Hey Friends,

If you’ve been keeping up with anything “pop culture” this week, be it through Entertainment Weekly, the Conan show, or even just your Facebook timeline, I’m sure you know my favorite “holiday” just ended: San Diego Comic Con!

Every year has had its share of amazing memories, and it’s hard to pick a favorite moment since I started going in 2015. This year, I don’t even know if I can pick a favorite day! As always, I left feeling both exhausted and rejuvenated. My body is tired, but my heart and mind are filled with love for the power of creativity–love for a yearly phenomenon in which thousands of people of all ages, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and life stories come together to share a creative passion. Maybe that’s for books, film, graphic arts, or any of the various rabbit holes of SDCC that I probably haven’t even explored: gaming, tech, cosplay, the scientific panels, etc.

Here are some of the highlights from my fourth year at SDCC.

Wednesday

“Preview day”! I wasn’t a badge holder for Preview Day, but as a volunteer, I got to work the Art Show! I wasn’t allowed to snap photos for obvious reasons, but there was at least one artist whose work I was sure I’d seen before, and it was fun getting to help him unload his van and carry his paintings to the Marriott. There was also an interesting man who made wooden robot figurines and spent most of his time talking to them. I guess all of us creative types are strange in our own ways?

When I finished my shift, I walked around San Diego a bit and scoped out the off-sites and wraps they were setting up for the weekend!

  

Thursday

The real “day one”! I actually spent a lot of time retracing some of those off-sites once they opened, and there were a lot of really great ones this year. The Good Place was one of my favorites. You start with a questionnaire about your morals: Yes, I have spoiled a movie for someone before (sorry…); No, I have NEVER reheated fish in an office microwave, how could you even accuse me of such a thing?! Based on my answers, I got to move into The Good Place where a merry-go-round, a super chipper mailman, a cupcake lady, and a bunch of other “neighbors” were there to welcome us to their neighborhood. Among them was a lady who told me she was supposed to go to the Bad Place and she needed my help keeping her secret, and if she could just see my phone, she needed to take a photo of me to commemorate my time in The Good Place. When I got that phone back, I had 8 selfies just like this:

And then they all started fighting and it turns out we weren’t supposed to be in The Good Place at all, so we had to leave before the Architect came to kick us out. Darn.

Amazon also promoted the heck out of the upcoming Jack Ryan show, with two huge building wraps and a HUGE off-site I only scraped the surface of. Seriously, they brought their A-game, with a huge escape room where you could win a Fire stick just for participating, an “analyst physical training” course where 100 people a day completed a VR obstacle course that ended in them zip-lining out of a helicopter, and a bazaar where if you completed a puzzle, they’d give you a cool bag and a sweet water bottle. They also gave out free ice cream, water bottles, and fruit. So yeah, they really want you to watch Jack Ryan, and because John Krasinski is awesome, I was already planning on watching it anyway!

Oh! And John Barrowman from Arrow and Doctor Who signed an autograph for me! Super nice guy!

Friday

Friday was so much fun! This was the day I saw a very dedicated group of cosplayers dressed like the Scooby-Doo gang, and overheard this candid conversation:

• Fred: *yawns* “So what do you guys think? Do we wanna do Ghost Busters first?”
• Daphne: “Sure! That’s a thing we want to do, right?”
• Shaggy: “I’m gonna check out the taco food truck. I’ll meet you there.”

I also got to be in the “Marvel Group Hug.” Full disclosure, group physical contact with a bunch of strangers sounded terrible to me, but I saw “free shirt!” on the sign and registered right away. It turns out this Group Hug wasn’t a physical embrace but a simple discussion with about 10 other people and a Marvel rep so we could sort out all of our “feels” about Infinity War. We discussed that “I don’t wanna go” scene, the fate of the Guardians, Bearded Cap vs. Non-Bearded Cap, and then the rep gave us donuts and shirts and showed us a deleted scene from the movie. Yay! I also had to sign a bunch of releases and sit by cameras and stuff, so watch for me on the Blu-Ray extras! (Just kidding–I don’t know what Marvel Studios is doing with the footage!)

I also saw a few panels in Ballroom 20 that day: Sissy Spacek and Bill Skaarsgard for Castle Rock, a new Stephen King show coming to Hulu, and the “Warriors of Prime Time” panel featuring Benedict Wong, Jay Hernandez, Santiago Cabrera, and a few others.

Saturday

Three highlights from Saturday:

1. The Manifest premiere and panel featuring Josh Dallas and Melissa Roxburgh. The pilot was amazing, and this is a show I’m going to get really into this fall! I have a feeling it’s going to resonate with LOST fans.
2. I played a 15-minute demo of Kingdom Hearts III, specifically the intro to the Toy Story world! I confess the controls felt a little weird at times and felt very demo-ish (it was also XBox which I’m not used to), but the magic was all about diving back into this universe and dusting off those memories of the first time I played Kingdom Hearts as a 5th grader. I’m 27 now, and the dude next to me looked like my physician and had to have been at least 40. We’ve been waiting all our lives to start bashing Heartless again!
3. I made it into Hall H for two panels! The first was all about “Women Who Kick Ass,” featuring Chloe Bennett, Amandla Stenberg, Regina King, Jodie Whitaker, and Camila Mendez, and the following panel was all about Deadpool 2 and the “super duper extended cut” they’ll be releasing soon. Seeing Ryan Reynolds was probably the highlight this year!

Overall

There’s tons of great programming on Sunday as well, but I had to catch an early flight and opt out of the last day! I don’t even think I’ve scratched the surface of everything that happened this weekend! I didn’t even mention that I was signed up for a scavenger hunt and placed around 17 out of 120 participants. There were close to 200 tasks, ranging from easy to hard to embarrassing:

• Easy: “Pose with a Deadpool cosplayer!” (This is actually kind of hard once you start looking for them… otherwise they’re everywhere.)
• Slightly harder: “Get arrested by a Stormtrooper.”
• Hard: “Kill Jon Snow.” (He actually wasn’t that big of a cosplay this year!)
• Embarrassing: “Start a rousing sing-a-long of the “500 Miles” song.” “Take an awkward prom photo in front of the convention center!”
• Impossible: “Spot a celebrity in a hotel elevator. Take a selfie with them.”

Would do the hunt again, hands-down!

This isn’t the rest of the photos, but I think this assortment summarizes SDCC 2018 quite nicely. Until next year!