Report Comic Con 2004

Comic Con, the home con and final con of the summer; there were many good things that happened and some bad things as well. Nevertheless, being able to hang out with cool cosplay friends I only see several times a year AND meeting new ones, is always a delightful experience. 

Interested in my adventures? Scroll to continue reading, or click the day of your choice!

Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |


Comic Con International takes place every year at the beautiful Downtown San Diego convention center; this year the convention center took on new life as the “mysterious hall H” was unveiled, adding tons and tons more square feet to an already huge building.

I’m sure this is not the only reason, but it was no surprise to me that come Thursday and the crowds are out in full force…WELL before Saturday! I figured on Thursday I’d wear an anime costume so I wore my Asuka Langely Sohryu from Evangelion. My sister (Sana-chan) wore MY Frodo costume from the beginning scene in Fellowship, and then my cousin SomethingLulu wore her joke “Teacher Lulu” costume while our friend Darkvision wore “Schoolboy Tidus.” We ran into Agentsakur9, Crazybunta Mike, Yuna, AJ, and Saphywaphy; took pictures with Eurobeat King; and ended up hanging out with Pikminlink and her family for most of the day. 

In terms of panels I wanted to attend, there was only the preview of the Ringers documentary and that did not elicit enough interest for everyone else to stay later; plus I wanted to get stuff ready for Friday. So in terms of panels for Thursday, didn’t attend any; basically spent my entire time perusing the exhibit halls, marking out certain booths I wanted to return to, and checking to see if any cool autographs were scheduled.

We retired from the con early to Pat & Oscars for dinner: there we witnessed a person pour sanitizer liquid from the second story floor onto some customers and their food…interesting entertainment to say the least (we were worried we’d suffer the same fate since we were eating outside as well). 

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Friday, for me; was the best day of the con. I started my day by waking up at 4:00 am just to get ready in my Frodo traveling outfit. Sana-chan wore Summoner Yuna and SomethingLulu wore Lulu. We arrived at Comic-Con way earlier than the exhibit hall opened in order to get parking; as a result, we went to Seaport Village for breakfast where this little kid got all excited to see our costumes.

Returning to the convention center, we stumbled upon DarkVision and Pikminlink with her family. We garnered a lot of attention just standing around waiting for the exhibit hall to open and surprisingly, AOL interviewed us for an “online commercial (have yet to see it since I don’t have AOL).” 

Once the convention center opened, we returned to our exhibit hall purchasing while hanging out and running into cool people (ziggybecket, moo, azanaphrodite, Adella, and the Pippin from ORC). I enjoyed taking pictures with fellow Ringers and the little kids especially were adorable when they’d squeal “It’s Frodo Baggins daddy!” 

Around 2:00 p.m. I did a touchup on my makeup (although one of my ears didn’t withstand) for the photoshoot with Kyle from Cosplay.com. That was such a fun photoshoot because I was able to get some really cool shots in my new Frodo gear (Check out the photoshoot here). After the photoshoot I hanged out with my friend Mochystar in line for the New Line Cinema’s Lord of the Rings Panel. 

It was a good thing my friend had a good spot in line because the line was already wrapped inside and outside the building! Thank goodness the room was able to hold 6,000 con attendees. Thinking about it now, that’s almost HALF of the attendees of Anime Expo piled in one room! Anyways I heard from a con goer earlier that the line started around 9:30 am…now THAT’S insanity. I mean, I consider myself a fan, but I was willing to get in line about 3 hours before the event so as not to ruin the rest of the day at the con. It was a good thing too because I ran into Uncle Bilbo! Great guy and great costume and I’m sorry we only got to hang out for a little bit until we entered the panel room. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get enough seats for everyone, but I tried. Inevitably I had a good seat and at least the people on stage were visible. Before the panel started a girl came up to me and said “You’re chobit right?” and I was all confused and said yeah and then she said she’d be right back. Thinking nothing of it I was readying my camera for when the panel started. Then no sooner do I start and I see Kelbebop, wyvernwell, and Scendan. I kinda leaped into a glomp with Scendan (which normally I refrain from doing but I hadn’t seen her since the Oscar party) which turned into a short “Hi’s, how are you, new cloak fabric?” before being ushered out from “blocking the aisle.” Stupid con security…gotta love em and hate em…

