Comic-Con: Day 1
Comic-Con officially got underway with a preview on Wednesday night, and then started on Thursday. However, my day 1 was on Friday. Four days seemed a bit much, especially since it was our first time visiting. Violet and I had passes for Friday and Saturday, and then bought tickets for Sunday at the last minute when we learned that Doctor Who and Torchwood were having panels on that day.
We drove up on Thursday, took care of some wedding errands, and settled in, ready for a long weekend of comics, movies, tv shows, and lots of nerd stink.
We watched Day 5 of Torchwood: Children of Earth in the hotel on Thursday night and woke up groggy and somber. It took a while to get going. We made it out of our room relatively early, but by the time we ate breakfast, drove to the trolley stop, took the trolley to the convention center, and walked through the crowd, it was nearly 11 am.
It was a bit overwhelming seeing how large the crowd was (and it only grew larger over the weekend) as we got our passes. We knew for certain that we were catching the TW and DW panels on Sunday, and the screenings on Saturday night, but we didn’t really have a plan for Friday. So we wandered the exhibition floor to start. It was massive. It’s a never-ending hall of geekdom. There were so many giant displays and people in costume everywhere. The hall was filled so you couldn’t stop if you wanted to, except when smashed in by a human traffic jam. Friday was Star Wars day, so there was an especially large number of Jedi, Darth Vaders, and Storm Troopers. I loved it. These are people who probably sit quietly in work cubes all day long, but get to bust out for four days straight. I’m sure they practice their poses and facial expressions in the mirror, and they love the attention when someone asks to take a picture with them. The costumed people are awesome.
As we walked through part of the floor, Violet did a double take and said, “Is that Captain Jack?” I looked and thought it couldn’t possibly be him (only because I would’ve known from the schedule that he’d be there), but as I looked beside him, there was Tosh. Then I heard him talk and knew: it was John Barrowman. And of course, beside him was Naoko Mori. I was like a deer in the headlights for a moment, just staring with my mouth open. We decided to get his autograph and were even able to get a picture with him.
We didn’t get Naoko’s autograph (a bit pricey to get both), but after texting Celia and James, the only other Torchwood fans we know, James requested we tell Naoko she was, “breaking our heart.”. There was no line in front of her so Violet walked up and said a friend asked her to say that. She was flattered and then looked over at me (I was hanging back because it seemed strange to both go up to her if we weren’t lining up to get something signed) and waved. I think she assumed I was the friend and too shy to approach her. It was a little awkward but I still waved back. Definitely worth it.
We took a break from wandering the floor and ate lunch outside. We were warned in advance of the long lines for expensive food, so we packed a bag of goodies for the trip. After eating, we headed back to the floor to do some shopping. We passed by Colin Baker (the sixth Doctor) and bought a couple of Doctor Who action figure. We bought a Rose with K-9 figure, and a Captain Jack with the gas mask child from the two part The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. We figured it was appropriate since those were the characters on our Doctor Who t-shirts that we were saving for the Sunday panels.
One thing I found amazing about comic-con was the number of people perfectly comfortable wearing full body spandex all day long. This was surprising for two reasons. One – because a lot of those people had no business wearing it and I feel like there should’ve been some type of dress code at the door that looked out for everyone’s best interest. There are children there. Two – because despite the stereotypes of nerds that would attend an event such as this, there were actually a lot of people that pulled it off. Some of those slave Leigh’s weren’t messing around.
We spent the rest of the afternoon in line for Ballroom 20, which was the second largest hall behind the HUGE Hall H (which supposedly seated 6,700). We made it into the ballroom in time to catch Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku talk about Dollhouse. I thought the first few episodes were a little shaky, but it got stronger and the unaired season finale that they screened for the audience appears to take the show in an entirely new direction. It looks like it has a lot of promise.
We left Ballroom 20 starving, so we headed into the Gaslamp district for dinner. We chose the Old Spaghetti Factory because we were in the mood for Italian and it was right across the street from the convention center. I’ve loved that place since I was a little kid. We always went there for special occasions growing up. We finished dinner and then met up with Britt and Andrew, who drove down during the afternoon and caught a couple of panels. The four of us took the trolley back, stopped for a snack, then collapsed in the hotel. The first day of comic-con was a ton of fun and only made me more excited for the rest of the weekend.