“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” some said.

“You have to plan ahead,” others emphasized.

“It’s more than just the show floor,” I was told.

Those are just three examples from the dozens of things folks told me about San Diego Comic Con in advance of its arrival. I was getting all these tips because this year’s edition was my first, and everyone wanted me to know what I was getting myself into. The truth is that most things people told me about the con were accurate, and sometimes in varying ways. It is a marathon, not a sprint. 45 You should plan ahead. 46 It is more than the show floor. 47 But there was one thing that proved to be the most accurate, and it was a pretty simple note.

There’s no real way to prepare for it.

Not really.

That’s not to say you don’t want to try. You have to try. It’s just this person rightly believed that there’s preparing for the idea of it and then there’s experiencing the reality of it. San Diego Comic Con is a Choose Your Own Adventure story with unlimited tributaries branching from every decision you make, each of which triggers its own feelings of FOMO and uncertainty. By choosing to do X, Y, or Z, you’re not doing A, B, or &. 48 There are a sea of choices available to you at any given moment. It can be overwhelming, so you really have just two options: Ride the wave or collapse under the weight of the options crashing on top of you.

Needless to say, I took the former route. I rode that wave as well as I could, even as it tried to kill me. 49

When The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald was on Off Panel last, she told me I should keep a diary as a first-time visitor to San Diego Comic Con. I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not, but I have to admit: it seemed like a good idea. So, I actually did that, and did so as a person trying to experience it as a regular attendee, outside of some core responsibilities. And throughout this journey, I tracked my observations and thoughts and experiences from my San Diego Comic Con debut. Some of those lead to broader thoughts about the convention. Others are just anecdotes.

Ultimately, though, this is the story of how I went into the biggest comics convention in America — at least in terms of impact — thinking one thing and came out of it believing something else entirely.

As a note, each entry will be timestamped just to keep this clean from a structural standpoint. But a lot of them are guesstimates based on memory and when photos were taken. Most of my journaling took place the day after these events happened. There was too much going on to do it during the day. That’s a necessary clarification for anyone reading. But with that out of the way, let’s get to it.

Tuesday, July 23^rd: Day -1

2:07 pm: I arrive in San Diego by train, as Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner with its ocean views and reasonable prices were an appealing alternative to flying from Los Angeles. 50 While the train was loaded with people that just felt like comic people and the train station itself was dotted with an unusual number of individuals wearing IGN branded apparel, nothing seemed out of sorts in the city’s Santa Fe train station. It was a normal city on a normal day.

That is, until I hopped into a rideshare to get to my hotel, the Hilton Bayfront. Just how dominant SDCC is became apparent once I reached the area surrounding the San Diego Convention Center. You think you’re prepared for how overwhelming this takeover will be, and then you actually get there. Every building and every trolley and really every thing in the area and the surrounding Gaslamp Quarter seems to be an opportunity for eager brands to build awareness and excitement. Giant-sized Akira Toriyama art on a hotel! A Marvel’s Contest of Champions ferris wheel! An era-specific setup for Peacock’s Those About to Die!

This dominance was especially emphasized by my hotel, which had a 85% complete, building-sized What We Do in the Shadows ad being put up on its exterior and Futurama, American Dad, and Solar Opposites ads for Hulu on the inside walls of its elevators. This made it hard to miss what was about to happen in the greater convention center area.

It was a lot from the jump.

3:00 pm: Another guest shares that the Hulu elevator ads were not up when he took the elevator the evening before, and yet they were the next morning. The advertising gremlins work quickly, apparently!

3:15 pm: It’s time to pick up con badges, and I attempt to go in the wrong door roughly five times because there isn’t much signage yet. I find the right one, though, and head up the escalator into the badge pickup area where I…went in the wrong line two straight times. My badge is supposed to be both press and professional, so I expected either the press or professional lines to be right option. They were not. I had to pick up my badge in the regular attendee area, which was easy to do but not obvious by any means. That was the badge pickup vibe: Smooth but confusing.

This is also the first time I was recognized during the con. As we walked into the badge pickup area, my wife overheard one of the people working the door ask, “Was that the guy from SKTCHD?” It was! 51

3:40 pm: Now appropriately badged and ribboned 52 I broke the rules and went deeper into the convention center to check out the room I’d be hosting a panel in on Saturday. It was a big one, which sent a chill down my spine, but it did give me the chance to take some silly pictures in the process.

5:15 pm: As I head to dinner at Nobu in the Gaslamp’s Hard Rock Hotel, two instances of SDCC advertising really entertained me. One was that a trolley 53 was wrapped in Snowpiercer marketing, which was too perfect. The other was the Hard Rock Hotel was completely covered in SpongeBob SquarePants advertising, which meant that I became one of the first human beings — I presume, at least — to eat at a Nobu adorned with Patrick the starfish making goofy statements. Only at Comic Con!

8:00 pm: The What We Do in the Shadows ad covering the Hilton Bayfront is now complete, just a few hours later. The gremlins are cooking!

Wednesday, July 24^th: Day 0

9:15 am: Friend of the site and podcast Alex sent me a list of favored con restaurants, and The Breakfast Company was at the top of my draft picks from it. It was a good choice for a Preview Night starter. This Gaslamp spot easily clears the seemingly more popular Broken Yolk Café across the street from it. Highly recommended.

Also: The comic sightings begin there. I saw a couple retailers and an art rep there as we dined.

10:40 am: I head out to Coronado Island by ferry — its a 15 minute ride from the promenade behind the convention center — for a quick away mission. Previously, my plan had been to stay at the Marriott on the island. Because of that, I ordered a shirt to be delivered there. The only problem was we switched to the Hilton Bayfront, so I still had to go out there to pick up that shirt. Alas.

