Since the last time I was at ComicCon--roughly 18 years ago--the convention center in San Diego has doubled in size. So it was just as packed this time as it was last time but with tons more to see and do. Also there was a higher percentage of females this time. If I had to guess I would say that back in the early 90s when I was there last, maybe 5-10% of the crowd was female, not counting the booth babes. This time I would estimate 35-40% of the crowd was female, and there were actually fewer booth babes. I believe Emily will be posting pictures soon and you can see what I mean.
We managed to go to four or five panels over the course of the convention. Two were fluff--one about vampire fiction and the other about 'urban fantasy' & 'paranormal romance'. The first one featured Charlaine Harris and a bunch of other female authors. The second was a bust--poorly moderated and the panelists were lame. We also went to one on science fiction and the future which included Samuel Delany, Alan Dean Foster, David Weber and a few others. That one was really cool. The first one we went to was called "Twisting Genres" and was about combining genres to end up with something more or less new. The highlight of that one was China Mieville. That guy is scary smart and very entertaining. If you haven't read any of his work, I suggest you do so.
We also spent a lot of time cruising around the exhibit hall--the convention floor where all the booths were. It was so different than the last time I was there--there were still TONS of comics related stuff, but there were also large booths for various TV, movie and web type stuff, including Warner Brothers, Fox, G4, Spike, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, CBS, Lionsgate. Also there were a bunch of video game booths including Nintendo, XBox, Square Enix, Bungi and a bunch of others. Finally there were actually toy manufacturers: Hasbro, Lego and a few others that I saw.
Emily and I spent a LOT of time in the small press and artists aisles discovering artists and books we'd not heard of or seen before. Here are a few links, in case you're interested in exploring:
Gris Grimly: http://www.madcreator.com/
Jerrell Conner: http://jerrellconner.com/indexold.html
Andrew Wilson: http://processjunkie.blogspot.com/2007/08/forgotten-kingdom-of-imaginary-friends.html
Josh Howard: http://joshhoward.typepad.com/
Bob Boyle: http://bobboyle.blogspot.com/
Joenis Norac: http://artisticdoom.com/
There were many more, including one called Zombie Tramp (extra amusing and well drawn), but it would take too long to mention them all.
And finally we managed to sit in line for 2:15 and didn't make it into ballroom 20 for 3 different events that were occurring one after another. If we'd waited another hour or so we could have missed the True Blood presentation, but we decided it was far more important to elbow our way through the insane crowds on the convention floor.
Oh, and here's the hotel we stayed at: http://www.resortkonakai.com/
It was great :)
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