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Some of you may be aware that I went to San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) this year. It was part of my first sojourn overseas and I had an absolute blast. I will definitely be going back (if only to go to another iFanboy party).

I met loads of wonderful people and was exposed to a fantastic part of popular culture. There were also a couple of areas of unpleasantness but if you have that many people in one place it is bound to happen.

So without further ado here is my list of what I loved and what I did not love about San Diego Comic-Con.

The people. Coming into this I had horrible images of nerds and geeks and cosplayers all shoving and being aggro with each other in the melee that was the exhibition hall. Turns out that for the most part we’re actually quite a sedate and friendly bunch of people. It was only on Sunday that I started to noticed some tired and cranky people wandering about but that’s to be expected after four days of SDCC.

On the flip side of this though is a small group that I’m calling griefers. These are people that are just there to spoil other people’s fun. I mean there were plenty of things that I didn’t like at SDCC but I wasn’t running around like an spiteful idiot waving hateful placards and generally just being a tool. Thankfully they were a rare subset of individuals but they were sadly very vocal. This really disappointed me. 361 days of the year these people are probably subjected to similar treatment from people in their lives. “Oh, you like comics? Isn’t that a bit juvenile/stupid/sucky/etc”. So why, at Comic-Con, our Mecca, do these people feel the need to act like hateful assholes?

A big part of Comic-Con is of course the panels and I’d just like to highlight a handful that stood out, for better or worse.

Marvel runs a good panel. They’re all flash with their slideshows and funny gags when they introduce their panel members and they have a really good energy about them. They also had some good announcements which I dare say helped with the me liking them. Special mention has to be given to Joe Q and Kid Vision at the Dark Reign panel. That was some classic stuff right there people.

On the other side of the street we have DC and their panels. Sorry to say it guys but you didn’t exactly thrill me. Now some of the problem is surely that a lot of big stuff had just happened prior to SDCC, especially in the Batman books, so I can understand how there wouldn’t be much in the way of exciting announcements there. But seriously, some of these panels were just downright boring. DC just lacked energy and focus. I came out of every one of their panels with no sense of “holy cow this is gonna be awesome”. Upon reflection there was some cool stuff announced in the Superman panel but it was mentioned in such an off-handed way that I’m not surprised no one is talking about it.

Here comes my (and other people’s) biggest gripe. Comic-Con security. So Friday morning rocks around and after lining up for two hours to get into the exhibition hall I realise that I’d forgotten to get money out. Silly I know but that early in the morning surely there wouldn’t be much of a line at the ATMs. Sure enough there wasn’t but I never got a chance to savour my luck because as soon as I’d walked out of sight of the exhibition hall doors a security guard stops me and tells me to leave.

Me: But I was just inside. I came out to use the ATM.
Security Guy: I’m sorry sir but you need to go outside.
Me: Why?
Security Guy: Sir, you need to go outside now.

Never having been in that situation before and being in a foreign country I decided not to press my point of “but I was just inside” and walk calmly outside looking both bemused and rather annoyed. Half an hour later I was back in and the rest of the day proceeded quite nicely.

That wasn’t the only example of over-zealous security and while I’m sure all these incidents were the result of poor communication or edicts that had been passed down from higher ups it really left a bad taste in my mouth. Just like the griefers I mentioned earlier, the security people just seemed to be there to keep the fun to a minimum.

So that’s my post. There were dozens of things I could have mentioned here but I want people to read this, not cower at the size of the thing. Stay tuned for more ranting and raving from me. There’s gonna be plenty of geekiness going on so I hope you like that sort of thing.