Of course, Halloween and horror did make their presence known, starting with the signs for zombie parking, and continuing with programming, guests and costumes. (Jump straight to the photos.)

Getting In

I’ve never had a problem getting into Long Beach before, but this year the line to get in stretched all the way to the end of the lobby. Or rather, the line for people who had pre-registered stretched that far. When I arrived, there were only a handful of people in line to buy tickets at the door, and I was kicking myself for the last-minute decision to buy my tickets ahead of time this year. It took 45 minutes to get through the line, but only 20 seconds to hand over my paperwork and pick up my wristband. They were efficient, just understaffed.

Still, it’s nothing compared to the time I went to San Diego without pre-registering — back when you could still do that — and I waited in line from 8:00am until noon.

Around the Con

The floor never got too crowded, but the only place it ever felt empty was way in the back by the fan groups and the wrestling ring. And there was nothing going on in the ring at the time. (The first time I saw wrestling at a comic con I thought it was weird – until I realized it was a bunch of guys in garish costumes fighting each other, often with code names and dual identities.) I think the longest line I saw was for John Carpenter.

Most of the well-known small publishers were there: Aspen has been really involved in the con from the beginning, and I saw BOOM!, IDW and Top Cow. There does seem to have been some drop-off. I can’t remember seeing Dark Horse or Zenescope, for instance, and either would be a shoo-in with the added horror theme. DC’s never had a booth here, but they held panels at the first two Long Beach Comic Cons, and they didn’t seem to have any official presence at all this time around. (They have a panel at Comikaze Expo this weekend instead.)

At the back of the main floor, the con had set up several event areas: a Laser Tag arena, a wrestling ring, and a stage. I wandered by the stage while Captured Aural Phantasy was performing a staged reading of an 1940s crime comic book: melodramatic, tongue-in-cheek, over the top, and thoroughly fun. I didn’t catch the title of that story, but they followed it up with “Revenge Can Be Fatal (The Mad Hate of Dr. Zart)” – a sordid (if sparse) tale of vicious betrayal and revenge gone wrong.

I didn’t make it to any of the panels this year, though I was glad to see they’d managed to get rooms close to the main hall this time. (Last year the programming was all the way around the other side of the convention center.) I kind of regret skipping out on the masquerade, though.

Artist/Writer Encounters

The first booth I went to was the Aspen Comics booth, and Joe Benitez was there. He signed my copies of Lady Mechanika #1 & #2, and while I didn’t talk with him very long, he said that issue #3 should be out within a few weeks.

I caught Marv Wolfman at the Hero Initiative booth (he was actually behind me in line for lunch, but I didn’t want to bother him while he was trying to eat), told him that his and George Perez’ classic run on The New Teen Titans is what got me into comics in general and DC in particular, and asked him to sign The New Teen Titans: Games, the long-delayed graphic novel that finally hit the shelves last month after nearly 20 years.

He asked me if I’d had a chance to read it.

And I had to admit that no, I hadn’t.

He suggested that I try to read it all at once, which is just as well, since that’s exactly why I haven’t gotten to it yet. He also said that this was the first work of his in a long time where he hasn’t found things he wanted to change after it was published.

I spent at least half an hour talking with Brian Buccellato, co-writer and colorist on the new Flash series. We’d talked on Twitter before, and met at a signing he did at The Comic Bug the week that Flash #1 was released. He was kind enough to give me a sneak peek at Flash #3 — which looks awesome! — and drew me a sketch of Impulse.

Swag

I didn’t buy much this year (lightest backpack ever, even with the stuff I brought for autographs), though I was seriously tempted by Absolute Sandman for 40% off. One of these days, I’ll buy it.

I did discover a new webcomic, Rock Paper Cynic, and picked up the first collection. The strip that convinced me was a reference to Chekhov’s Gun. What can I say? You can take the theater major out of the theater, but you can’t take the theater out of the theater major.

Try saying that three times fast.

I also picked up a two-issue indie book called Prodigal, which looks like an Indiana Jones-type adventure, and the Coffee: It’s What’s For Dinner collection from Sheldon. (This one pushed me over the “must buy” threshold.)

And when I went back to the Hero Initiative booth to link up my Ralphs card for their community charity program, I discovered that they were offering incentives to do so — one of which was the Transmetropolitan art book. I guess it makes sense: they get a lot more in the long run from an ongoing percentage of grocery purchases than they would from a one-time sale. But it still felt like a steal.

