Where is Diggity Now? (WIDN?): Comic Con 2011

This week, my friends, I'm in sunny San Diego, California. I'm here to attend an event that is officially called Comic Con International 2011.

Basically, it's the largest pop culture show in the U.S. (probably the world), with over 110,000 people attending the show over 4 days. It started years ago with a few thousand people that were fans of comic books. However, over the last decade, it has reached out to include so much more of pop culture - TV, movies and videogames. It a show for consumers, or regular fans. This is a demographic that is quite desirable by companies that create pop culture products. Many people come to the event dressed as their favorite characters from all the various media forms. It's become THE place to debut a film or TV show. If you can convince these fans that the show/movie is "cool", they will go out of their way to promote that project to whomever will listen. That, as they say in the industry, is "buzz". Hollywood now makes Comic Con a big part of a film's marketing.

Why was I here, you may ask? First, I was here on business. My company actually had a booth at the show. I was there helping to showcase some of the latest PC games to consumers. I also participated in several press interviews. However, the strongest reason I'm here - because I'm a huge fan of comic books, and all the rest ; ) So, let's just get started.

First, with so many people attending the show at the San Diego Convention Center, the lines to get your ticket/pass was LONG. There were over 60,000 people going through the doors today.

A small shot of the incredible lines to actually register for the show

Our company's banner where thousands of people are registering for the show

Once you finally reach the show floor, there are literally hundreds of booths that you can visit. Here's a shot, looking down the main walkway. You can see the aisle number signs fading into the distance. There was an equal number in the opposite direction.

The Warner/DC Comics booth. These banners were really tall...

I know there are a lot of Angry Birds fans out there...this booth was selling all kinds of Angry Birds merchandise:

One of the reasons that I love this show? Toys. I'm talking about A LOT of toys. I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of merchandise available on the show floor:

As I've said, the show caters to a variety of interests. This vendor was selling original artwork from Disney films. Here are original images from Sword in the Stone and Pocahantas:

Sometimes, artists are selling new characters, that you may never heard of before. Here's just one of them:

I have no idea why this flower is so angry...

One other type of merchandise that you'll find here are maquettes, or sculpted mini-statues. These are usually very detailed and showcase a superhero or character. They are also expensive. This is one that I would love to have the money for:

T-shirts are big with this crowd, as you might expect. Here's a "tower" of t-shirts from one booth:

In other parts of the expo floor, you found huge booths for a variety of companies:

This picture of Voltron is dedicated to my brother-in-law ; )

You also found several booths that provided opportunities for celebrity autographs. Some celebs were quite famous. Some were - how shall we say - past their prime? Here you have Nicholas Brendon, who appeared as "Xander" on Buffy the Vampire Slayer - along side Robert Picardo from the TV show Star Trek Voyager:

There were other celebrities at the show. They participated in "panel discussions" in the large ballrooms, holding hundreds at a time. These panels included films about to be released (Cowboys & Aliens, Captain America, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, etc). If you waited in line for hours, you could see the actors from these films in-person. I didn't have time (nor the desire) to do that.

Back on the show floor, you could find the biggest comic book company - Marvel. As you may know, Marvel has been involved in a lot of recent superhero movies (X-Men, Thor, Iron Man):

This fan dressed as Captain Marvel & had his picture taken with the Marvel girls

The big attraction this year for Marvel, is the Captain America movie, opening this weekend. They invited the star of the movie, Chris Evans, to sign some autographs in their booth. Here is a video of the mayhem. If you look closely, you can see Evans in the distance. This is as close as I could get:

I found these awesome vinyl action figures at one booth. If I can find time, I may go back and try to find a Kevin Garnett/Celtics figure. You couldn't even give me a Kobe Bryant figure...

Comic Con just wouldn't be the same without Star Wars. Near the LucasFilm booth, you could have your picture taken with a variety of characters from the Star Wars universe:

Moving on, I found the "videogame" section of the show. Here, some of the large game publishers had booths, to show off the latest videogames. This is the booth for Capcom and they were showing the latest Street Fighter game: