.

Added: I did, however, find myself walking past the Golden Apple booth during the Pathology signing. I wasn’t sure whether Katie was in the incredibly long line (she wasn’t, as she’d had the same problem with unpublicized tickets that I later had for Freshmen), but I figured I’d try to snap a couple of shots of Milo for her as I walked past. Or, more accurately, shuffled past. The crowd was so thick that I basically couldn’t move for five minutes. I could barely see him, and couldn’t see anyone else at the booth. At least Michael Weston was supposed to be there, but I couldn’t tell. (Not that I would have recognized him.) (Edit: Apparently Alyssa Milano was sitting right next to him—probably straight through that other camera—but I couldn’t see her at all, even in the photos.) But one nice thing about digital cameras: you can afford to take pictures without aiming. It seemed like everyone in the crowd was reaching up with a camera.

Knowing is Half the Battle

The main problem I had with the convention was hidden information. I’ve mentioned the lack of placards in Artists’ Alley two years running, and the unannounced signing tickets. There weren’t any placards at the panels, either, so if you didn’t recognize someone by sight and couldn’t catch their name at the beginning of the panel, you were out of luck trying to figure out who they were.

Another problem was the map: it showed the dealer’s room in great detail, and the hallway with most of the panel rooms, but it didn’t show how to get from one to the other. It also didn’t show how to find Petree Hall, which turned out to be not only halfway to the other convention center, but directly above a street.

And then there’s the schedule. Most cons I’ve been to will put out a flyer with any changes to programming. Even small fan-run cons will sometimes put out a daily newsletter. Wizard World LA just posted changes on their website and in front of each room. So if, for example, you wanted to go to the Heroes panel, but didn’t know it had been moved from 6:00 to 5:00 in another room (probably to accommodate more people and Milo Ventimiglia’s schedule), and you hadn’t looked at the website at home, there were two ways you could find out:

• Check the website on your cell phone, assuming you’ve got an iPhone or Opera Mini or something else that can handle it.
• Scout out the old room more than an hour before you thought the panel was going to start.

We were fine, but there must have been a few people who showed up an hour late to the wrong room.

In Closing

While I was wandering the floor, Katie went to the Pathology and Lucasfilm panels. We met up for lunch (well, her lunch; I’d eaten an hour earlier), and again for Heroes. (Yes, I passed up DC’s “Countdown to Crisis” panel again.)

After the Heroes panel, we did a quick circuit of the dealers’ room. I wanted to pick up the Anna Mercury book (success) and check one more time for Marv Wolfman (no luck). We left around 6:30, during some sort of giveaway at the Marvel booth.

The door guards asked us two questions: “Did you have fun?” Yes. “Did you find great stuff?” Yes on that one, as well. Despite the convention’s flaws, it was more fun than last year’s, and definitely worth attending.

So I looked up the comic conventions in the area, plus the other two Wizard World cons that have prices up.

And to compare to some non-comic-focused conventions, some nearby, some just big:

It’s interesting to note that WonderCon (San Francisco) and ConDor (San Diego) are extremely cheap if you sign up far enough in advance. Also, when you expand to more general cons, San Diego Comic-Con is right in the middle of the range, with several conventions being more expensive. I’d guess that the more volunteer-based cons like Westercon and Worldcon probably don’t bring in as much money from exhibitors, so they’d be more dependent on memberships to keep afloat.

In compiling this, I discovered that this year, Comic-Con International isn’t going to be selling any memberships on-site. It’s going to be pre-registration only.

I guess they’re expecting it to sell out again like last year, and don’t want people to count on something they won’t be able to deliver. Plus I’m sure it’ll simplify matters for the con, since they won’t need to deal with taking money for registration.

Update: Added Loscon for nostalgia’s sake. Also fixed some links; GenCon rearranged their website sometime in the last 4 days, and I somehow typed in the wrong domain name for ConDor.

Note: These are the 2008 prices, except for the ConDor advance price, which is for 2009. All prices were obtained from the events’ websites except for the way-advance price for San Diego Comic-Con, which is simply the price I paid last summer for this year’s con. For shows with multiple membership packages, such as Wizard World, I selected the most basic package that lets you walk in the door.