Outside the Con

I always try to get outside at least for a walk and a look around. The convention center’s right by the ocean, and while I didn’t explore as much as I did the first year, I did wander out on the deck/bridge past the Hyatt hotel next door. It turned out there was an event going on there as well, though much more sparsely attended: Over the Edge had city council members and other people rappelling down the side of the hotel to raise money for the Special Olympics. There were a few lunch trucks up on the bridge by the info booth, but in the end I decided to just go back to the convention center and grab a panini.

I went out again later on after I grabbed some coffee, and ran into a group of four or five guys who were out celebrating Halloween with what sounded like a costumed pub crawl. One of them wondered what was going on at the convention center, and someone said it was Comic-Con, and he said, “No it’s not! Comic Con is in September!” I told him that it was Long Beach Comic Con — “No way! There’s a Long Beach Comic Con now?” — yes, in its third year. I told him how much it cost, and let him know about Comikaze Expo next week. They moved on, and when I headed back toward the convention center a few minutes later, I saw Jabba the Hutt stopped at a food truck. People were stepping over his tail to get past. Later on I saw the same group in the lobby. I guess they’d decided to check it out.

I wonder if they ended up coming back for Sunday.

»More convention reports
»Take me to the photos!

A couple of years ago, Wizard World Los Angeles seemed to be all about people looking for deals on comics and collectibles (in which case, why not just go to Frank and Son or the Shrine?). When the show resurfaced in Anaheim this year, it seemed to be all about the celebrity autographs.

If you just want to see the photos, check out the photo set on Flickr. Otherwise, read on!

Layout

The first thing everyone noticed was the row of themed cars out in front of the convention center: A Camaro painted up as Bumblebee, a replica of KITT from Knight Rider, cars from less geeky shows like Starsky and Hutch and (IIRC) Magnum, P.I.…and a car that had been modified to look like a Rebel Alliance small fighter, complete with an R2 unit!

The main floor at Long Beach was bigger this year than last, though nowhere near as big as Anaheim. Unlike Anaheim, they used most of their space.

All the publishers were clustered near the entrance, with Aspen and BOOM! the most prominent, followed by Top Cow, Image and Avatar in the next row with other small press, along with the celebrity autograph area off to one side.

The rest of the floor was structured with a huge Artist’s Alley at its core, surrounded by retailers on either side. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that it was two Artist’s Alley areas with dealers wrapped around them in a sort of F shape.

If you went to Anaheim Comic-Con this year, remember how big the celebrity signing area was, and how small the artists’ area was? Flip it. My gut instinct says that there were more artists with tables here than there were in San Diego, but then it could just be that they’re a bigger percentage of the smaller space.

Publisher Presence

The Southern California-based comics publishers seem to have really gotten behind this convention. BOOM!, Aspen, Image, Top Cow and IDW all had booths and exclusives, and I remember seeing Avatar and Zenescope as well. Several of them hosted panels talking about current and upcoming books.

DC Comics actually had a couple of panels too, though they weren’t in the program. I only found out about the DC Universe panel from the announcement over the PA system. They announced major panels and signings as they started, which was a big help…but of course it only works up to a certain size convention.

Events

Because I was only there for one day and had plans for the evening, I ended up making a lot of trade-offs. Especially after I found out how far away the panels were. Last year, the panel rooms were directly upstairs from the entrance. This year you had to walk outside, around the corner and down the street to another entrance below the Long Beach Terrace Theater in order to get to the rooms. The walk wasn’t hard, but it took time.

In the end, I only went to one event: the surprise DC Universe panel, which turned out to be mainly a Q&A session with Eric Wallace, J.T. Krul, Dustin Nguyen, Bob Wayne, and (I think) Byran Miller. Some items I thought interesting:

• J.T. Krul got really depressed when writing The Rise of Arsenal.
• He also gave the Titans Tower fan site a shout-out as a great reference.
• At least some writers are aware that no matter how obscure a character they pick for a story, there will be someone out there who is a huge fan, has every appearance, and knows more about the character than they possibly could.

