I gotta go. Comic-Con will have to find some way to get by without me.
The appropriate way to leave Comic-Con would be gripping the skid of a Huey as it lifts off from the roof of the San Diego convention center, Saigon-style. That option wasn’t available, though give it a few years. By then it’ll be a corporate-sponsored promotion, and the Huey will be advertising Scott Pilgrim V starring David Schwimmer.
It’s important for people to leave Comic-Con. There are way too many people here as it is. A huge surge arrived Friday — it was the first day I really saw those classic black-hole-gridlock Comic-Con corridors. You know that show you saw an episode of one time on a plane and you thought it was pretty OK but nothing special — that show? The line for the panel on that show is an hour long.
So instead of going to panels I hung out at the Random House booth for a bit, where I ran into, in sequence, Christopher Paolini (Eragon), Ann VanderMeer (Weird Tales, etc.) and Justin Cronin (The Passage). I wandered over to Artists’ Alley to admire John Picacio’s stuff. I walked over to the panel for Super, with Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler and (audience favorite, and why not) Nathan Fillion.
It was the one time I saw Hall H with no line. They screened footage of Wilson, in a home-made superhero costume, smacking a woman with a wrench. It was hard to say which side of edgy it was on.
On my way back to my hotel, to get my stuff and go to the airport, I made a final stop: the fake 1980’s Flynn’s Arcade they’d set up to promote Tron: Legacy. They’d rounded up an incredible collection of vintage arcade games, including Centipede, Berserk, Robotron, Defender, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Arkanoid and (deep breath) Battle Zone. It was just like the arcades of my youth.
Except I don’t remember there being quite so much Coke Zero around when I was kid. My childhood has been rebranded.
Final Comic-Con thoughts tomorrow.
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