*CCI always has a booth selling pre-registration for the following year’s convention at an even lower price.

So I looked up the convention website. The first location I saw was Orange County, which was a bit confusing because I live in Orange County, California, which is right next to LA. Then I remembered there was an Orange County in Florida as well. Scrolling further down the page I confirmed that the con was in Orlando.

The cognitive dissonance lasted all of a second or two, but it makes me want to go back and look at anything I’ve posted about WonderCon in the past week and make sure I mentioned it was in San Francisco.

(The post title is not to be *ahem* confused with ConFusion, a convention in Michigan for which I’ve occasionally seen flyers.)

Update: Photos are up!

Getting There

The trip to San Francisco was spread over several days during which we stopped at various tourist traps and visited friends. We got into town late Friday afternoon and spent the evening visiting family.

Saturday morning, shortly before 11:00, we arrived at Moscone Center. We could tell we were at the right end of the convention center by the Stormtrooper waving people along. The pre-reg line ran to the end of the block, but at least it didn’t wrap us around the corner. And when it started drizzling, they opened up a ballroom as a holding area and moved everyone inside. Clearly, they decided to get people in as quickly as possible instead of worrying about ticket fraud (probably more of an issue with CCI anyway). Instead of scanning the tickets’ barcodes, printing labels, etc., they had two people standing at the front of the line: one with a cardboard box, the other with a bunch of blank badges. As we walked past, one collected printouts and tickets, checked whether it was a one-day or 3-day pass, and put it in the box. The other handed out blank badges of the appropriate type. We were in the convention proper within 15 minutes.

The Exhibit Hall

The main floor reminded me a lot more of SDCC than Wizard World Los Angeles, though everything was smaller. I wandered around for several hours over the course of the day, spotting people in costumes, looking unsuccessfully for back issues*, and looking more successfully for deals on books and other stuff. At one point I spent probably 45 minutes looking through the unsorted boxes of a booth selling trade paperbacks for 50% of cover, and ended up getting $80 worth for $27.

I didn’t spend as much time as I’d hoped to in Artists’ Alley, but I did stumble across the artist of Alcatraz High. Last year in San Diego, I’d looked through a preview at his table, and walked away with a signed copy of #1, not realizing that the preview wasn’t actually in the first issue. I completed the set with the next two issues, and the one I’d passed up last summer.

Lines were a lot shorter, even for well-known celebrities like Kurt Busiek or Terry Moore. I spotted Phil Foglio at the Studio Foglio booth, and Sergio Aragonés had his usual table. I snapped a shot of JMS on the escalator, and he gave a sort of embarrassed “Oh, crap, I’m getting attention” wave. It was a bad angle, though, so I deleted the photo from the camera.

Panels

We both caught panels on the making of last year’s Beowulf, specifically animating Grendel and the dragon, and on Tokyopop’s manga licenses with Jim Henson: Return to Labyrinth and Legend of the Dark Crystal. I hadn’t realized that the first volume of the latter was already out, but I’ll be picking it up as soon as I have a chance. Though I have to admit that I picked up the Labyrinth sequel last year, and haven’t read it yet. (Sadly, I skipped the JMS spotlight to go to this, which means I missed the bunch of announcements.)

Katie made it to a panel on the psychology of comics and comics fans, and to one on special effects make-up. I attended the premiere of Justice League: New Frontier, which I reviewed earlier. I was surprised that there was no problem getting in. I caught the last ~15 minutes of the big Lucasfilm Clone Wars presentation, got a seat only 1/3 of the way back on the right side of the hall, and had a decent view of the movie and the panel afterward. (Funny moment: the panel moderator explaining that it was coming out on both DVD and Blu-Ray, and that the serious collector should get both. And that the really serious collector should get the HD-DVD as well, since they weren’t going to make any more!)

I almost went to the “DC: Countdown to Crisis” panel just to ask why the heck they think killing the Flash is a Crisis tradition, but killing Supergirl isn’t…but decided against it.

