Report Comic Con 2005

Comic Con 2005 was an odd convention: it was the first Comic Con in a LONG time that I did not go the entire four days; yet it was still a great Comic Con! With friends in the masquerade, a chance to see Karl Urban (actor of Eomer in Lord of the Rings), and previews of the upcoming Narnia film, what more can a convention geek ask for? Perhaps the chance to have cosplayed…

This report will more than likely be one of my shorter Comic Con reports. If interested in a particular day, click one of the days below, or just keep on scrolling to read!

| Wednesday | Saturday | Sunday |


Two years ago Comic Con inaugurated “Preview Night” for all pre-registered attendees. Preview night really is a good night to check out the Exhibit Hall, get some early freebies, and check out the schedule for the upcoming weekend. For me, the “Preview Night” necessitates getting a badge early and plotting out where certain booths are for easier access during the weekend.

Let me just start by praising Comic Con with great praise about Preview Night. Preview night was one of the smoothest registration experiences…PERIOD! When my friends and I arrived to pick up our badges, I had been expecting to wait in a long line for about 2 hours, for that was the state of affairs in previous Comic Cons. But such wasn’t the case this Comic Con: there was no line; there was plenty of registers available to help with attendees, and I got my badge literally within two minutes of talking with the registrars; it was that simple. My hats off to the Comic Con staff for making it a smooth and easy process!

Since Sana-chan, Richiied, and Pikminlink arrived before I did, I headed downstairs to meet them while accompanied by Prim, corrielle, Rei and Fubu-chan— friends of mine, who for three of them, was their first Comic Con ever!

Once we were downstairs, we waited for about fifteen minutes until they let us into the exhibit hall. The exhibit hall was still enormous and jam-packed (in terms of booths) as it was during last year’s Comic Con. The only thing missing was of course, a huge Lord of the Rings display. Even the Star Wars booth seemed less impressive than last year’s.

Irregardless of this, there was a huge display for the upcoming Narnia film. Plus Nintendo was offering con attendees the chance to play demos of the new Zelda game for gamecube. Square Enix offered us a glimpse at the new Kingdom Hearts 2 and Advent Children—the Final Fantasy VII sequel.

Most of us in the group split up but Prim and I went around surveying the exhibit hall, occasionally taking a picture here and there. We were both amused at the site of a Star Wars Christmas tree complete with Star Wars and other pop culture icon ornaments. A full scale model of Darth Vader built of Legos; free Zelda tokens, free T.M. Revolution posters, and wristbands were just some of the things we found on the convention floor.

In the back of my mind I wasn’t going to spend a whole lot at the con because immediately following the con I would be taking a trip to England. However Prim convinced me to buy this ultra-cool Lord of the Rings poster with all the major characters. It didn’t break the bank, but I had to remind myself not to spend anymore.
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Now after preview day, you’d normally think I would write a report of what I did on Thursday and Friday. Well due to the fact I was working, I was not able to attend Comic-Con on those days. Now granted, Comic-Con is but a mere fifteen minutes away from my home; in theory, I could’ve attended after work.

The problem lay in my frustration of not getting ample enough time to cosplay (because I wanted to cosplay sometime during the con) combined with the fact that if I attended the last few hours of the con, it wouldn’t have been worth the $10 parking fee. San Diego sure knows how to jack up the parking costs.

Thankfully I was able to attend Saturday, even despite a time restraint of getting to a wedding job on time. Originally I was planning to attend Saturday after the wedding gig, but one of my favorite manga authors, Masami Tsuda; was attending and there was no way in the world I’d miss it!

Prim and I waited essentially three hours before the con opened in order to get our choice seats for Tsuda-sensei’s panel. For those that don’t know, Masami Tsuda is the creator of the highly successful Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou (His and Her Circumstances) manga. The fact she came to Comic Con and not Anime Expo was very interesting. I almost worried about the probable lack of people due to the fact Comic Con has become less associated with anime fandom. Well I was proven wrong when a whole bunch of anime fans filled the panel room.

It was cool because I ended up seeing friends from my high school anime club and was able to enjoy the panel with Bluejeans07, who was dressed as a character from the LOST show. Prim was dressed as Rukia from Bleach, and I was in my civvies (no time to cosplay since I’d have to eventually change for the wedding job).

When Tsuda-sensei came the Tokyopop representatives announced that no photos allowed. At first I was angered seeing as normally they are allowed within a Comic-Con setting, but then they announced it was per Tsuda-sensei’s requests. This led me to believe she either has a problem with the flash from cameras (because some Japanese guests can’t deal with all those successive photos), or that she’d like to keep her face/appearance private; which then of course I understood completely.

Tsuda-sensei was a pretty lady who appeared to be in her late 30’s. She was very soft-spoken and very humbled that so many American fans loved her work. She never expected such a big turnout.

Some of the questions from fans included which character was most like her, which character she enjoyed drawing (I believe she said Arima), and whether or not there will be more anime episodes now that the manga just finished in Japan. Another interesting tidbit is that Tsuda-sensei is a big fan of Johnny Depp and in one of her manga strips goes on and on about Johnny Depp. Can’t really blame her however, he is quite hot.

After the fan’s questions she ended up asking us questions about differences from our culture and Japanese culture, and then they gave out really cool Karekano merchandise to anyone who could answer their trivia questions. Bluejeans07 got a question correct about the high school Yukino goes to and so she won a set of Yukino and Arima pins.