The panel was well worth the wait, even though I had to sit through movies I was not interested in before they showed Lord of the Rings. The panel basically previewed upcoming scenes from Return of the King Extended DVD (which has restored my faith in Jackson) while having a Q & A session with the cast and crew that worked on the film. They had two guys that worked on the extended DVD’s, Rick Porras (co-producer I believe), David Wenham (Faramir), and Billy Boyd (Pippin). 

To say the crowd was loud is a bit of an understatement; I think the audience was in a state of euphoria over these two alone showing up. They have a lot of charm and wit and easily poke fun at other members of the fellowship. It’s almost too bad the panel did not last any longer because being in a room with these people was just awesome!

Favorite highlights from the panel (SPOILERS ENSUE SO CLICK HERE IF YOU DON’T WANNA BE SPOILED):

• Eowyn & Faramir scenes in the House of Healing (happy fangirl squee)
• Extended shots during the Paths of the Dead
• THE MOUTH OF SAURON IS SOOOOOOO CREEPY!
• Not in the DVD (unfortunately), but Viggo and Dom have “their” version of why Viggo did not make the Oscars this year.
• Plus many more stuff that is all a blur right now…

At the end of the panel they stated Billy and David would be signing autographs SOMETIME on Saturday. If anyone wanted an autograph, people should stop by the New Line Cinema booth. I heard that and immediately got excited for Saturday. After the panel I found Ashley dressed in her Arwen dress from Helms Deep (the one that got cut from the movie but the dress was still gorgeous). So we ended up taking a few pictures before I saw scendan and the rest of ORC. I talked with them for a bit as we oogled over the coolness of the panel.

And that was about it for Friday; a great way to end the 2nd day and certainly one of the best Fridays I’ve ever had at a con.

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But then came Saturday; Saturday I had mixed emotions over and you’ll see why later.

First off I started the day on a bad note getting into Will Turner because I couldn’t find my shoe buckles, was having drama keeping my pants up and rolled because they weren’t hemmed, and just overall frustration. It sucks too because I ended up not getting ANY pictures with my sister who was dressed up as Jack Sparrow. And why?!

Well first off after hearing the New Line Cinema booth was going to have an autograph session with David and Billy, I IMMEDIATELY wanted to get back to Comic-Con as soon as possible. By the time the exhibit hall opened (which was even earlier for a Saturday), I bolted to the New Line Cinema booth and there was a sign saying “Autographs at noon, LINE WILL START AT 11:30.”

My first thought was cool; but then realizing a line wouldn’t be starting until 11:30 made me skeptic: would people REALLY buy that? Would people start forming lines anyway? Or just hang out in the booth regardless?

I wasn’t going to let the chance of an autograph miss me so I asked the people sitting at the booth whether or not this would be a TICKETED event (because in the past that’s how I missed Elijah Wood’s autograph session). They specifically said, “No this is not a ticketed event. It’s a first come first serve for anyone who shows up in line at 11:30.” I breathed a sigh of relief; but at the same time that meant I had to hang around because what if at 11:30 they said “Line is starting here” and then a mad dash of people crash the line? I figured they’d cap the line because it was going to get long so my goal was to stay in the booth and continuously take pictures of the costumes actually used in the movie. They were beautiful to say the least, but three hours of taking their pictures started to get old.

And sadly they kept telling people to move or else leave the booth. Eventually they kicked everyone out of the booth in order to interview David and Billy before the autographs. By that time an ENORMOUS crowd was surrounding the booth and I was sardine-d like a fish against many people; holding my stuff I wanted to get autographed, and holding my camera for the chance of getting their picture close up.

