it’s not a secret that we go to sdcc every year; however, this was the first year in a while that we had near to nothing for an agenda. with the sag-aftra and wga strikes happening, several of the main booths had cancelled and so had several panels.
yet, even before that, we had only planned on going two of the 5 days: Friday and Saturday. things changed again when we decided to take Thursday off for no reason and that had us taking the trolley downtown for the first time ever.
thursday
there’s a trolley stop near my office, so we headed down later in the morning and took the 15 minute ride. That provided us with an entirely different sight when we got downtown.
we had decided that since we hadn’t planned on going Thursday, we would use it as our shopping day. I had wanted to buy some artwork from Chris Maze, so we headed to his booth first.
After picking up the things I wanted there, we headed over to Effin Birds. I was looking for enamel pins, but found trading cards instead. And if you bought a certain amount, Aaron would draw and personalize a “shitty duck”… so you know I did that.
We walked around after that, just checking out the floor and watching the various cosplayers. It did start to feel like it was crowded like a Saturday, so we didn’t stay much longer.
Friday
the morning had us driving downtown instead of taking the trolley. (we did go to a couple of offsite installations, but since it would be promoting struck work, I will not be including those in the recap at this time.)
The main thing I wanted to do was see Jamie Lee Curtis. I was able to meet up with Jess who had gotten in line and we were able to get into the room for the panel right before JLC. The before panel was Todd McFarlane, so that was pretty cool to see some upcoming Batman things.
And with that, the panel for Mother Nature started. The panelists were the head of Titan Comics, Russell Goldman (the co-writer), Karl Stevens (the illustrator) and of course, Jamie Lee Curtis.
They talked about how the idea came about, their process for writing, how Karl was the only person who did the illustrations and that it was all by hand, how they researched, and all of the gruesome murders in the book.
Toward the end, Jamie started talking about how she wanted a different sort of cover–one that highlighted said gruesome murders–but it was decided that perhaps it wouldn’t work for the mainstream. And then Titan announced that they had made 100 editions with the alternative cover: 3 for the creators and 97 that would be for sale the next day.
Jamie was absolutely delighted.
After the panel, we did go over to the Titan booth to see if there was any additional information about getting the special edition. They told us that the special editions were going to go on sale Saturday at 9a. Another person stated that the floor wasn’t even open at 9, that only exhibitors were allowed in at that time.
The people at Titan said they would make note of that, but ultimately, it wasn’t up to them. It did seem like a lot of work and sort of an impossibility to get in before the floor opened, so we decided it wasn’t something we were going to try for.
We ended up walking around and I bought even more. It wasn’t too much longer in the afternoon that we decided to call it a day. And after finding more cosplayers, we started the trip back to the car.
Annnnnnnd then I found two (TWO!) different groups of Ted Lassos. The duo on the left handed out little army men and the group on the right handed out goldfish keychains that had quotes from the show printed on the back.
Hubs was enamored with this #MexicanWonderWoman (I still need to look up her hashtag) and no trip in the Hilton elevator is complete unless you share it with some stormtroopers.
And just like that, we called it. We decided not to go back down for the weekend. The entire con felt the same, but different. Perhaps it was the lack of a plan. Perhaps it was the missing Hollywood aspect. Perhaps it was just us, feeling our age and choosing a/c, ice cream, pjs, and binge watching something.
Of course we’ll be back in 2024, so until then…
I would love to go to sdcc just once. I haven’t been to the local comicon since before Covid. Just haven’t really been anyone I wanted to see there, or it wasn’t scheduled at a time I could go. Maybe next year. We’ll see. Thanks for sharing!
Local cons can be so much fun! I hope you get to go next year. Thanks for always reading and commenting.