I ended up passing on two panels I wanted to hit:

• 50 Questions in 50 Minutes with Mark Waid, because I wanted to track down Mike Mignola and get him to sign The Amazing Screw-on Head for Katie, and was afraid that if I waited until after the Mark Waid panel, I wouldn’t be able to catch him before…
• The Mike Mignola Spotlight, which I passed up because I wanted to have time for a full circuit of the main floor. If I’d been able to stay through 7:00, I probably would have gone, but as it was, I had to leave by 5:00 or so.

I don’t know how I’m going to manage a single day in San Diego next year!

Signings and Swag

Highlights: Mike Mignola, as I mentioned earlier. I picked up a copy of Scott Kolins’ variant cover for The Flash #4 for less than cover price(!), but passed on the $10 Project Comic-Con variant of Velocity #2. I got Joe Benitez to sign Lady Mechanika #0 and draw a quick sketch of the character (shown here). I also ran into Jay Faerber at the Image booth & talked a bit about Noble Causes and Dynamo 5, but didn’t have anything for him to sign.

Speaking of Lady Mechanika, it looks to be a really interesting series. Sort of a steampunk cyborg detective with a mysterious past — so mysterious that she doesn’t remember it herself!

Crowds and Costumes

The crowds were light, but the floor was always busy. I didn’t see any huge lines comparable to last year’s Geoff Johns & Peter Tomasi signing, but I didn’t get over to the autograph area at all, so I may just not have noticed. It was a good balance between an active convention and being able to actually talk to people in the industry.

I think there were more people in costumes this year than last, though I couldn’t say whether it’s due to the con being more established, or it being the day before Halloween. I definitely saw some familiar faces (Valerie Perez as Zatanna, for instance). There were also several families with group costumes. I remember seeing a Ghostbusters family (mom, dad, and ~5-year-old). Another where the mother was dressed as sexy Boba Fett and the ~12-year-old daughter was an incredibly detailed Ahsoka from Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

There were at least two remote-controlled R2D2 robots rolling around the floor. I lucked out when I went to drop some stuff at my car: the owner of one of the R2s was loading it in the back of his SUV, and he’d removed the head so that it would fit. I asked, and he let me take a look at the inside, though I couldn’t see much since he’d already lifted it into the car. I don’t know why it seemed odd that it would be built on a wooden frame.

Verdict: Long Beach Comic Con is definitely worth an annual visit for Southern California comic book fans!

Hulk want more photos!

Sunday

• Watched a nearly-full moon set into the cloud layer behind the LA skyline on my way to Adobe MAX. #
• Obligatory pic of Adobe MAX entryway. #

Monday

• Made it to the keynote just as, I kid you not, Martha Stewart took the stage. #
• Nice demo of dynamically wrapping text around image content (not box), to be contributed to Webkit. #
• Content aware fill demo on a tablet – “performing witchcraft” on the progress bar label. #
• Multi device link: iPad as classic color palette mixer for desktop Photoshop. #
• Blackberry Playbook approach: don’t dumb down the Internet for mobile devices, bring up the performance of the devices. #
• Green Hornet game demo: same app running on desktop & touch screen phone, auto-detecting input methods. #



• The Green Hornet car. I wasn’t expecting overlap between a tech conference and Comic-Con. #
• Something else Adobe MAX has in common with Comic-Con: Flash fans. #
  

Tuesday

• When I got here, the line for Starbucks was about 5 people. Now I can’t see the end. #
• Managed to scarf down a sandwich from Starbucks before the evening session. Interesting mix of tech crowd & Lakers fans. #
• Ok, I am officially a geek. I ranked 7th in a phone-powered Star Trek trivia contest with several hundred people at a tech conference. #
• And then tweeted about it. #
• Adobe MAX sneak peeks’ method of keeping people from going too long: A Klingon with a phaser creeping across the stage. #
• Very cool demo of auto-converting long video to a tapestry for better scene selection. #
• Nifty Photoshop demo: post process photo based on a model. “what if this photo had been taken by Ansel Adams?” #
• Nice! Automatically compensating for camera motion blur! #

Wednesday

• Gotta love LA traffic. I left for Adobe MAX 40 minutes earlier than yesterday and arrived at the same time – too late for my 8:30 lab. #
• Funny how you can get nostalgic for your first version of Photoshop. (Sadly, 2.5 is missing.) #
• MAX is definitely less crowded today. No problems finding a table for lunch, and the cell & wifi networks are a lot less congested. #

All this despite the fact that I put the request in within 5 minutes of the system going online. That part was smooth, and judging by the comments on Twitter and at The Beat, it went smoothly for most people.

