Being able to attend this years comic con was an amazing experience. Heck the last one I was at was back in 96 with Andy, and god did that suck. But lets get past the bad and talk about the awesome that was this years.

First and foremost the forums stick out in my mind as one of the coolest things at comic con. From movie previews, to behind the scenes trailers, to robot chicken, to forums disguised as something when they are just a freakin plug for clone wars….. It was all good. No seriously, it was really cool to be able to see behind the scenes and stuff that no one else has been able to see before. The only problem I have with the whole forum thing was the fact that there were so many going on at once this year. According to Andy and others, last year they had most of the forums in the same theatre, making it easy to be able to see your favorite things. But this year there were about 10 rooms hosting forums and they all started about 15 minutes from each other. Making it impossible for people to get to see every one they wanted to. Oh well, this just basically made you plan out your attack better and make you think about which forums were the most important to you.

I was amazed at the sheer amount of vendors! Everything a nerd could want was available at the comic con. Energy drinks, comics, magazines, useless crap to put on your walls, swords, full sized Master Chief outfits, and statues were abundant this year. Everywhere you turned you saw another booth selling stuff you wish you had enough money for. Now did I buy anything there? Not really, I was taking in the experience  more so then anything. But man oh man, if i had a disposable income, I would have come home with so much useless stuff!

The signing areas were OK at best. There were 2 very poorly labeled areas where you could get things signed. One of them was in the back right corner of the floor with about 6 booths. And the other had about 15 lines for various people like Lou Ferrigno and some comic artists. The ones that were setup the best were DC and Marvel. They had huge floor spaces and had enough room to get lines somewhat organized. Sure there were other places doing signings, but they werent labeled very well so it was very easy to pass them up.

My favorite booths were definitly the  video game booths. It was so cool to be able to go and play games that were either in their first development stages or were only a few months away from being released. The two that stick out the most for me were Section 8, and Red Faction Gurrilla. Section 8 looked so amazing graphically and the gameplay looked so sweet. It is definatly the FPS to be on the look for down the line. Red Faction looks like the ultimate multiplayer deathmatch game. It was smooth, fast paced, and the most spectacular looking game of the whole comic con. There were some other booths with games like Ready to Rumble 2 where they were having a contest of who could give the best “LETS GET READY TO RUMBLE!!!”, and they actually had Bruce Buffer as the judge. DC universes booth was ok, nothing spectacular and they didnt have much in the way of a game demo because you could only use a few pre made chars.

But the worst booth of the show game wise had to be GTA Chinatown Wars for the DS. The staff couldnt care less, as they didnt even bother helping people with questions. They had two guys giving out the swag bags of GTA stuff, but they just shoved crap in a bag and kinda tossed it at ya. Every other game booth had people (usually developers) helping people get used to the game and fielding questions. These guys did none of that! Although their floor space looked cool, when you got up close, you realized you should just move on.

Wait whats the point of comic con without FREE STUFF!!! OMG it was amazing. Every single booth had freebies that dealt with their product or games. Lets take a little look at what i got in about 2 hours there. 2 red faction t shirts, 1 xblades tshirt, S.H.I.E.L.D magnet stickers eyepatch and pin, Marvel and DC pins posters and comics, 3 free game trials, and a free autographed 8×10 of one of the actors of Cinemaxes upcoming show Forbidden Science. There is a lot more stuff in my bags, but honestly its too much to list. Oh and for all of you out there interested in getting some of this stuff, listen to episode 21 of the SparkBoxShow for details on how to win a swag bag full of all sorts of goodies from the show.

I could really go on and on for another 2 pages easily, but I know most of you are surfing from work and you hjave actual work to do. The last thing I need is for you to get fired and blame me. So thank you for checking out the article and if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post below or send me an email at James at Sparkboxshow.com

Later all!

This entry was posted by James on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Entertainment, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.