Oddly, people at this con didn’t seem to be interested in seeing specific things. They’d drop in on a panel for 5-10 minutes, then leave and do something else. It was like they were trying to sample everything.

After New Frontier, we met up again and made our way back to our hotel through the cold rain and gusty wind. By then, it was the kind of rain that comes at you sideways, bypassing any attempt at shielding with an umbrella. Even though it was only a 10-15–minute walk, it was infinitely more miserable than the same walk had been that morning, when it was marginally warmer and—more importantly—dry.

The Verdict

I’d definitely go to WonderCon again, though I’m not sure I’d make it an annual visit. If we do go again, I’d definitely do a few things differently. For one thing, I’d make sure we had more time in San Francisco proper. It’s too far a trip not to spend time sightseeing. We basically saw the hotel, the con, and the area right around my brother’s apartment! Though we did manage to catch a few nice views from across the bay on Friday. I’d also try some more restaurants. As for lodging, the Hotel Mark Twain was okay, but there are plenty to choose from. It might be worth staying in the official con hotel. And finally, I’d want to do something about the trip home. 12 hours, even with breaks for food, is just too long to drive.

*Regarding the back-issue hunt, it’s the same problem as other conventions. There isn’t a lot of Golden-Age material out there, and stores only bring the high-grade books they expect to sell. If you’re looking for readers’ copies, like me, you’re better off looking online. More recent books are more likely to qualify for the quarter bins—or, these days, the one-dollar bins.

The story links the dawn of the Silver Age of comics, and the formation of the Justice League of America, with the dawn of the Space Age, set against the political background of the Red Scare. It focuses most heavily on Green Lantern-to-be Hal Jordan and on the Martian Manhunter, but touches on Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and the Flash as well.

What Works

Cooke’s drawing style and the 1950s retro look to the artwork both translate well to the screen. The voice talent does a great job as well: At no point did I find myself thinking, “Hey, that’s Lucy Lawless,” or “Funny how Hal sounds just like Angel.” In many cases, I actually had to look up the names of actors whose voices I probably would have recognized if I’d been less involved in following the story.

The first 10-15 minutes are somewhat disjointed, but it soon settles into a solid narrative, and the battle which takes up the final third of the film is quite impressive. On the surface it’s about the new generation of super-heroes banding together to face the apocalyptic threat of “The Centre,” but it’s all really about two things: hope and trust.

Some of my favorite bits from the book are still there: Barry Allen racing across the country to stop Captain Cold in Las Vegas, pausing for a nanosecond to kiss Iris on the cheek before continuing. J’onn J’onnz absorbing American culture by watching TV, transforming into the characters he sees—including Groucho Marx and Bugs Bunny. Wonder Woman explaining how she freed the captive women in an Indochina village, and let them deal with their captors as they saw fit.

What Doesn’t

There are two main places where the movie breaks down:

First, the spaceflight sequence in the middle. There was just way too much wrong with it in a “Physics don’t work that way!” sense. I can buy the secret pre-Apollo launch; that’s a staple of the genre. But it would help if the rocket moved like, well, a rocket. Though I have to admit it didn’t bother me watching it with a huge audience of comic fans. It was only when I watched it again at home (M80 was kind enough to send me a review copy) that it really pulled me out of the action.

Second, the political themes came off a lot clumsier than I remembered. It has been a few years since I’ve read it, so it could simply be rose-colored glasses, but it’s probably just the result of trying to condense a 450-odd-page story down to 75 minutes.

Overall

It’s definitely worth seeing. And it’s convinced me I need to dig through my long boxes and re-read the original. (I also need to fill in the details on my Flash site’s write-up.) There are a number of subplots which fill out the backstory and the main themes which had to get cut for time. (An audience member on Saturday asked about the Challengers of the Unknown. They’re there—but only Ace Morgan gets much screen time.)

If you haven’t read the comics (or, as they’re careful to describe it, the graphic novel), I highly recommend it. It’s available as a single hardcover or as a pair of paperbacks. There’s more on the adaptation at the official website for the movie.