Then came the waiting.

On one hand, it was better because I could actually do things — like, y’know, work — instead of sitting there hitting refresh on the browser and redial on the phone for two hours. On the other hand, instead of two hours of active frustration, it was eight hours of wondering whether they had lost my info, or whether I had mistyped my email address, or whether they had actually run out of rooms in the first five minutes and hadn’t gotten around to telling me. A confirmation number for the request itself would have gone a long way toward making me confident that I was in the system.

Later posts on Twitter, and later comments at The Beat, reflected the growing sense of frustration among congoers — and anger as they were assigned hotels that weren’t even on their list.

Order

It seems that not everyone’s requests were handled in the order received. I saw people who had received confirmation hours before I did, but who had submitted their requests a few minutes later. My guess is that Travel Planners was taking two passes through the queue: one pass to handle the requests that they could fill based on people’s actual choices, then one pass to handle the requests where all the preferred hotels were full. Even that doesn’t quite track, though, so I’m not sure what was really going on.

Edit: Katie suggested that they might also be prioritizing based on how many nights you tried to reserve. I was only reserving three nights, so it sort of makes sense that they might give more weight to someone trying to reserve four or five.

Lessons to be Learned

As with the convention’s struggle with crowding, every year they solve one problem only to discover another lurking behind it. A lot of people have compared this year’s process to a lottery, but really, it actually shifted the advantage from luck to typing speed.

Think about it: For the last few years, everyone has had to try to get through, repeatedly, over a period of several hours. Those lucky enough to make a solid connection would then make a reservation and leave. You could start at 9:00 and get through at 9:05 or 11:00, but there really wasn’t any sort of strategy you could apply other than trying multiple avenues at the same time.

Now? Everyone logs in at 9:00, fills out a form immediately, and submits it. Whether you submit your request at 9:05, 9:10 or 9:15 has nothing to do with luck. Instead, it has to do with whether you made up a list beforehand, how long it takes to enter your information, and how much time you spend verifying it before clicking that button.

In that way, it’s actually less of a lottery than it used to be!

Update: I’ve posted some ideas on what to do if you couldn’t get a room.

The reservation page was actually optimized!

• Just one image: a banner across the top.
• Everything was on one page, including the list of hotels, the personal info, and the hotel choices.
• Hotel selection was done by client-side scripting, so there was no wait for processing between selections (and no risk of typos confusing their processing system later today).

This is a huge deal, especially compared to Travel Planners’ horribly overdesigned 2008 forms — yes, forms, plural — that kept bogging down. (I never even saw last year’s, though I tried for an hour and a half to get in.)

On the downside, that one page does load a half-dozen script files, but that doesn’t seem to have slowed it down much.

In case none of your 12 choices were available, they asked for a maximum price you’d be willing to pay for another hotel that’s not on your list. I vaguely recall this being a feature of the old fax forms, but I don’t remember being asked this on the phone last year.

I was surprised to find that they didn’t want credit card info immediately, but that’s good from a streamlining perspective as well. The hotel choices, room type, and contact info are critical in order to make the reservation in the first place. Payment can be done later, so in a rushed situation like this, it’s better to handle it later. Plus, not asking for credit card information means that they could run the site without encryption, speeding things up a bit more.

I would have liked to have gotten a confirmation number for the request, or an email, just so that I could be sure that I was in their queue. And to be sure that I entered the right email address. And the right start and end dates. And…well, you get the idea. I’m a little paranoid about the process at the moment.

Here’s hoping that the back end of the process, and sending out confirmations, goes as smoothly as the front end did.

Update: Short answer: it didn’t. Long answer: I’ve written up what went wrong, at least from the guests’ point of view.

The fall newsletter, now an online magazine, went up today, and along with it not just the date for reservations, but a list of hotels…including distance, prices, and shuttle stops. Hotel reservations go online March 18, 2010.

Additionally, they’ve made some interesting changes that may help combat the craziness:

• Reservations will now require an immediate deposit of one night’s stay
• Deposits are fully refundable until May 14.
• From May 15 to June 17, there’s a $75 cancellation fee.
• From June 18 onward, deposits are nonrefundable.

With luck that’ll cut down on some of the “just in case…” extra reservations, now that there’s an actual financial commitment to it.

