Toy Box: SDCC 2008 – The Best and Worst!

Another year, another San Diego Comic Con goes by. For many years now I’ve been braving the crowds and crazyiness to savor all that is the nerd prom, and I always enjoy myself. This year, the entire show sold out in advance – no tickets were avalable on site. I don’t know of any other public convention where that occurs, particularly since we’re talking around 125,000 advance ticket holders.

Here again is my Top 10 best and worst aspects of this year’s con. And while I’ll be complaining about some things (it is our nature after all), please let me say that the positives of the experience greatly outweight the negatives. Let’s get to the list!

Number 10 Best – The panels of course. While I’ll be the first to admit that overall the panels this year weren’t quite as blockbuster as last year, I did attend some terrific ones. I think this is the first year they’ve ever held any panel in Hall H that was television show themed, but both the Heroes and Lost panels were fantastic and filled to capacity. We got to see the entire first episode of this seasons Heroes (with lots of great answers like who shot Nathan Petrelli and plenty more interesting new questions), and while the Lost guys never tell us much, at least they do it in a Hell of an entertaining way. I also enjoyed panels on the Venture Brothers, Robot Chicken, Terminator: Salvation, Pixar’s next film Up, and Disney’s next animated release, Bolt.

Number 10 Worst – The lines for the panels, of course. Hall H wasn’t too bad, even when the lines were long. That’s the thing about lining up almost 7,000 people – it’s one HELL of a long line, but you all get in. In fact, I got in line at 9:45 am for the 10:30 am Heroes panel, thinking I’d never get in (the lenght of the line was awe inducing), and yet I made it in on time with room to spare. I plan on turning the experience into a uplifting documentary film called Waiting. I smell Oscar.

But other rooms were not so lucky, and there were great panels in the other rooms. This year, 6CDEF was particularly bad, and by Friday morning I realized that I was more likely to have a pleasant experience with Hall security than seeing anything in the large combined room.

Number 9 Best – The celebrities. Comic-con is becoming the place to pimp your show/movie/projecct. I didn’t see a lot of celebs wandering the flow (Scott Adsit from 30 Rock was there, as was Dennis Miller, and Triumph the Insult Dog was enjoying himself), but the panels had everyone from Matthew Fox, to the entire cast of Heroes, to Chris McCulloch (creator of Venture Brothers, and voice of Hank Venture). It appeared as though all were having one Hell of a great time, too.

Number 9 Worst – The crowd. This was particularly obvious on Wednesday night. It appears as though they are selling just as many tickets for Wednesday as any other day…but there are no panels or other activities to pull people away from the main floor. Add to that all that geek adrenaline that’s been pent up for 360 days since the last Comic Con, and you get one large, pushy, annoying crowd. At some point they have to look at moving to a larger location, perhaps in Vegas, or the show may simply implode to form the first nerd black hole.

Number 8 Best – My introduction to the Flight of the Conchords. Actually, this has nothing to do specifically with the con, but while I was there my nephew had me watch the entire first season DVD’s. And they kick ass. If you tend to like weird, off beat comedy, and particularly if you like novelty music, you should check it out. I am da Boom King. And the Hip Hoppopotamus.

Number 8 Worst – getting a Mattel or Hasbro exclusive. The demand was high, and neither booth could truly accomodate it. Hasbro went with an approach where you had to get a ticket at one location, and that ticket told you when to go to the booth to buy your exclusives. However, this just meant you got to stand in one long line to be given the opportunity to go stand in another long line.

Mattel committed the cardinal sin of switching how they did their distribution during the middle of the con. First, they started out simply selling them first come first serve up to an alloted amount each day. This means long, painful lines of course. Then, a couple days in, they switched to passing out raffle tickets early, and going to the booth later in the day. While this second approach was less painful, the confusion caused by the switch created some serious fanboy animosity. There was much grinding of teeth and cursing of mothers.

Number 7 Best – All those wonderful costumes. This is a chance to let your geek flag fly, and fans unfurl them with great gusto. Oh, some of those flags shouldn’t be waving quite so proudly, but that’s for them to work out in therapy later. Big points to the folks that get and imaginitive in their choice of characters. To do a great costume requires a) that you pick a recognizable character, but not one that TOO obvious and b) that you take into consideration your own body and look. If you weigh 80 pounds soaking wet, I wouldn’t recommend dressing up as He-man. And while the title of the movie might have been ‘300’, that doesn’t mean weighing 300 pounds makes you an ideal Spartan.

Number 7 Worst – The sheer number of Jokers this year. I bet that probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to you…so I’m not sure why so many folks thought that it would make for a creative and interesting look. Oh, there were some guys there that have been doing the Joker for years, and they do it extremely well (such as this guy in the photo), but there were dozens and dozens around making all of them a whole lot less special. On the flip side, big props out to the guys dressed as the Monarch’s henchmen, Bender, and Black Manta.

Number 6 Best – The Sideshow Freaks party. I attend a number of parties during the week, and none are as much fun as the one put on by the Sideshow Freaks. This forum is ran by fans of the company, and has a wonderful relationship with the people there. The party has lots of great giveaways, food, drink, and lively conversation with some great folks.

