If you are going to do a 4.5 day convention of this size, you should be charging a higher entry fee, say $40 for each single day, and $125 for a full pass. Maybe the convention center can help with this when they expand. They can add a surcharge of $10 to each ticket to pay for the expansion.

One day for Chicago is $28, and the Chicago convention is lame compared to the one in Sandy Eggo.

And I remember the year being part of TEAM BEAT, or whatever Heidi was calling her motley crew of correspondents for the Pulse.

I would pay for a set of Matt Maxwell Mr. Yuck Face stickers.

I wouldn’t go to press day. That sounds awful.

I’ve never had stature to trade on nor can I assemble a team to compensate. The only event I’ve ever been to with a list is the Eisner Awards, and I’ve always been happy to sit in the back of those — I moved to the back for the final awards this year when I got skeeved out by the folks up front. I was alone at the con this year, and only there for 30 hours, but I thought my readers were reasonably well-served. Then again, people have severely reduced expectations for my site when it comes to “event” coverage. So I’m lucky that way. Really lucky.

I’d sure hate to be a stringer having to get into certain panels according to my assignments. That must be awful.

Not that $5 spread over 4½ days is a huge difference, but still…

Bleah…

Up until this year, I always demanded the access that my stature deserves. That sounds arrogant, but, let’s face it, I’ve been doing this 25 years. As a daily blogger, it’s hard enough just to go through my email and write a daily blog as contacting scores of pr people for access. Why can’t I just BE ON THE LIST?

This year I realized that doesn’t matter. There really is no place for the Lone Gunslinger any more. Advance prep is absolutely essential, even if it means assembling a team. Even if that team consist of Face, Howling Mad, Hannibal and BA.

Regarding bags: friends of mine and I noted after the con that in this age of declining availability of plastic bags at grocery stores, the Jurassic Fight Club bags were this year’s bag winner, even if the property they were touting isn’t all that interesting. But the bags are just the right size for groceries, of durable construction, have an adjustable shoulder strap and a zipper closure! I regret not picking up a couple extra of those. The gigantic WB bags are practically useless, unless you’re sewing a dress out of them.

My Comic Con experience was more about comics than ever this year, primarily because I completely gave up on going to any Hollywood-related panels. I didn’t even go to Lost. Why bother? Either it’s merely a screening of 10 minutes of “EXCLUSIVE!” footage that I’ll get to see in the context of the complete film in a few months (or not, because it will turn out that it sucks) with all of the panelists unable to say much because “we can’t give too much away” OR the entire thing will be on YouTube in a couple of days (see: Lost). Or there will be a detailed transcript somewhere from a fan more obsessive than I. So unless you’re entertainment press desperately needing a scoop, or a 15-year-old girl who would just DIE if she doesn’t get to see this year’s popular hunk of man meat (distantly, at the far end of Hall H) there isn’t much point in going. And yet that’s the engine driving Comic Con. Weird.

Instead I was in Artists’ Alley, Small Press and the exhibitors’ tables which were generally easy to navigate compared to the inflatable-sword-induced gridlock around the major toy/media booths in the middle. My main complaint would be that this year’s con seemed louder. There were more obnoxious PAs being used at booths demoing video games or something, such that I nearly lost my voice by Thursday.

I had a great time this year in SD, helped by the fact that I wasn’t photographing anything for anyone but myself. And I’ve been to nine of the last ten shows. My wife came for the first time and LOVED it. She met and bought comics from indie cartoonists, attended panels, found a great vegan mexican restaurant not too far away (Pokez, how we love thee) and stood in line with me for an hour on Sunday to get tickets for next year’s show. From her perspective, it was a blast.

I think there’s likely a distinction to be made between press complaining that they can’t do their jobs and press complaining that they can’t leverage their press passes into stuff they want to do; this year was the first year I saw legitimate instances of the former, and I still saw plenty of the latter. This happens with everybody, too, not just comics people — there are a lot of editors shadowing their actual reporters that don’t need to be at events they claim they need to attend because of their coverage.

Similarly, while I think it’s smart not to dismiss new media as inherently less valuable than a print or broadcast source, there’s probably also a distinction to be made between receiving actual coverage and receiving attention that doesn’t actually lead to substantive coverage. Screw VIP attendee passes, though, although I think they could raise prices across the board and might consider event tickets to keep people from standing in line only to be frustrated.

I’m a little wary of the idea that press deserves access to these events, because they’re just hypeathons; most of them aren’t real events. It’s like covering TV commercials and people watching them. It would be nice to see a press track develop that was actually about disseminating news that ran parallel to the presentations. Some of that goes on informally.

I imagine that the enormous growth of the show the last few years and the industry in general has taken some getting used to and comics people will use the show more effectively in future years, however they want to use it. You can certainly embargo publishing news until a panel announcement but let press know it’s taking place, and this seems sensible to me just because press can’t attend everything. I wonder if the problem isn’t so much that we’re not effectively processing the Ant-Man news but that an Ant-Man series isn’t really the kind of news people would like for it to be.

That sort of whining annoys the crap out of me. As press, I bust my rear end for weeks ahead of the con putting together a schedule of interviews, etc., knowing (and planning for the fact) that the odds of getting into the big panels are extremely slim.

At least, not without waiting in line for a LONG time.

So, as Heidi says, you work with the PR folks. You create a sane schedule that allows you to maximize your time. And you don’t whine.

For Comics Waiting Room, SDCC represents a chance to gather a wealth of story material that we might not otherwise have access to. So rather than piss and moan about what we *couldn’t* do, I’m always going to be happy with the things we could. More people need to adopt Heidi’s attitude (and mine) and be happy with the Con they have, not the one they can’t.

side note: meeting and chatting with the future Mr. Beat as our group left the IDW party was a fun highlight. Ben’s an absolutely hilarious fellow.

Of those responses to IDW’s announcment, I liked Chris Staros’s the best. It pretty much sums up the advantages of attending the event, though it is awfully difficult to leverage press coverage without big event-like announcements and pre-con hyping, and I didn’t do so hot on that front this year.

The only comic person I’d want to party with over a stripper is Alan Moore; he’d have a sock puppet show and magic tricks.

Incidentally, I wonder, and perhaps this is “don’t ask” territory, but what does it cost a comic company for renting a typical space at Comic Con? Are we talking mega dollars or a couple of thousand for the space? I don’t mean the cost to ship the display units around.. just the cost to “be there”.

As for the swag… Bidding a few choice items on eBay.

I’ll only go if I’m guiding a virginal fanboy or girl, or if it’s work related. Or moves to a larger venue.