(Cross-posted at Speed Force)

Note: If you just want to look at photos, feel free to skip to my Long Beach Comic Con 2009 photo set on Flickr.

Location

It’s been at least ten years since the last time I’d been to the Long Beach Convention Center*. I didn’t recognize the building the con was in at all (and I’m sure the shopping mall across the street wasn’t there before), though the facade and lobby reminded me a lot of the San Diego Convention Center with the arched ceiling and floor-to-roof windows. It made me wonder whether they had been designed by the same architect.

With a mall across the street to the west, Shoreline Village across a bridge to the south, and Downtown Long Beach across the street to the north — not to mention the food service in the lobby not being swamped — I really regretted having brought my lunch with me. Though it probably did save time, since I had panels I wanted to see from noon until 2:00. If I’d wanted to go to, say, the Auld Dubliner (right across the street! Auughh!), I would have only had about half an hour on the convention floor that morning.

*Not counting plays at the Terrace Theater. Though the last thing I saw there was a touring production of Miss Saigon in 2003, about two days before the start of the Iraq War. Talk about timing.

Main Hall

I think the main floor was about the same size as the floor at Wizard World Los Angeles the last couple of years — or rather, the amount of floor space they used was about the same. (Last year WWLA had a large empty space in the back.) Exhibitors were clustered around the entrance, mostly indie press (I remember Boom, Archaia, and Aspen) and a large Nintendo exhibit. The center of the room was dominated by the Artist’s Alley, with dealers wrapped around it and celebrities lining one wall.

In the back, inexplicably, was a raised wrestling ring. I didn’t notice it when I went through in the morning, but in the afternoon, when they were actually holding wrestling matches, it was loud! Halfway down the hall, you could hear the *smack!* *thud!* as the wrestlers threw each other to the floor. I figure the floor of the ring and the convention center floor must have made a fantastic sounding board!

I got in about 20 minutes after the con opened for the day, so if there were any huge lines I missed them. The artists’ tables were practically empty (they came in later), and most of the action seemed to be at the publishers’ booths and dealers. There was a big line for Jim Lee, and people were lining up for Stan Lee and Berkeley Breathed signings at 11:00.

Unlike San Diego, though, I could walk around without relying on Level 18 Crowd Weaving!

I made a half-hearted effort to look for some of the Golden-Age Flash comics on my list, but I knew I wouldn’t find much. Dealers just don’t seem to bring readers’ copies of golden age books to conventions — or if they do, they’re the rarer ones (like, say, late in the run of Flash Comics) that they can charge $95 for. In the end I picked up a couple of half-priced trades from a series I’ve been meaning to read.

There weren’t a whole lot of people in costume, at least not by San Diego or WonderCon standards. Though I suppose it’s probably about the same percentage of attendees. One thing I noticed is that I’m actually tuning out a lot of the Star Wars costumes, particularly Stormtrooper and Mandalorian variations. There was a gold-painted Boba Fett who walked past me about five times, and not once did I try to take a photo.

Annoyingly, I couldn’t get any signal at all on my phone in the exhibit hall. In the lobby? No problem. On the mezzanine balcony? Just fine. In the programming rooms? Sporadic. Enough to pick up text messages, but not necessarily enough to post.

Panels: DC Nation & Mark Waid

The two panels I hit were DC Nation and “50 Questions in 50 Minutes With Mark Waid.”

I got to DC nation just before it started, and given the relative lightness of the crowd I was surprised to find it almost full. The panel started out with two announcements, one about Flash and one about Outsiders. The cell signal lasted just long enough for me to break the Flash news on Twitter.

The rest of the panel was question and answer format. I’m used to Q&A panels having a microphone set up in the audience, with people lining up to ask their question. This time, Ian Sattler walked around the room with a cordless mic, and people with questions raised their hands. I asked about plans to reissue the collections from Geoff Johns’ initial run on the Flash. A lot of them are out of print and hard to find, even online. “No plans at this time.” *sigh*

Anyway, I’ve written up the Flash news from the panel elsewhere, and CBR & Newsarama have decent writeups of the whole panel.

The Mark Waid Q&A started out with very few people in the audience, but filled in to maybe 1/3 of the room by the end. A screen up at the front of the room displayed the title, some cover art from Incorruptible, and a timer. They had a bunch of questions that had been submitted ahead of time online, and every few minutes they opened to questions from the floor.