Number 6 Worst – The latest step in the evolution of the show – video games. Comic Con started out almost 40 years ago exactly as the name implies – as a convention for comic book fans and creators. As the comic book characters began to merge with other forms of entertainment, like film and television, it was only natural to begin seeing more of that content included at the show as well. During the 90’s, the action figures and other collectibles based on the characters became so popular the the makers of these took over half the main floor, pushing comic book companies and dealers into a smaller and smaller area. Over the last 4 or 5 years, a new trend ermerged, with the producers of video content shoving out everyone else, and this year the same main floor that was once entirely dominated by comic book publishers and then dominated by toy makers, is now dominated by film and television companies like Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sci-Fi Channel, ABC Family, and many others. The next big thing that will dominate is already clear – video game companies. Companies like Konami have figured out that their target audience is here too, and their presence expanded quite a bit this year. They aren’t dominating anything yet, but just wait – the war between video games, movies and television for the best Comic-con real estate is only beginning. I’m sticking this under the ‘worst’ category not because I have anything against video games, but because the show risks trying to become everything pop culture, and pop culture is a tremendously broad category. When the breadth of the show gets to expansive, the depth will get more and more shallow, making it less interesting for the hard core fans of any one sub-genre, and even more crowded and painful in general. I can almost hear the sucking sound of that black hole now.

Number 5 Best – For me, seeing some really cool items that I might not have otherwise pre-ordered is always high on the list. There are always a number of items that I might think look okay in photos, but when I see them in person I realize I must have them. This year, the stand outs were items like the 18″ Hellboy with Big Baby by Mezco, the Watchmen figures (both small and large) from DC Direct, and the new Hot Toys Lost Predator.

Number 5 Worst – For my wife, seeing some really cool items that I might not have otherwise pre-ordered is always high on her list. I think this goes without saying.

Number 4 Best – New and interesting mediums being exploited for geek content. I attended one panel on a new series of ‘mobisodes’ being produced by CBS in conjunction with Marvel.com, based on an original story from Stephen King called ‘N’. These are done in a sort of comic book style with voice overs, and are designed to be viewed on mobile devices. I also attended a panel on original content being produced for the Xbox Live. They are starting out with a series of short horror-comedies directed by some well known names in the horror genre, like James Wan and David Slade. I’m always up for interesting and creative concepts to deliver cool content, and it’s nice to see companies exploring different ways to bring even more entertainment into our lives, rather than just re-distributing content we’ve already seen in another medium.

Number 4 Worst – Convention food. There are no conveinent fast food restaurants near the convention center, so most of your outside choices are more expensive and hard to get in to with all the crowds. Your inside choices are pretty much limited to things like Mrs. Fields cookies and $3 cans of Coke. You really don’t know what bad overpriced food is until you’ve had a $7 convention hamburger, made from only the choices cuts of road kill.

Number 3 Best – Sideshow announced and showed the second figure in their 12″ Indiana Jones line – Belloq. As always, there’s a regular and an exclusive. While many people are going to immediately wonder why they’d go with such a secondary character so early, there is a very positie aspect to it. Going with someone like Belloq over others does imply they expect to be doing quite a few figures in the entire series, much like their Star Wars line. He also looks exceptional, and the exclusive ‘environment’ is going to really add to the overrall Indy display.

Number 3 Worst – Sideshow DOESN’T announce any additional figures in their 12″ Lord of the Rings line. No Gimli. No Merry. No Pippen. I suspect this is bad news. Very bad news. You might want to pick up an extra Sam and Frodo now, and befriend someone that can sculpt…it might be your only chance to get the other two hobbits into your collection. And Gimli? That’s going to be a pickle, but you can always pick up the old Toybiz version and swap out some costume parts. Not getting the full nine would be one of the great action figure tragedies (not that any action figure tragedy is all that tragic), and I’m far less confident that we’ll be seeing them now.

Number 2 Best – Connecting with old friends and making new ones. One of the best things about this hobby is the people I’ve met over the last 15 years, and SDCC is a wonderful way to connect with folks from around the world. It’s always great to put faces to names, and to realize they’re all just as big of a dork as you are.

Number 2 Worst – finding a damn hotel room that doesn’t require a bank loan to afford it. While there are plenty of folks from San Diego and Los Angeles who attend the show, there’s even a greater number that fly in from all around the world, and the close hotels – those within a mile or so – realize that the supply of their rooms doesn’t come any where near meeting demand. And what does that mean? Prices go up, insanely so, during the Con. Even at the high prices, good luck finding one.

Number 1 Best – Sideshow’s annonced and showed the 12″ Darth Vader and Stormtrooper. Has any fan base waitd this long for a A list Star Wars character to make it into a particular line before? We finally get armored Star Wars figures from Sideshow, and they look terrific.

Number 1 Worst – I don’t have one. For all the issues that crop up every year, I have to say that I love every show. Yes, it’s crowded, and if you can’t handle mingling with your fellow man I’d stay away. But if you’re looking for the ultimate geek experience, I highly recommend it.

And since I’m always asked, here are some photos of the best looking new figures/busts/statues I saw at the con, other than those already shown above and in no particular order. Any questions, just drop me a line at mwc@mwctoys.com, and if you’d like to see more photos of the things that were on display, hit my coverage.