Comic-Con 2011

Well, it's been a while, I should probably report in.

Comic-Con this year was a blast, as usual! The highlight for me was, as ever, walking the convention floor. The cosplayers were out in fine form this year, but my personal favorite was a mash-up of Darth Vader and Super Mario. It's a complete non sequitur, but that's why it's so amazing.


I also came up with a terrible game to play on the convention floor, which I called 'makeup or skin condition'. I make no excuse for how terrible that is, except I actually had back to back moments of genuine confusion, where I realized that one person actually had fake blood on their face, and not rosacea, followed immediately by making the converse realization about another person. Again, I'm sorry I'm occasionally the worst person. It happens.

My favorite part, however, wasn't strictly a Comic Con event, it was rather Con-adjacent. It was the ever-hilarious, nerdy and moving W00tstock, as put on by Paul and Storm, Wil Wheaton and Adam Savage. The guy who rather stole the show for me was Patrick Rothfuss, the author of two of my favorite fantasy novels of the past couple years. In the video below, he reads an old advice column he wrote for his college newspaper.



So imagine if the whole show was that funny. For four hours. That's W00tstock, people.

Another Con-adjacent show that blew my mind was the recording of the Nerdist Podcast Live, with the normal Nerdist crew plus Wil Wheaton, and then the guests of honor Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, known for their roles on a little TV show known as Dr. Who. The part where my brain exploded was when Wil and Matt started discussing how it was to pilot the Enterprise and the TARDIS. NERDGASM. You can find the whole thing here! Sadly, I did not receive a TARDIS burrito from Matt and Karen after the show. Still, well worth it.

Something that's always been a big part of the Con for me is the swag. I could probably get most of the same stuff online, piecemeal, but this lets me do it all in one go. Plus, it lets me meet a bunch of artists and writers whose work I admire greatly. This year was a pretty minimal haul, but I'm pretty stoked about it.


True to form, I bought a lot of comics! Clockwise from top left, I bought the Questionable Content book (the last one he had!), Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi (whose work I've always loved in the Flight collections), Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, the latest Penny Arcade collection, Orc Stain by James Stokoe (probably the weirdest comic I've read in ages, but it's a hoot), and the second Astonishing X-Men collection (signed! But since the signature is illegible, I don't know who by). Okay, I'm done abusing parenthetical statements, rest easy. The print is the cover of the Japanese edition of the first Scott Pilgrim book, the shirt on the left is a Dr. Who joke on the NASA meatball logo, the middle one is a Game of Thrones bit of swag I got in the redemption room, and the tanuki plumber shirt on the right is from Sam and Fuzzy via Topatoco. Come to think of it, that's actually a lot of swag. So it was a good year!

Finally, the thing that really made my Con this year were my friends. Or rather, the fact that I have friends, and rather more than I thought. Hanging out with Dave and Katherine and Ashok one day, then Raymond the next, then Peter, Hillary, Ruth and Kiana the day after that, and then my dear old friend Thomas who rolled down from LA, I was reminded of the fact that this is not an event to do alone, as I've previously thought. Con is an event that is always enhanced by the company of the people you attend it with, and I'm grateful that I had so many people to hang out with. Oh, and dressing up as Sherlock Holmes was awesome too. Pics to follow.

Anyhoo, this is my Sunday crew as we were rolling out on the trolley. Can't wait for next year!