Comic-Con

Some of you may be wondering what in the world that thing in the picture above is. I have no idea either. (If someone does know, I'd appreciate being told in the comments.) All I know is that the moment I turned around and saw an evil Mickey Mouse that looked like it wanted to eat my face, I had to take a picture of him. He was even nice enough to pose for me!

This picture was one of many pictures I took at Comic-Con yesterday. If you've never been to Comic-Con, then you're really missing out! If you're an artist, a writer, a video game lover, a comic book fan, or a nerd of any other kind, you'll love this place! People dress up in amazing costumes (before going, I thought only a few people would be dressed up, but it was actually tons. I would have taken more pictures, but it would have involved stopping people every ten steps or so to ask them to pose for me). There's all kinds of fun trinkets and things to buy (they had a giant selection of dice to choose from for tabletop role-playing fans for instance) and celebrities (the cast of firefly was there, but unfortunately, we weren't able to make it in to see them.)

One of the most amazing costumes was a wookie costume. I don't know how it was done, but there was a seven or eight foot Chewbacca there. He was so detailed that he looked like a real wookie. I still can't figure out if they found a man that was that tall to dress-up or if he was walking on stilts. Either way, he pulled it off effortlessly and gave me a silly picture of my 6'1" boyfriend looking short standing next to him.

There were several huge things there, including a life size statue of Optimus Prime and a thirty foot tall Power Ranger. There were giant screens playing clips from Dexter and advertisements for Game of Thrones.

They had seminars on writing. I attended one of them given by Maxwell Alexander Drake on showing, but not telling. It's something I've heard a ton of times, but he really got me thinking about it more deeply and how I still have ways I could improve in this area amongst others in my writing.

I also bought a really cool comic book series called Love and Capes by Thomas Zahler. (You can read a lot of it for free on his web-site.) It's a cute romantic comedy about a guy who's a super hero and a normal girl who is dating him and finds out his secret. I love it so far. The author was very nice, autographing the graphic novels I bought from him, and just chatting with me and smiling. Funny enough, on the first page is an intro written by Mark Waid about him sitting at his booth in Comic-Con, smiling and being friendly with everyone. That's exactly how he was!

I had to leave early unfortunately because I got tired from walking around for hours. I was carrying around the giant bag they give you when you get your lanyard for your badge. It was full of my new books and my purse. My boyfriend tried to carry it, grunting under the weight, and calling me crazy for lugging that much stuff around.

I wish I had a pass to go on more than just Friday. I'm already having difficulty getting back into the swing of things after the excitement I experienced yesterday. I'm definitely going to Comic-Con next year.

If you've been, I'd be happy to hear about some of your experiences.