Questions ranged from the standard (“What’s going on with X series?”) to the personal (“What’s your favorite beer?” — it’s not beer, vodka.) to the insightful. One that I found fascinating was his answer to the question, “Do you write every day?” He explained that no, he writes every other day, because he finds that he writes better if he writes one day, then takes time off to recharge. For writers, he made the suggestion that you shouldn’t necessarily follow someone else’s method of writing: you should find the method that works for you and embrace it. For his write-every-other day method, it wouldn’t do any good to beat himself up and feel guilty about the days that he’s not writing.

By the end, he managed to answer 56 questions in 50 minutes.

Signings

I looked over the guest list before coming, and decided I’d try to get things signed by Mark Waid and Geoff Johns. I’d gotten Waid to sign The Unknown #1 in San Diego largely by accident, and Johns had signed the first three issues of Flash: Rebirth. For Geoff Johns, I figured I’d bring Rebirth #4 and the variants I had since picked up to make a complete set. For Mark Waid, I figured I’d bring the first issue of The Unknown: The Devil Made Flesh and dig through back issues for some sort of milestone issue. I ended up bringing Impulse #1.

Unfortunately, I had no idea where or when either of them would be signing.

Mark Waid announced a 2:30 signing during his panel, so I took the half-hour break to do some sightseeing (see below), then came back to the BOOM! Studios booth to stand in line. I got there a little late, but there were only about 10 people in line ahead of me. We talked briefly, mostly about The Unknown, and I got someone else in line to take my picture with him.

Then I figured I’d make a second pass through Artist’s Alley, now that the artists had shown up, and noticed a long line running about half the length of the “alley.”

“What’s this line for?” I asked.

“Geoff Johns,” someone answered.

Well, that solved that problem!

So I got in that line as well. At one point I talked a bit with another fan in a Flash T-shirt (he approached me with the standard, “Nice shirt!” greeting of people wearing the same logo). Somewhere along the line I found out that Peter Tomasi was also signing in the same line (it was a Green Lantern/Blackest Night thing), but I’ve never read any of his stuff that I can recall, so I didn’t have anything for him to sign. As I neared the front of the line, the guy in front of me started talking with him about the con, and how it seemed to be off to a good start — like San Diego 20 years ago, back when it was fun — and I sort of nodded and made a few comments like I knew something.

Then I was up to the front of the line, handed Geoff Johns my stack of comics, and told him I was really happy about the Flash announcement he’d made. He said it was going to be a chance for him and Scott Kolins to get back to the kind of stuff they were doing back on their initial run on the book. I said something about how I’d been worried that Wally was going to be sidelined, and he said something to the effect of, “Hey, you shouldn’t worry about that – I’m writing it!”

After the signings I went back up to the lobby, bought an iced mocha, and checked in on Twitter, Speed Force and Comic Bloc, then returned to actually make that pass through Artist’s Alley. I ended up looking at a lot of art, and bought a couple of prints.

Sightseeing

I wandered outdoors for sightseeing a couple of times, once right before that block of panels, once right after, and once at the end of the day. There’s an artificial lagoon wrapping around the Hyatt hotel and the convention center on the ocean side. You can’t really see them in the panorama shot, but in this photo I took a minute or two earlier, you can see a group of cosplayers hanging out on one of the islands.

There’s a pier-like bridge extending from the end of the lobby past the Hyatt out to the shoreline. You can just see the Queen Mary over the tops of the shops and restaurants of Shoreline Village. While there I spotted a couple of oddities: a group of people riding Segways (I decided it the group term should be a flock of Segways) and the Good Year Blimp soaring above a roller coaster and Ferris wheel.

Then there was this great blue heron standing nearly still as if it were posing. I must have spent five minutes stalking that bird, taking photos every few seconds at lower and lower zooms until I got about five feet away. It just stood there, not a care in the world, as if it were thinking, “I’m ready for my close-up!” Eventually the bird did take off, and I tried to follow it, and (amazingly) managed to get a decent shot of it in flight!

At the end of the day, I dropped my stuff off in my car, then went up to the courtyard in front of the Terrace Theater. Mostly I took pictures of the immense fountain. While I was there, there were three women who looked like they were probably there for one of the other events going on that weekend (a craft fair and a corporate training event), and a small boy who looked maybe four. As I walked past them to get to the other side of the fountain, the boy looked at my T-shirt and shouted, “Flash!” I turned around, grinned, said something like, “Yes!” and flashed a thumbs-up sign, then continued on.

