2008 San Diego International Comic Con July 24-27
 

Is anyone going this year? They ran out of the 4-day passes (w/ Preview Night). I hadn't purchased mine, but my friend who owns a comic book store gets a couple of free ones and confirmed with me today that they are a lock and he put me down for one. Now I can be excited. If you're buying single day passes you should do it soon the saturday passes are almost gone!

www.Comic-con.org

Any speculation as to what to expect? I heard Bill Willingham is announcing the next Fables spin off. I'm hoping there will be some cool advance film screenings this year. We saw Stardust a few weeks early with a Q & A from Gaiman and the Screenwriter.

Since there's so many going i thought i'd add that the saturday passes are sold out.

I'm going on Thursday and Saturday. My partner (and soon to be husband) gets free tickets from his work in the games industry, so I'm his extra guest. I'm hoping that there will be some sort of Dead Like Me panel (for the long overdue movie) and I will definitely be going to the Family Guy/Futurama panels (some of the best events IMO).

Congrats! Yay California!

They announced on the Mystery Science theatre 3000 site there going to be a uber panel with Joel AND Mike on Friday. It's pretty much gonna rock my socks off.

There's a lot of Ghostbusters stuff going on. That's why I'm trying to go. There's supposedly a huge announcement to coincide with the new video game, and there's supposed to be a panel along with the original Ecto-1 there (fully restored).

We shall see..

I'm planning on it, but with the new house (moving Sunday) I'm not sure I'll have enough money to go.

Picked up my tickets last year, my room in feb. so I'm all ready to go.

I'll be there; should be fun. My fifth year covering the show. Biggest thing that sucks is that our hotel rooms are like 10 miles away from the con; last year we were across the street. Was 1000x more enjoyable.

San Diego Comic Con 2008
 

It's almost here! 3 weeks from tonight is Preview Night. 4-days passes have been sold out, Saturday is sold out and Friday is 75% sold out. There's a rumor they're going to offer 3-day passes this weekend. Passes are NOT being sold onsite this year.

This year the Con will open 30 minutes earlier than previous years. woohoo!

It's unsure how the looming SAG strike might affect the panels. :(

Last year's thread, Comic Con 2007, was pretty lively. I even got to meet some of our fellow Otters. :up:

So, who's going? Any first timers?

I'm dying to go. Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened is up for an Eisner and I'd like to be there when the winners are announced. (And of course, the drinking that follows the ceremony.) But alas, we just bought a house and traveling isn't in the budget.

Have the panels been announced yet?

This will be my 5th Year and I am extremely excited. I plan to attend more panels and do less shopping. We'll see if that happens -smile-

Nothing official has been listed but a lot of the TV panels have been leaked. Kevin Smith blogged that he'll be on 4 panels this year. MST3K will have a great panel that'll include pretty much everyone that's been on the show (even Mike and Joel).

The official program list should be out in a week or so.

The list of Comic Con Exclusives is out and updates are still being added.

Comic-Con 2008

Here's a link to a tentative list of TV panels: TV panels at CCI

Ya know ... it occurs to me that I'm no longer on the mailing list. I guess if ya skip a few years they drop ya. :sad: And I wasn't planning on going anyway. :sad: :sad:

For the really popular panels, how many can to actually attend if you have to wait many hours in line for them on a daily basis? Do you have to pick one major panel, and forego others?

The 2 big rooms (Hall H and Ballroom 20) are usually where they hold the popular panels. Sometimes you get lucky but, usually, there's a wait to get in.

One thing that I do is get there really early and, once inside the room, camp out all day. There's been a few times that I've lined up at 5am for Hall H, the panels start at 10am and I leave the room at 7pm. I'll bring my own munchies and they have bathrooms inside the hall. There might be a panel or 2 that might not interest me but I'm not giving up my good seat :)

But if you want to attend the more popular panels, and they're in different halls, then you have to plan well and know that you will miss stuff.

The Saturday TV panels looks really good.

going for the 1st time... and I hate sci-fi and comics :)

Wow, Tom, you are hardcore! 5 a.m.? I'd still be in deep REM sleep.

Awesome. People don't understand craziness until they've been to Comic-Con.

I like to get a good seat. Yet, when I arrived in line, there are still those who are more hardcore (hardercore? hardcoreier?)

http://i26.tinypic.com/116rpch.jpg

yeah.. i'm excited. i'm really just going to get some sketches from my favorite artists and pick up a few toys but think the people watching will be amazing

Unfortunately at Dragon Con, they now clear the room after the popular panels, so you can't just camp out in the main Centennial Ballroom all day anymore. Sigh...

