Weirdos, Freaks and Me: Stephen B's Adventures at the Comic-Con Day 2

So I finally arrived at the convention center around 12:30pm. I went with my wife, Ursula, and a couple of her friends, Juan and Marsha. There were mad folks out there on Saturday. That's the day the regular folks (i.e. not fan boys) go to the comic con to check out all the fuss so there was an amazing amount of traffic and nowhere to park. Plus the Padres game was that same night so it was really packed. When I got there, we walked around on the convention floor for a while. I was able to score some free Hasbro Star Wars figures for my nephew. They just love giving out free stuff at this thing. It was too late to see the Aeon Flux panel so I set my sights on the Serenity panel. Serenity is the movie based on the Fox TV show Firefly .

After waiting 40 minutes in line to get into Hall H. (Kevin Smith was speaking in the hall before "Serenity" so it took a while before we got in.) That's the largest hall in the convention center and holds 6,500 people. I finally got into the Serenity panel. But first we were treated to footage from some crappy movie called "Slither" from that legendary auteur, James Gunn of "Tromeo and Juliety" fame. This movie stars Nathan Fillion from Firefly, Serenity, and Buffy. The entire cast came out and they showed footage of this film about a small town that's infected with some kind of creatures that turns everyone into mutants/zombies/whatever. It truly looked bad and was as low budget as you can get. When Michael Rooker is the biggest name in your movie, you got a problem. Anyway, I think the only reason this panel was part of the "Serenity" panel was as a favor to the director because Nathan Fillion was in both movies. There was *no* reason that schlock like that would be in the largest hall that was devoted to previews for big budget films like "V is for Vendetta, Harry Potter 4, Aeon Flux, The Corpse Bride, and Doom.

Anyway, after the cast of "Slither" left, the cast of Serenity came out. All were there minus Alan Tudyk. Gina was looking luscious as usual. Honestly, I didn't enjoy this panel as much as I hoped I would. They showed a scene from the movie of "Summer" beating up folks in a bar, but that was the only interesting part. The panel consisted of the cast joking around the entire time and Joss Whedon not seriously answering any questions. The one good thing that came from it was how appreciative the cast was to the fans stating that the support of the fans is the only reason the movie was made. The cast mentioned that several times. I cut out of the early because I was hoping to find some interesting sites on the floor. Alas I was dissapointed.


The best thing to come out of my time on the floor was my wife being able to get an autograph from Bill Amend (creator of FoxTrot comic strip). She's a huge fan of the strip. I could have gone back up to Hall H for the Sony panel featuring Underworld/and The Fog, but I had no desire to stand in line for another 40 minutes.

So the rest of my time was spent wandering around. Many "celebrities" come to comic-con to earn a little income by signing autographs and it's always depressing to see this. There's always those people are very popular and the line is 300 deep for autographs. Then there's people like "Virgil" from the WWF. I saw that brotha sitting at his booth looking bored and quite frankly, pitiful. No one was visiting his booth for an autograph and I felt so sorry for him. These people obviously need the money and I'm sure it costs them money to fly to San Diego, and stay in a hotel and when they're charging $10/$20 an autograph, they need a lot of autographs to make it worth their while. I wouldn't be surprised if many go home in the red.

I didn't really get to see much Saturday. After the headache of finding parking and dealing with the very large crowds I really didn't enjoy myself. Friday was a better day for me. The problem is, all the good stuff is scheduled at the same time. Friday had a bunch of stuff from 2 to 6pm that conflicted and you could only go to one at a time because of the time it takes to go from room to room and stand in line. Other times there's absolutely nothing going on and if you've already hit the convention floor you're left twiddling your thumbs.

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