Throughout the 90’s I just went for one day. My Comic-Con day consisted of going to every booth, looking for anything Sergio Aragones produced, getting Sergio Aragones’ autograph (almost every thing that Sergio has put out I have his autograph on them), finding MAD Specials (I have MAD Specials from #1 - #70), finding collectibles, and loading up with as much free stuff I could carry. Throughout the 90‘s Comic-Con got bigger and bigger. I wasn’t able to see everything I wanted to see in just one day so in 1999 I bought my first 4 day pass and started staying in a hotel for the 4 day. The only panel I ever went to was when Mark and Sergio started one that had to do with Groo The Wanderer. Now with my 4 day pass I was able to go to more panels. Then Comic-Con added Preview night so we started staying 5 days in San Diego. When hotels were almost impossible to come by, we rented a sailboat in 2008 and 2009 and stayed in the harbor by the Convention center.
Tickets were fairly easy to come by in the 2000’s. You could buy them at the Convention Center for the next year. By 2005 there were over 100,000 attending Comic Con. In 2007 I started buying my wife Lee a four day pass, plus preview night, so she could start going to some of the panels. At the 2011 Comic Con I had to get in line at 3:00 in the morning to purchase my 2012 Comic-Con tickets. This year’s Comic Con attendance was over 130,000 attendees. Tickets for Comic-Con 2013 were not available at this years Comic-Con. They go on sale online in August. All that being said this year’s Comic-Con will be my last. I turned 50 this year and after 20 Comic-Con’s I decided that it has gotten to hard to get tickets and a hotel and there are just too many people to enjoy it as much as I have in the past. It was fun while it lasted, but it’s now time to move on. Enough with my Comic-Con history lesson. let’s get on with
KOMIC CON REPORT 2012.
Welcome to the Komic Kuhn Report. My San Diego Comic-Con experiences started back in 1991. I only missed one year (1997) so this is my twentieth Comic-Con. In the 90’s I went for just one day. I’d go down with my wife, Lee, she’d drop me off and I’d stand in line to buy my ticket and off to wander the convention floor. The first year I went, there were 15,000 in attendance. Below is a photo what I collected my first year. The MAD Magazines I’m holding were the issues I was missing to complete my MAD Magazine collection of every issue.
Coming to Comic-Con is quite a spectacular thing. Below is a short movie of our arrival at Comic Con
We got our tickets at 3:00 p.m went back to the hotel and at 6:30 we entered the Convention Hall. Here’s a movie as we entered the Comic-Con 2012
The Convention hall is huge. Below is an overview of the convention hall.
A movie I am very much looking forward to this year is Frankenweenie by Tim Burton. They had a exhibit with artwork and sets and characters from the movie and that was the first thing I went to once I got on the floor. Click on the image below to see what the exhibition looked like.
***A NOTE WHILE READING THE KOMIC KUHN REPORT****
ANYTHING YOU SEE THAT LOOKS LIKE THE FOLLOWING
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MAYBE JUST COMPLETE SILLINESS.
I then went over to the IDW booth to pick up my pre-ordered copy of Sergio Aragones’ Groo The Wanderer Artist Edition Book. It is quite fantastic. The book is made up of the four part Marvel issues titled “Wager of the Gods” There was a signed and number limited edition with a variant cover and a regular edition. Since I’m a die hard Groo fan, I had to get them both. Click on the image below to read the introduction of the book by Mark Evanier. It goes into further explanation of what the book includes.
Also at Comic Con, off site, HGTV created an Electrifying Garden with a Frankenweenie Theme. Click on the image below to see the photos I took of the garden.
All the pages look fantastic. Below shows 2 of the pages of a wraparound cover for the Spanish Wager of the Gods. Click on the image below to see in more detail.
Below is a photo they took of me in front of Victor’s house.
Below is what I got when I donated some money to the Comic Book Defense League.
When you get your Comic-Con badge they give you a huge oversized bag. In that huge oversize bag, you are able to put an awful lot of goodies in them. The first is the bag that I got.
Here are some of the goodies that I stuffed in my bag.
Click on the image below to see the map of the convention floor.
The floor closed at 9:30 so I went back to the hotel to unload my bag and admire all of the contents.
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Thursday’s Activities