Then here comes the pisser, they started giving out tickets which they SPECIFICALLY said they were not going to do. I reached my hand out frantically in order to grab one but I never got one. I was pissed and heartbroken at the same time because I waited SOOOOO LONG in order to get them. All I ended up getting, in retrospect; was candid shots of David and Billy from a close shot…and wishing I was in the picture with them. David did a funny thing and took out his camera to take a picture of that enormous crowd surrounding and his camera was aimed in my direction! So sad to say he has a picture of me taking a picture right back.

Getting out of the crowd was troublesome too because everyone just WOULD NOT MOVE. It was the worst kind of fire hazard according to the security guards but what could you expect? Lord of the Rings is a big thing now; there are plenty of fans wanting the same chance I did.

I almost wished they had made it a ticketed event because they would’ve avoided the hassle of that crowd. Apparently my sister was able to get Dominic Monoghan’s autograph because they were doing a ticketed event where you come back at a certain time and you’re guaranteed an autograph as long as you have the ticket. Why didn’t they expect that David and Billy would both conjure a huge crowd? I was very pissed and thought it was the worst organization for an autograph session either. I guess I can consider myself lucky in the past, but honestly it’s really upsetting.

It’s also upsetting how everyone smashed my costume, stepped on my cape; and just made me look like an utter mess. Needless to say I was in Will for a very short time before heading back to the car to change in civvies. 

Afterwards I ended up hanging with sis and Alaria in her Rose of Versailles costume. It was funny how the non-anime people thought Alaria was one of Jack’s pirate wenches. Pikminlink joined us in her Oni-Link and we just headed around the exhibit hall.

I had a nice dinner with sis, Lord Masamune, Alaria, Ashley, Mink, and Yuna. It helped to forget the autograph mess. After dinner I spent the rest of my time backstage since Somethinglulu was Wonder Woman in the masquerade. Her group was doing the whole Justice League of America. 

I think the whole point of being in the masquerade helps because then you don’t have to be in the extremely annoying audience nor wait in a long line just to get in; you just are. I wasn’t completely useless either since I made several trips back to the car to get makeup cases for Somethinglulu. 

It was cool to hang backstage with fellow friends, taking pictures, and just laughing and having a good time watching all the skits. This year’s was another competitive year of costumes but I was pretty certain who would win Best in Show.
Surprisingly, I was wrong. The judging (in my opinion) was TOTALLY skewed. I was glad at least that the groups I liked one something, but I think they deserved even more. Oh well, I have certain opinions that I will best leave offline unless anyone wants to discuss them with me in private.

Irregardless, I still had fun and would not have traded the experience for anything else.

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Sunday was the anti-climatic day; I checked up on booths I had entered for raffles, ran into Kelbebop, Cordelia, Pippin and their Faramir; said my goodbyes to Eurobeat King, Alaria, Lord Masamune, Adella and Kyle; and FINALLY ran into my friends Joey and setasoujiro27. I also got filmed again from the Ringers booth and they remembered me from the Hollywood Film festival I attended. Funny thing is how there’s a clip of me in the documentary…I WANT THE DARNED FILM OUT NOW! Yeah, it looks ultra cool!

So that was Sunday and the entire con. Despite the minor irritancies, I still had tons of fun! It’ll be a long time before I ever stop going to Comic-Con. It’s my home-con and every year brings its fun new experiences.

For first time goers (especially those in the cosplay community), don’t go to Comic-Con expecting huge cosplay gatherings because the majority of people go for the panels and the exhibit hall. There will be plenty of people that dress up, but nothing as far as formal gathering listings like Anime Expo or some other anime convention.

But if meeting celebrities is your thing, if you’re not JUST into anime but have a broad range of interests, and just want to hang out with cool people; you’ll be in for a treat. Have fun and see you all next year!


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