Last year my best friend got a few commissioned sketches from artists. One of them was even from our very own Ethan Van Sciver from DVDTalk. He was very pleased with the results.

Wow, that sucks. Not sure how big the Centennial Ballroom is but Hall H holds 6,500 and Ballroom 20 holds 5,000. I think it would take too long to clear out that many people since there is only 15 mins between panels. Thankfully.

Is that MST3K or Cinematic Titanic? In either case, I be jealous.

I doubt the main ballroom holds more than 1500, so 30 minutes is plenty of time to clear the room and repopulate it again at Dragon Con.

It's been 11 years since I've been to Comicon, but I might make the trip next year, it depends on scheduling, of course.

Wish I could go, I'd love go to the MST3k panel.

Last year it took me 5 minutes to walk to the end of the line for the main TV panel room. After seeing that, I didn't bother standing in it. I just went and did other fun stuff instead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDssh_x1_Hg

It's the MST3K show. One thing they are supposed to announce are the 4 movies that'll make up their 20th Anniversary Set. They're supposed to be the 4 most wanted that have not been released.
It'd be cool if you could make it. We could probably set up another Otter meet.
Nice video. I looked to see if I was in line but I think they had already let us in early. This was a "get in line at 5am" day. I wound up in the 3rd row and when the Heroes panel went on, I found myself right in front of Hayden:

http://i25.tinypic.com/23ueg7q.jpg

Supposedly Hayden will be at Dragon Con in September (and I was thinking, why isn't she working on "Heroes" in that time frame, but I guess she got the Labor Day weekend off). But I digress...

I wish they would bring back the Adult Swim panels and the Futurama panel.

I'm skipping out this year. I've gone for the past 5 years in a row and it's sort of lost it's luster. I figure a year (or two) away will make me appreciate the smells again.

I've went the last 2 years to work the show for my company, but we're not attending this year and I've since been promoted anyway and no longer run these events. I was pretty done with it last year though. I was pretty annoyed with the crowd and the inability to move.

Of course, I had a similar reaction after having been to a few E3's (when they were still big, and even the smaller one last year).

I was thinking about going a day again just for random fun, but I doubt I will.

I'll be there for possibly the 15th year in a row (I lost count; I know it's been over 12 years). Unfortunately I got a new job and don't have the vacation time accrued yet, so I won't be able to take off Thurs/Fri and will have to miss most of those days.

Over the years I think I've done and bought everything I've almost ever wanted. I completed my 30 year quest to own a stormtrooper helmet last year. I do need Matt Groening to draw me a Lisa Simpson and I'll finally have the whole Simpsons family personally drawn by Groening.


Of course there are always surprises, and I can't wait to see what this year will bring.

I have a good time just sitting in on panels and meeting celebs.

How did you score the stormtrooper helmet?

Kevin Smith just released more details on his Comic-Con visit:

I’ll be there, doing four panels...

Thursday
3 to 4 - Moderating "Scream Like a Girl: Spike Salutes the Women of Sci-Fi"

Friday
5:15 to 6:15 - Entertainment Weekly’s “The Visionaries: Filmmakers” panel in Hall H
6:30 to 8 - Annual Q&A panel in Hall H (with "Zack and Miri" footage)

Saturday
2:15 to 3:15 - Moderating the "Battlestar Galactica" panel

How long are the lines to get him to sketch?

Master Replicas made 2,500 of them.

Ah, ok. I've seen their lightsabers and almost got one of the mini ones.

Well it used to be that he would only draw when he felt like it. And when he felt like it would be when a kid would come up and ask him (he has a hard time saying "no" to kids). So you'd have to wait around the Bongo Comic's booth for Matt to show up, then wait for a kid to ask Matt. Then you'd have to jump in line and if you were lucky, some jerk who just showed up wouldn't push you away after you were waiting all day for this to happen.

Then they started passing out "Bart Bucks" at a given time. Then Matt would only sign for you if you had one. And those were VERY hard to come by. You had to be in the right place at the right time to get one.

Now they have a lottery. Which is the best way. They'll have a 1000 tickets, but only 100 of them (I'm guessing on the #s) will have something on them that will get you a "Bart Buck". But the good thing is, is you can go through the line as many times as you want to get a chance. That is, until the tickets run out. The line for that can be very long, but moves very fast.

It's about an hour wait, once he starts signing.