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Best of San Diego Comic Con 2013
Today’s the big day. Open registration for San Diego Comic Con 2014. For all those waiting in line, hoping to get a badge today, here’s my recap of the best stuff from SDCC 2013.
Best Art I Bought
Sara Richards
Got this lovely Doctor Who Print from Sara, along with an original piece – Amelie:
Mike Vasquez
You might recognize this art Mike did for me at SDCC.
Bordin Marsinkul
Best Panels
Tournament of Nerds: Live
The World’s End – The panel featured Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright talking about the movie for an hour. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Ode to Nerds – You can read more about it, but this was the biggest surprise to me at SDCC 2013. Charlie Jane Anders was a delightful moderator, and the panelists were intelligent and encouraging. I hope to see more panels hosted or featuring io9 staffers at SDCC 2014.
Best Cosplay
You can see the rest at my SDCC Cosplay page.
Best Parties
The Unofficial SDCC Blog’s #UndertheSDCC party
Geek and Sundry
You can read a full travelogue of all the parties and panels here.
Best Comics I Bought
Love and Capes TPB #1
Thomas Zahler is quite a nice guy, in addition to being a very talented writer and artist. I reviewed this TPB here.
Atomic Robo #1-6
Another great find from a terrific publisher – Red Five. Reviewed here.
Vision and Scarlet Witch (Vol 2) #1-12
And to wrap this all up, how can I resist?
Thanks, and good luck to all!
– CCG
SDCC Thursday: Ode to Nerds Panel
Here’s another panel I hit in Thursday. Or rather, one that hit me.
Ode to Nerds
This panel was an absolute revelation to me. It was on my radar, but to be honest I only went for two reasons.
First, I needed someplace to sit while I ate lunch. Second, Anthony couldn’t make it and he had been geeking out hard to see one of the panelists, Chuck Palahniuk. (Weird that his name doesn’t trigger spell check – there must be a “Fight Club” fan in charge of Microsoft’s dictionary).
The description in the official guide didn’t give me much to go on: “Everyone knows that published science fiction authors reign on the Geek Heirarchy charts, because the Internet tells us so! Join panelists as the genre’s top names in publishing celebrate all things geeky and nerdy, with Charlie Jane Anders of io9.com. Geek out with Cory Doctorow (The Rapture of the Nerds),Chuck Palahniuk (Doomed), Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind), Austin Grossman (You), D. C. Pierson (Crap Kingdom), and Robyn Schneider (The Beginning of Everything). “
The first thing that hit me was what a tremendous job Charlie Jane Anders did moderating this panel of authors. I’ve just recently come to read, appreciate, and ultimately cherish the job that io9 does covering culture. So, I recognized the web site in the programming guide, but had no idea who Charlie Jane Anders was.
I’ll tell you what. Charlie was great. She was enthusiastic and knowledgeable – a great combination for a moderator. I’d never read anything from any of the authors on this panel before, except for “Haunted” by Chuck Palahniuk. Now? I’ve got a long list of these titles on my Amazon wish list.
The panel opened with a “Geek Hierarchy Chart” and launched into a discussion of people and their passions. The whole conversation made me fall in love with Comic Con all over again – there’s not just acceptance of “difference”, but celebration of it.
The best thing about this panel was the energy and encouragement these authors had for other writers. The panelists were, to a person, passionate about authors staying true to themselves and doing what they love.
There was a hilarious discussion that started from a comment about 50 Shades of Gray that I won’t repeat here because I just showed my mother how to subscribe to this blog. I’ll wait a few weeks until she loses her login and forgets about it to post the details.
My favorite comment of the panel came from Robyn Schneider. She talked about all the different kinds of fandom present under the nerd umbrella. She said, “They’re all pockets on the same pair of nerd jeans.” Then she immediately seemed a bit embarrassed that she said “nerd jeans”. Don’t worry Robyn, we get you.
The panel was very inspirational. I appreciated the discussion regarding publishing. Specifically, there was a discussion that, too often, people measure the worth of a writer by whether they’ve been published or had a movie made. I don’t want to spoil the metaphor by misquoting it here. And since this panel caught me off guard, I didn’t have my pen and notebook handy to capture specifics. Suffice it to say, there was an acknowledgement that many writers are hobbyists and there are greater aspirations than being published.
I will, however, be keeping my eye on io9, Charlie Jane Anders, and the authors on this panel. And next year, I’ll be specifically seeking out more programming like this at SDCC.
If a video of this panel exists, I’d love to see it and provide a link. I’ve still only got six skill points in Google, though, so I haven’t been able to find it on my own.
In the meantime, you can watch Robyn Schneider introduce her appearance at Comic Con on Youtube. It’s fun and will give you an idea of the geek enthusiasm that abounded.
– CCG