Ah, Thursday. You seem so far away now.

The interesting thing about Comic-Con is that even when you spend a day there without really doing a whole lot, it still seems like an incredibly long day.

Before I get into the daily recap, however, and just to set the scene, here’s a couple pics of the convention floor.

View From The Floor

View From The Floor

View From the Floor

View From The Floor

When I first got to the con, I met a couple friends, and we cruised around. One of my buddies wanted to get an X-O Manowar #1 signed, so we made our way to the Top Shelf booth to chat with Robert Venditti. He had his Surrogates hardcover collection at the booth, so I bought that up.

Small Press

There’s some good, and some bad, in the Small Press area. I wasn’t able to really dive in and check it all out, but I did catch up with a few Small Press regulars.

Steve Bryant, James Heffron, and Chris Murrin are always set up with one of the most professional, well done booths in the Small Press area. Steve has drawn in my sketch book in the past, and does fantastic work. He is drawing the upcoming Steed and Peel book from Boom! and written by Mark Waid, and his Athena Voltaire book is soon to be published by Dark Horse. I was able to catch up with these guys for a bit, always fun.

I also made it over to Super Real Graphics to check for their latest book. Unfortunately, Night of the 80’s Undead #2 wasn’t out yet (the first issue was great!), but always nice to stop by and say hi.

Purchases and Panels

I made the rounds, picked up a couple things, like the Walking Dead Compendium Hardcover, the Simpsons Go For The Gold, The Art Of Amanda Conner Hardcover.

Most of the day was spent meandering around the convention floor with buddies, looking at everything there is to be seen.

I did notice that it seemed less crowded than in previous years, even when I got to the center of the con, which I affectionately call “the vortex”. It is the part of the convention floor with the giant multimedia booths that usually have people packed like crazy around. Somehow, this year, it wasn’t as bad.

I did make it to the All-Stars of Comics Podcasting panel with Jonesy. For some reason we were not panelists, maybe next year.

I jest, the folks on the panel certainly are all-stars of comics podcasting, and deserve to be up there.

Batmobiles

On display next to the con are all six Batmobiles. I’ll just let these pictures speak for themself.

The Tumbler

The Keaton

The West

The Kilmer

The Clooney

Tumbler 2.0

Podcasts and Parties

After the con, we made our way back to the Hyatt and recorded our first convention wrap up (available now!)

After that, I dragged all my friends to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund party. I joined the CBLDF earlier that day on the convention floor, and I heard about the party from the folks at the booth. A couple of my friends were planning to go, so I dragged my other friends across town. It was a very nice party, up on an outdoor terrace, and some cool folks to hang out with and meet.

From there we headed to the Boom! Studios drink up, and by the time we arrived, the “event” was more like “people at a bar”.

I dragged myself home at 1 am, and promptly stayed up till 3 am producing the podcast episode that went up last night.

Why am I awake? Why am I going to do that all over again?

Must be Con.

Stay Classy, San Diego!