COMIC-CON: DAY 1

COMIC-CON 2002: DAY 1

Oh man...talk about a long day. For anyone willing to listen, let me tell you a little story about day one of Comic-Con!

In the wee hours of the morning my Lights Out Media partner, Matt, and I got on our way to Comic-Con 2002. It was already WAY TOO early to be doing anything, but we figured the early bird gets the worm, so why not make our hour and a half truck to the convention.

On our way there we came upon some traffic. Now this wasn't any ordinary stop and go traffic mind you. We were at a dead stop. So, after sitting there for about 3 minutes trying to figure out what in Carmen San Diego was going on we saw a car driving in the turn out lane...going against traffic. Then we saw another. Then another. We decided that we were as punk enough to take on interstate highway 5 southbound head on as well as these other chumps, so we did. After busting a U-turn in the middle of the freeway we started down the turn out lane toward the freedom of an on-ramp (see...that's the only way to get off the freeway when you're driving the wrong way.)

After we got back onto a main road we started to listen to traffic radio stations to find out what was going on. It seems that a semi had tipped over on the interstate and spilled hundreds of gallons of oil onto the road...hence, they were redirecting traffic through Camp Pendalton....car by car, performing an ID check on each and every person. Damn terrorists.

At 6 o'clock in the morning this is no fun and almost crushed our dreams of an event filled day at Comic-Con. So, we didn't let the system beat us...we took an alternate route that took us around the accident. Although this route tacked on an hour of travel time for us, we didn't let the whole San-Diego-is-closed-today thing beat us.

Finally, 3 hours later, we made it. BUT, it's not that easy. When we finally got to the convention center in downtown San Diego, we could not find parking anywhere. It seems our fellow Consters had beaten us to the punch. So, we then spent the next 2 hours figuring out parking....which eventually consisted of parking, a hike, 2 trollies, and a hooker. Yes. You read right. It took us 5 hours to do what should have taken an hour and a half.

While there wasn't much to do today at the convention we did get to hang around the many Lord Of The Rings booths and cruise the show floor a bunch where they were screening footage from the extended edition DVD all day long! Being that there wasn't much film related material going on today, (all of the film stuff happens tomorrow and Saturday) I've broken down the rest of the day in the day's greatest highlights...(as if you're still reading this article right now!)

Highlight #4: The Shaolin Soccer trailer was great!!! It instantly reminded me of the kind of campiness we were always trying to pull off with our Truck Guy series! Oh well...if we only had a big budget. Or any budget at all. We did actually score some screening passes to Shaolin Soccer but we were so exhausted that we decided against it and thought it best to get an early start tomorrow.

Highlight #3: Right now, I can say that the stuff that impressed me the most had to be the Alien vs. Predator 12" figures coming out from Spawn.com this fall. WOW! Those things are amazing!

Highlight #2: While we had a small inkling of who was going to be at the convention this year, we didn't know everything. We ended up walking a certain strip of the con a few times and didn't realize it the first 2 or 3 times, but then something clicked...wait, that's Peter Mayhew...THAT'S CHEWBACCA!!! We were impressed, but got a little scared when we saw that he was charging $20 for autographed pictures and $15 for an autograph on something you bring. Anyway, we didn't know what he was gonna charge us if we tried to snap a picture with him, so we left him alone and snapped a few candid shots!

Highlight #1: By far, the most entertaining part of the day was the outstanding presentation put on by our friends over at TheOneRing.net! It was a blast. They showed us trailers for The Two Towers, analyzed them scene by scene, and took us a through a slew of changes that Peter Jackson made to the story to present a better film to the audience. Don't worry though...I don't think Tolkien fans will be disappointed.

Well, that's all for now. Stay tuned tomorrow for the main event when we hit up Stan Winston, John Musker, Seann William Scott, James King, & Asia Argento! We'll also be heading over to the infamous Movie Webmaster Panel where we'll be talking to some of these guys who we've been conversing with through e-mail for ages...

Oh yeah! We'll also be there for whatever they throw at us on House Of The Dead! Get ready!

Check out some pictures we took today!









Stay tuned for more Comic-Con madness!