We left around mid-morning on Wednesday, driving through 2 hours of crappy Los Angeles traffic until things finally cleared up out toward Ventura. Along the way we saw something we’d never seen before: Our Prius runs in part on a battery, which is recharged by the gas engine, by coasting, and by braking. It has an 8-bar gage that mostly moves around in the 2–7–bar range. Heading down the pass into Camarillo, for the first time, I saw it fill all 8 bars.

We took the 101 most of the way, branching off at San Luis Obispo to take Pacific Coast Highway up to San Simeon. With all the rain we’ve had this winter, the countryside is amazingly green. The last few times I remember taking the 101 up the coast, it was summer, so the hills were all golden brown. We lucked out with the weather: instead of the constant rain I was expecting from the forecast, we only had scattered showers.

We spent Wednesday night in San Simeon. Dinner was at a restaurant called The Sow’s Ear in Cambria, which was very good.

We actually managed to see the lunar eclipse. Sort of. The cloud cover was just light enough to see the bright sliver shortly before totality. It screened out the reddish light completely. I have a blurry picture of the just-as-blurry eclipse which I’ll have to post later. Meanwhile, here’s the LA Times’ eclipse photos (c/o aeryncrichton).

Thursday morning we went to Hearst Castle for the morning’s first tour. We didn’t get the one we wanted (Tour 2) because it didn’t start until 9:20, and we wanted to get to San Jose by 5:00. If I could make one change to their website, it would be to list actual tour times. We got rained on a bit, but it was a good overview of just how eclectic the house is. Basically, if William Randolph Hearst was traveling and saw a piece of a building that he liked, he’d buy it, ship it back to California, and have it built into his house.

After stopping briefly in Cambria, we took highway 46 across the hills to catch up with the 101 and head north to San Jose. Partly I wanted to avoid the long, twisty, cliffside stretches of PCH, and partly we wanted to avoid getting caught in the bike race. The route goes past cattle ranches, empty hills, and wineries. At one point there’s a fantastic view of Morro Bay off in the distance.

We made it to San Jose around 4:30, and managed to get tickets for the last tour of the Winchester Mystery House. Yes, we toured two big, rambling mansions in one day. It was interesting to compare the way the tours treated the two places. With Hearst Castle, it was very much a museum tour. Everything was preserved as exactly as possible, including all the furniture and decorations, and they admonished you not to touch anything. And the docents were walking encyclopedias. With Winchester, it was much more casual. The speeches felt more canned, and the tour guide wasn’t concerned with anybody touching anything except for a few places where the floors or tiles were still original.

After the tour, we met up with our friends for dinner. I don’t remember the name of the place, but it was a tapas restaurant on Santana Row. Also quite good. Edit: Katie points out that it was called Consuelo.

Tomorrow: On to San Francisco. Not sure whether we’re going to WonderCon on Friday or not—it depends on what else is available (since they keep promising massive downpours of rain)—but we’ll definitely be going on Saturday. For one thing, I’m hoping to get to the premiere of Justice League: New Frontier. I really liked Darwyn Cooke’s original mini-series linking the dawn of the Silver Age and the dawn of the space age, and what I’ve seen of the animation style looks quite promising.

OK. It’s 11:30. Time to get some sleep.

Update: filling in a few pictures.

Continued in: Saturday/WonderCon and Friday–Sunday

• Comic-Con International 2007 Photos

I’m still adjusting the descriptions and titles and such, so the text will change a bit over the next day or two, but all the photos are up! 293 pictures of costumes, convention sights, San Diego and more!

The convention itself did turn out to be a nice, low-key experience, and I found some interesting stuff, but getting to the convention was a bit of an adventure.

Getting There

The drive up to LA wasn’t bad at all, though I made one critical mistake. Instead of getting off at the first exist that said “LA Convention Center,” I waited for the next exit: the 10W-110N off-ramp to Pico, where the traffic slowed to a dead stop. I’m not sure anyone actually made it to the end of the ramp. It’s possible I only moved forward when someone ahead of me gave up and tore off to the 110 South. After 25 minutes, I got close enough to see a glimpse of the street in front of the convention center… with a line of people stretching around the block.

