A lot of my work is done under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) which precludes me from posting such work publicly on my blog or elsewhere. This leaves me with little to post here. Consequently, every weekend I’m left scrambling to throw something quick together for a Monday morning post, and, being lazy as I can be, I decided that I’d use this Monday’s post to share my experience at Stan Lee’s Comikaze Expo which I attended with my wife several weeks ago. So here I goes my rambling…
In my last post, I shared about the Rocket Men poster I did for the Comikaze Expo. Well, John Semper, the gentleman for whom I did the poster, suggested that I attend. While the San Diego Con is really enough pop-culture-convention-time for me, I figured it couldn’t hurt to check out the Spider-Man panel to say “Hi” to John in person, as well as check out this Expo which I’d never attended. The thing is, I really didn’t want to attend this show badly enough to purchase tickets, so I went on their website to register as a professional and try to acquire complimentary passes.
With the show being less than a week away, I really didn’t think I’d get in. Furthermore, the registration page indicated that it could take up to four weeks to be approved for professional status. As it happened, it only took a few days to get my professional status approved, and they offered me complimentary passes to the current show. That whittled my cost down to gas, parking, and lunch. Not too bad.
I went online to pre-order parking and, as I expected, parking for the convention center was sold out. Fortunately, there are surrounding lots which still had some available spaces, so I pre-ordered my parking. When my wife, Cristina, and I arrived downtown, the parking lots were not accurately marked, and as there were many little lots on the same block, we had to circle around and inquire at a few lots to find where we were supposed to park. When we finally found the right lot, it was full… Wait, huh? Isn’t that what pre-ordering tickets is meant to avoid? I suspect the persons of dubious character who were letting cars in were probably just doing their own parking business on the side. I was naturally bent out of shape at having to pay again to park. Anyway, we did the driving version of musical chairs, hoping we could squeeze into a parking lot somewhere before the music stopped. Fortunately, we found parking at a lot across the street of the Staple Center. As we drove into the lot, the attendant at the entrance was changing the sign and raising the cost to park another fin, so we just avoided the price-hike.
The convention floor of the Comikaze Expo was pretty full. I though the energy and buzz there was much larger than the Wonder Con in Anaheim. It actually felt like the San Diego Con, only with all the big-money booths absent (i.e., no big film studios or comic companies seemed to be present). We were only on the floor a few minutes, after which we headed upstairs to the Spider-Man panel to see John Semper talk about the series and announce the Rocket Men project. He also announced that the entire cast of the Spider-Man series committed to doing the Rocket Men series, so that’ll be interesting if the crowd-funding comes through.
That’s John Semper on the far right. Everyone else were voice actors on the 90’s Spider-Man animated series.
After the panel, Cristina and I went back downstairs and walked the entire floor. While the excitement of the show was there, I have to be honest in saying that most of the smaller exhibitors that interest me at San Diego were absent. The crowds were certainly enthusiastic, and there were lots of people in costume, but there wasn’t much that caught my eye at the booths. To be fair, I’m only referring to things that interest myself, so others might have a different opinion on that matter. I’m sure there was plenty to interest others. Because few booths interested me enough to stop in them, we pretty much were able to cover the entire showroom floor in a couple of hours.
One thing that I thought was really cool while we were walking the aisles is that they held a large panel with Stan Lee and various artists right on the convention floor, along the back wall. It was projected on giant screens so that people walking the aisles could watch it. I thought that was a clever way of letting people enjoy the panel without wasting half of their day in a line and having to crowd into a panel room. I wish there were something like that at the San Diego Con, though I realize that would cause them to lose precious exhibitor space.
We pretty much left after walking the convention floor. I didn’t have much interest in hanging around all day for the after-show party that evening. All in all, it was an interesting show. I suspect that in the future many film studios may switch to this show since it’s so much closer to Hollywood than San Diego. Still, I suppose it depends on how successful they continue to be. In the meantime, I still prefer the SanDiego Con over either this or WonderCon.
Here’s a recording of the Spider-Man panel…
Frank Grau Illustration 