End

The last sight of the con I had before getting in my car was a discarded wristband on the steps of the parking structure. It seemed to sum up the end of the day.

Update: I’ve finished and posted my con write-up as well!

A group decided to step in and fill the void by launching the Long Beach Comic Con. The first convention is this weekend…at the Long Beach Convention Center.

Tonight I drove past a billboard and found out what’s going on this weekend at the LA Convention Center, where Wizard World would have been:

“Adultcon.”

Given some of the opinions I’ve seen expressed about Wizard, I suspect there will be people wondering, “What’s the difference?”

It makes me want to headdesk.

Now, I don’t hate Vegas. I’m not ZOMG in love with it, but I’ve been there more than once and I don’t think it should be removed from the face of the earth. What I believe about Vegas is that it is a law and a destination unto itself, and that everyone should be able to choose whether they go based on the merits of the place, not on the merits of what else might be going on there that isn’t a usual part of the location. Please keep this in mind as I present my list of Reasons Not to Move CCI to Las Vegas:

1. Weather. San Diego may be incredibly hot some years, but it’s coastal. There are breezes a lot of the time, and it’s often quite bearable. Vegas is inland desert and is 99% guaranteed to be nasty hot in July/August. Part of the crazy fun of CCI is seeing costumes on the street, which would become darn near impossible for a lot of people given the temperature.

2. Distance. I’m not talking about the distance for people to get there (though I will in a bit), but the distance between things. It can take over half an hour to get from the front door of one hotel to the front door of the next one over. In San Diego, it’s pretty easy to leave the convention center, go find food that’s not jacked up in price for an inferior product, and come back. In Vegas, unless you take the monorail, that’s a pipe dream, especially given that the convention center is off the Strip and not really near a lot of hotels. Keep reading for more.

3. No public transportation. Well, not NO transportation. There’s the monorail, and there are buses. But the monorail only goes down one side of the Strip, and the traffic on the Strip itself, where the buses run, is a nightmare 24/7. The monorail is not convenient to get to; it runs down the backs of the hotels, and getting to the stations from the street, or vice versa, can take 20 minutes just by itself. (We timed.) Lots of hotels do have shuttle service, but it’s not huge, it’s not universal, and it’s not fantastic. Based on the masses of humanity I’ve seen at the SD Old Town trolley station, I doubt the monorail has enough cars to pack the schedule as full as they’d need to, and I doubt the shuttles will satisfy fans wanting to get to places at specific times. There would need to be charter buses, the way SD does it, but because this is Vegas, they would want either tickets or tips…probably both. Which brings me to:

4. Pay For Play. In Vegas, the dollar is still almighty. You can get a hotel room for $50 a night if you play it right, sure, but you don’t get the perks that identify you to the hotel’s amenities providers as a Good Customer. In some places, if you just want people to be polite to you, you have to pay them. In others, you just get dirty looks if you don’t tip. It’s been said that CCI wouldn’t make a dent in the normal daily Vegas people-traffic; if that’s true, then we’d all be running into this. Think it’s maddening to get slow service because a restaurant in the Gaslamp is full, or because you think you’ve been pegged as a low tipper? Try being in Vegas where they know whether you have spare change. Doesn’t matter if the place has only two parties in the section; if one of them is a Vegas regular and has paid to be part of their Premier Club, he’ll always get better service than the other party. I’m imagining the cheaper hotel restaurants being overrun with congoers who don’t understand the ethos (if you can even call it that); the saddest part is that if they voice any displeasure, they simply won’t be heard because all that’s happened is that they’ve run into how Vegas deals with those they perceive as cheapskates. They discourage you from coming back until you’re ready to spend. And,

5. Everything costs more. More accurately, it’s a case of the substandard being cheaper and the quality merchandise being more expensive. You can get a lot of pure crap for very little money, but you have to be willing to accept really crappy crap. Most stores are either souvenir dives or designer boutiques. I’d bet even the toothbrushes in most of the dives are emblazoned with “LAS VEGAS.”