Here’s where I need to tell a quick story. I was convinced I had made an amazing decision by booking a spot on Coronado, one that everyone had been missing out on for years. Coronado was the play, and I was the genius that unlocked it. Thankfully, MacDonald promised me it would be a mistake, and then so did some other kind folks from comics, two of whom helped me find a better solution, namely a room in the Hilton Bayfront. I was wrong and everyone else was correct.

While Coronado seems incredibly nice, it would have been a nightmare commute going back and forth, and being near the convention is basically an SDCC superpower. So, don’t listen to podcast me: Coronado is not a smart play for SDCC. It’s a cool idea in theory but not in execution. Big thanks to the comics community for guiding me away from a decision that would have been terribly self-destructive!

12:15 pm: The con badge pickup line is now insane.

12:40 pm: I head to (redacted), a quiet and excellent coffee spot on the fringes of the Gaslamp district, for coffee with Tiny Onion’s Director of Communications Jazzlyn Stone. It was lovely getting to catch up with Jazzlyn, and this visit proved to be a good example of something unique about this con. While it started as Jazzlyn and I, it quickly swelled from a two person visit to a five person one, as a couple great comic folks joined randomly, another stopped by briefly, and my hang with writer/artist Declan Shalvey kicked off there.

This is where I quickly learned that it’s basically impossible to not constantly run into people at this convention. That’s a good thing, of course! It’s a super fun aspect of SDCC! But you almost have to bake that into your plans, as every bit of foot travel will take that much longer because you’re invariably going to see people you know, even if you don’t plan to. 54

Also, it underlined that con events are everywhere. There was a Sonic the Hedgehog pop up right across the street from the coffee shop, because of course there was.

1:45 pm: Declan and I head to Now or Never Comics, a nearby comic shop. We’re both glad we visited.

First off, the shop is excellent, as owner Aaron Trites and his main man Zach Norris run a tight ship filled with a whole lot of love for comics and smart retailing choices. It’s a bright, well-laid out space loaded with comics and toys, all of which are displayed beautifully and prominently. I especially loved the section of discounted comics upstairs that aren’t bagged and boarded, a perfect option for those who just want to read some good comics — like I do. If you ever go to SDCC, you should stop by the shop.

Second off, Trites and Norris are human kindness factories. They could not have been any more welcoming, with the former taking the time to tell us all about the shop during a busy event and the latter hyping SKTCHD and Off Panel up to the entire store when I was given the honor of joining the ranks of creators who had signed their staircase. 55

Finally, they were having an IDW-powered pizza party for the launch of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, and who doesn’t love pizza? I know I do!

3:20 pm: While texting with someone in comics I was hoping to meet up with, they say they can meet up after a party they’re going to that night. I ask if it was one of two parties I was invited to, thinking we could just meet up there. It wasn’t. It was a third one I had not even heard of. There were assuredly others as well.

San Diego Comic Con loves a good party. There were so many parties.

4:15 pm: Note to future first timers: If you’re trying to get somewhere during SDCC that isn’t walkable, order your ride early. That area becomes a nightmare for cars, and we’re late to a dinner reservation at the incredible Born and Raised because of my lack of planning ahead. It worked out for us 56 but it could have been much worse.

6:24 pm: It’s Preview Night at SDCC, so we scoot over to the convention after dinner. I’m already late for a press signing IDW is doing for TMNT #1 with writer Jason Aaron and artist Joëlle Jones by the time we arrive. My immediate solution is to run there, until I remember the roughly eight million signs that say you’ll be kicked out of the con if you’re caught running. Instead, I weave my way through the con like peak of his powers Barry Sanders and make it just before the signing starts and just in time for a group picture with attending press. 57 It was a fun event, and one I wouldn’t typically go to. I was glad I did!

A quick related note: I could not have been more impressed by IDW’s Senior Publicity Manager Gregg Katzman. He was hustling throughout that whole convention. Just that day, I saw him at Now or Never at the pizza party, then at the signing, and at an IDW party later that night. Near as I could tell, he was either running the show or deeply involved with all three. What a boss!

6:40 pm: The remainder of Preview Night was spent getting a lay of the land and saying hello to people. I typically spend my first visit to a convention’s show floor figuring out where everything is. You can do that at most cons. That’s not possible at San Diego. The show floor is like a regular one stretched into infinity. I saw maybe 35% of the floor that night, and only briefly. My comparison for its show floor was The Louvre, and how if you spend 30 seconds at each piece of art there, you’ll be in there for a month. It’s just not possible to see everything at SDCC — especially in those first three hours.

That said, my initial observations were as follows:

• The comic publisher setup here is much more impressive than at other conventions, as pretty much everyone has a booth — including Marvel, DC, Image, BOOM!, Dark Horse, Oni, and DSTLRY 58 — and they use that space to max effect 59
• The Artist Alley seems okay at best and like a mess at worst. Signage is limited, tables are small, the rows are too tight, and sound from Hall H blasts through the walls to the point they shake during the loudest booms. Creators make it work, but it’s cramped
• The name of the game is always exclusives at bigger cons, but that feels especially true here. There seems to be a line everywhere you go
• It doesn’t feel too different from any other con. It’s just much, much bigger

9:15 pm: At the aforementioned IDW party, I see a whole bunch of cool people, some of whom I excitedly talk in this very loud setting. It’s well-attended for a reason. IDW did a great job with the party. 60 However, this is where disaster begins to strike: it’s day zero and I’m already starting to lose my voice. Apparently going to a baseball game and Disneyland before the trip and then talking to dozens of people before and at this loud party was a bad idea, because the con hasn’t even really started and the one thing I cannot lose is beginning to go. I talk to a bunch of folks quickly, but as my voice really begins to crack, I return to my hotel in an act of self-preservation.