At that point I decided to bail. If that many more people were there this year, it would be like trying to buy tickets at the door for San Diego. It wouldn’t be worth waiting for three hours just for two hours looking for books that I probably wouldn’t find anyway. I ducked into the next lane and onto the 110 South, took the first exit, and decided, you know, I drove up here, I may as well try to get in. I made it to the parking garage easily via surface streets, thought the Central City sign was appropriate, and headed out to look at the line.

That’s when I noticed three things: First, signs directed Wizard World to West Hall. Second, I was parked next to South Hall. Third, the people in line didn’t look like comic book fans. I walked the entire length of the convention center, eventually discovering that the South Hall was hosting the DUB Auto Show.

By the time I got past the Bride Expo and American Inventor, and finally found Wizard World itself, it was nearly 12:30. But there was only one person ahead of me in line, and there were two clerks selling tickets. I had arrived!

On the Floor

I didn’t attend any panels, since all the interesting stuff was on Friday and Saturday anyway. The main floor was much like the floor at Comic-Con, with a trade-show area, a dealer’s area, and an artists area, only a lot smaller, and a lot less crowded. Actually, I’d say there were about as many comic dealers at this con as there were at San Diego last year. Memorabilia and general pop culture has really taken over the CCI floor space.

As I walked in, they were setting up the Heroes autograph table. Zachary Quinto (Sylar) was the first one to arrive, soon joined by James Kyson Lee (Ando).

Oddly, there were no Heroes T-shirts to be found anywhere. It’s NBC’s biggest hit (Jeph Loeb joked that they refer to it as, “Save the cheerleader, save the network.”), we’re almost to the end of the season, and there are no T-shirts out?

There weren’t too many costumes. A couple of booth babes, one guy in a Transformers costume that I couldn’t place, and, bizarrely, an Alien who was helping to hand out promotional flyers at the entrance.

I wandered through Artist Alley a couple of times, mostly because I’d read that Humberto Ramos (the original artist on Impulse) was going to be there. One thing I found frustrating was that there were no placards identifying the artists. With very few exceptions, I don’t know any of these people on sight. I know their names, and in some cases I can recognize their art style. A few artists had brought their own signs, but surprisingly few of the rest had drawn up their own placards.

The Hunt

My main goal was to further the Golden-Age Flash hunt, which failed. I wasn’t expecting to find anything. Dealers seem to mainly bring their high-grade Golden Age books to conventions, and I’m not looking for collectors’ items, I’m looking to read them. The one low-grade book I found was a rare enough book (All-Flash #32*) that they wanted $200. Though I have to admit I enjoyed the chance to gawk at a pair of 9+ Flash Comics #1 and All-Flash Quarterly #1.

There were a few newer things I was looking for, and skimming the $1.00 and 50¢ bins reminded me of more. Around mid-afternoon, the cries of “All books, half off!” started reverberating through the hall, and I pored through several dozen boxes of 50%-off trade paperbacks. One booth had 5-10 copies of the first Fallen Angel TPB, a fact that came in handy when I overheard someone who was looking for the book.

In the end, I managed to find a full set of JLA/Avengers and a missing issue of Robin with Captain Boomerang, Jr.. The bargain bins helped me fill in the Seven Soldiers issues I hadn’t read, plus Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating JLA and Crisis (I read them tonight—the Crisis book was terrible, and not just because he made Crisis a villain instead of a concept), and a bunch of random Sergio Aragonés stuff.

I left around 4:00. The Pico off-ramp was still backed up, and getting to the freeway was a challenge.

Overall, not a bad day. Maybe next year I’ll try to attend on Saturday. Update: I did. You can read my 2008 WWLA Con Report.

*All-Flash #32 is not only the final issue of the series, but the three stories in it feature big-name villains: the Fiddler, the Thinker, and the first appearance of the original Star Sapphire. The Fiddler and Star Sapphire stories have been reprinted, but the issue contains the one Golden-Age Thinker story I haven’t tracked down.