And the food. Every megahotel in the vicinity of the Strip has a restaurant hierarchy. There is at least one posh place, one just a bit below it, one just a bit below that, a buffet, a theme bar, and a taco/burger/coffee stand. Most of the “nice” restaurants in SD are comparable in price to the lowest-price nice places in Vegas, and there aren’t nearly as many tony upscale spots. Not only that, but the cheap places are much greater in number in SD, and easier to get to (see #2 and 3 above). If there are more restaurants in a megahotel, there is usually a theme place that may be either very posh or very casual, followed by a doubling of one of the lower-priced ranks. They’ll also have bars around the casino floor(s), and occasionally a cookie or ice-cream shop. If the hotel is not a new “mega” type, they’ll have a coffee shop and a nice place, and some coffee/ice cream/burgers. The Stratosphere is the best for cheap eats, but it’s not close to anything. (The biggest souvenir shop in the city doesn’t count.) And at the other end of the Strip, the MGM Grand isn’t bad for it either, though their counter service is tucked away into the winding halls at the back of the place. Sure, there’s fast food dotted around here and there, but chances are that you’re not going to want to make the 45-minute trek to the McDonald’s when you can go a monorail stop away and find the cheap food in the hotels on the monorail line. Which will be mobbed, because nobody’s going to want to take the time to hike across the street and hunt through a megahotel for something they can afford.

Actually, there is one thing that doesn’t cost more: alcohol. Three guesses why.

6. No commuting. To those who come in from, say, Virginia, this may not sound like a big deal. But it’s just plain fact: there are fewer people living within 2 hours’ drive of Vegas than within 2 hours’ drive of SD. With the con in SD, people can even stay with friends (or in cheaper hotels) in LA, OC, or even Riverside, and take a train or other mass conveyance into town for the con. Not so easy in Vegas. Which means that a lot more people would be staying in town, filling up services and probably driving up hotel prices out of sheer demand. Another consideration: Hollywood is not close enough to Vegas for big-name stars to come out by bus for just one day. There’d have to be planes involved, or hotel stays; and with the way insurance works, the cost might be too great for the perceived benefit…especially considering how many lowlifes decide it’s their right and privilege to post exclusive footage to YouTube five minutes after it’s been aired. Dragon*Con suggests that there would still be plenty of star power, but such things as bringing in large portions of new movies’ casts might become much less feasible.

In the interest of fairness, there are a few reasons Vegas would be superior to SD for a giant con of any type:

1A. Parking. Vegas has parking. Acres of it, all over the place, for a lot less than you pay in SD. Anyone driving in would be able to park, for as long as they wanted, probably even wherever they wanted. Then again, #6 above might mean fewer people wanting to park in the first place.

2A. More floor space. The LVCC has nearly four times the floor space of the SD facility. To someone who’s been stuck in foot traffic on the floor at least once every year, this sounds like absolute heaven. Even if the con used only half the floor space available, prospects might be a little brighter for those of us slogging through the whole thing. On the flip side, they don’t have much more in the way of meeting room space; chances are, there’d be a bunch of exhibit space being used as the equivalent of Ballroom 20 and the 6A-F rooms. I’m not sure from the floor plan whether any of the large floor divisions is set up to be the equivalent of Hall H; I may need MeetingMatrix to find out. (Because only a meeting planner could ever possibly have a legitimate desire to know the details of the center.) Also, there are multiple small convention/event centers in Vegas; one of these could easily be used for, say, an exclusive screening of something at night. Ticket sales for 12,000 seats in the Mandalay Bay center would probably cover the rental cost and the rights, with some left over for the Cause of the Day.

3A. More hotel rooms. The Vegas visitor site boasts “over 140,000 hotel rooms,” which sounds fantastic. Throw in the fact that many congoers share rooms, and you have a recipe for much easier reservations than can be had in SD. Downside: the same room can vary in price by as much as $300 from Tuesday to Friday night, so you can bet they’ll be picking a more middling point on their scale for con-block reservations. And this is Vegas, so see #5 above. They’re going to do everything in their power to be sure their Premier Club regulars are able to get rooms if they want them.

If Las Vegas wants CCI, it’s in the way Irvine wants a university: they want the benefits without having the necessary people around. Congoers for CCI, by and large, are not well-heeled yuppies with expense accounts, and we are not there to spend our money at the blackjack tables. The Vegas I know is not enthusiastic about our kind of congoer overrunning its streets and its bars, and it has a much higher threshold for good financial behavior than San Diego—where we already fall short. Let’s do ourselves a favor and start looking for better solutions to the crunch.