Popular Culture Growths

Do you love popular culture? Do you want to find out about the exciting happenings, projects, collaborations, retrospectives and coming attractions in comics, film, television, books, video games and entertainment retail? Would you like to meet all your favorite celebrities, authors, artists, and so on?

Then attend Comic Con 2010 this coming July!


Except you can't. Because it's sold out.

I first attended Comic Con four years ago, basically on a whim. We literally decided a couple weeks before hand we were going to go, and threw together the trip. Fortunately, we were able to buy our tickets at the door and thoroughly enjoyed running around the showroom floor, attending panels and geeking out. The presentations at the Con have the capacity to be truly impressive. Guests and panels can be fascinating insights into things upcoming or into territory you already love. Naturally they have the potential to be terrible as well, despite good billing, but that became less of a problem in later years where, in order to get into a panel you needed to attend the two panels prior to it in order to obtain a seat. They stopped clearing rooms out after a presentation, and then admitted as many new people to the room as empty seats based upon who left. What this meant was that instead of determining which conflicting panel you wanted to see more, you had to determine if you were also willing to block out three hours to get into it. The nice part was that you'd see panels you'd never have chosen to attend and might end up with some true gems, even if the one you were actually waiting for was a dud.


I do have to add that we got into one or two panels thanks to Will, who will be going to hell, for lying us in with some story about having to leave the discussion early so we could take somebody to the medic area. It worked though and we enjoyed a really crowded Marvel presentation followed by the even more insane Sarah Silverman and friends. Totally worth it.


Each year the Con has gotten more ridiculous. The next year we attended, you had to buy your tickets online, and they filled mostly to capacity. Oh, and forget about getting a hotel near the convention center. That fills up ages beforehand. The third year we went, it sold out a couple months in advance. We skipped a year since I was frolicking in Japan, and in rolls 2010: Will and I think, hey, maybe we'll go again this year and take Chase. He's old enough now that the worries of him getting lost are lessened, and at an age to enjoy it.


Except that the passes sold out in November.

November! In a way, it's easier to accept that they're already sold out. The crowds can be and are overwhelming, a great deal of time is spent in lines, or searching for food that isn't overpriced or miles from the building, it grows more and more mainstream commercial each time, and frankly, there are some weird people (I guess we count in that...). Last year's attendance was somewhere around 140,000. I do enjoy Comic Con, a lot, but frankly that's just too many nerd in one place.


I need to find something more exclusive and elitist.