Following the panel Tsuda-sensei was signing autographs at the Tokyopop booth. We bolted down there for a chance at an autograph but I knew that I wouldn’t have time to get one seeing as the panel had started a full 45 minutes late (and I had a deadline to meet with my wedding job). Plus I couldn’t leave one of my manga to get signed since Tsuda-sensei was only signing a certain postcard. Well Bluejeans07 did a very sweet thing and gave me her Yukino pin, seeing as it was handled by Tsuda-sensei. I was very grateful for it.

Upon returning from my wedding gig I met up with Corrielle and Rei to have dinner at Horton Plaza before heading back to the con and retrieving masquerade tickets. Retrieving those tickets were a bit of a pain seeing as they ran out but we were waiting on a friend of Rei’s who said she had extra for Prim and I. Thanks to Pikminlink and her family, Prim and I were able to get tickets AND sit so freaking close to the stage that it was almost unreal.

The masquerade itself was the typical masquerade: a bunch of ok/not so ok entries with only a few GOOD ones. The very good ones in my opinion were the Disney Girls skit, the HCC Rose of Versailles, the Serenity Group, Lara Croft versus Nightcrawler (their gymnastics were unbelievable) Coronation Eowyn, and the Nightmare before Christmas skits, of which there were two different ones and both very good.

What was not so good about the masquerade was the very loud and very immature audience. We literally were surrounded by idiots. I had a hard enough time trying to enjoy the show amidst shouting, stupidly lame jokes, and a host who could not demand the attention and respect of the audience.

Even though the host was horrible (same one as last year’s), I was NOT yelling stupid comments for the sake of being a jerk. There’s something called respect and even for those on stage whose skits are less than stellar, there’s no point in booing or yelling at them to get off the stage, or take it off (in terms of clothing)! How bad has our society become in terms of mannerisms? It simply was annoying and it reminded me of why I enjoyed being backstage helping out during the masquerade instead of partially enjoying it from the audience.

After the masquerade I ran into Coronation Eowyn, and Estel with Captain Jack Sparrow for some post-masquerade madness before heading on home for some much needed sleep.

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Sunday thankfully was one of the least crowded days at the con, but Corrielle, Prim, Richiied and I wanted to get their early because of Karl Urban’s panel and the Narnia panel. Karl Urban’s panel was actually the “Doom” movie panel. The supposed "real highlight" of the panel was that "The Rock" came, much to his adoring wrestling fans. I could've cared less about him or the fact it was a Doom panel, I just wanted to see Karl Urban! Now really can you blame me? I mean, he only played Eomer in my favorite movie of all time…so I think that’s explanation enough.

And yes, the movie is based off of the successful Doom video game franchise; they even showed a scene in first person shooter mode but it honestly felt like watching a game rather than a movie. Granted the movie is far from being done.

During the panel some people asked Karl to compare movie experiences from Lord of the Rings to Doom. He even said his “What business does a man, an elf, and a dwarf …” line which was fantastic and made the inner-Ringer in me squeal with delight! After the panel, Bluejeans07 (who met us at the panel) ran with me up to the autograph area in the hopes that Karl Urban was signing autographs. Unfortunately he wasn’t.

We headed back an ended up missing only twenty minutes of the Narnia panel, but we caught on as they showed us models of Minotaurs, ugly creatures that reminded me of Shrek, and a trailer that hadn’t been shown to the public. This really pumped up my excitement for the Narnia film. It was great to see Richard Taylor heading up the panel with other folks from Weta, Visual FX and one of the co-producers. There was also a satellite broadcast with the director and cast from London which was very neat and funny at times due to the 15 second lag they were experiencing. They opened up the panel to members of the audience who, depending on their questions, received cool props from the movies.

Following the Narnia panel everyone received a cool Aslan pin! Then we were chauffeured to an area upstairs to get a free movie poster, which Corrielle and I took to get autographed by the same people heading the panel. I wasn’t able to get Richard Taylor’s autograph since he was leaving just as I arrived to the autograph line; however, I was able to shake his hand and thank him for his wonderful work that he had been doing for Narnia. I must say he must’ve thought I was a blubbering fool since I was gushing extremely too much.

It’s interesting to note that I never stepped one foot in the exhibit hall on Sunday because I ran into Bluejeans07 again with her Disney girls skit group. We all had lunch at Seaport Village where Corrielle and I split on Nachos Grande. Having lunch with them was fun as we discussed the Comic Con masquerade, future masquerades, anime, other fandoms, and the craziness of the hobby known as cosplay.

While I was sad that I didn’t have the chance to cosplay, I was glad I just went to the con in civvies: the con is becoming increasingly more of a burden to cosplay in because of people that bump into you (due to the enormous crowds), people who walk in front of you while pictures are being taken (or you’re taking a picture), and just the overall length of the con (the latter is only a problem if you have ridiculously annoying cosplay shoes, but then again, I choose to suffer for my art).

Other than the cosplay aspect, it would’ve been nicer to attend all four days of the con like normal. Again, due to the fact I was going to attend England, I doubted I could even attend the con because of money. Yet somehow, something worked out. I am not too sure if I can attend Comic Con again next year. Cons are becoming less and less a priority; yet this con was certainly a con to remember, even with the problems I faced. There’s something about Comic Con that has allowed me to come back year after year and I’m grateful for all the happy memories. It’s been a fun eight years so far! Here’s to hopefully, many, many more!


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