The San Diego International Comic-Con. Comic conventions just don't get any bigger than this one. This year, from July 20 to July 23, fans by the thousand packed into the San Diego Convention Center to see the stars, see the superheroes, see the comics, and see if they could survive a few days of utter mayhem.

And I was one of them.

Day One – Free Stuff!
We got there Wednesday for preview night and it took us about 10 minutes to maneuver our way inside and get our four-day passes. Seems pretty quick, but then we got in line for the freebie table....

...an hour and a half of waiting in line to get to one single table. Not the line for the exhibition hall, the line for a fuckin' freebie table! How people were able to spend more than two minutes grabbing the things they wanted I will never know.

We headed down to the line for the exhibition hall and were lucky enough to get there while they were letting people in. I didn't look too much since it was a cluster-fuck, and thankfully the one booth I really wanted to hit was right there, the Revoltech booth. I bought the exclusive they had and bought the last three figures I needed to complete the first wave.

As we walked around a bit more, I passed by a booth. A very important booth. And if my friend hadn't pointed it out to me, I would have missed him completely. Sid-fucking-Haig! He was really cool about talking with me about random bullshit; he even started to sing Highway to Hell for us while we were there. He seems so much more intimidating on screen.

We looked around a bit more and decided we had had enough and went back to our hotel.

Day Two – Movie Sneak Peaks!
The next day we ended up going to a bunch of Q&A's for Lions Gate and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated movie. The guy who is directing the TMNT really knows his shit and I'm glad they have him helming the project. It's a lot darker in tone while still retaining a bit of wackiness from the cartoon series. The clip they showed was pretty impressive and I definitely love the direction they are going with it.

Lions Gate panel consisted of Q&A's for Skinwalkers, Crank, The Descent, and Saw III. The clip of Skinwalkers was pretty decent; though it didn’t make a whole lot of sense and confused a majority of the audience. It is a werewolf movie that is backed by Stan Winston. Supposedly the werewolves will look light-years better than anything that has ever been done on film before.

Crank looks very fun; it’s about a guy who has an hour to seek revenge on the guys who poisoned him. They had the two director's, Jason Statham, and Pedro from Napolean Dynamite (he plays a transsexual and unlike Jon Heder, he isn't a complete fucking douche bag of epic proportions).  The clip started out with Jason coming out of a door and chopping a man’s hand off. The man then proceeds to beat the ever-loving crap out of Jason.  Pedro comes from behind and hits him in the head with a dough roller. Jason tries to shoot the guy but his gun is empty. Jason walks over, grabs the guy’s hand off the ground, goes up behind the hand-less man and proceeds to blow the man's head off all over the brick wall, door and Pedro. Very intense and really showcases the film’s style. Most of the questions were directed at Jason and he seemed very clueless at his female fan's reactions.

They only showed a clip of The Descent and didn't have anyone there who was involved in the production. The Saw III panel, on the other hand was great, mainly due to Tobin Bell. Somebody asked him what his favorite trap was in the previous two Saw movies and while he was thinking he just said this into the microphone, "Hmmmm....... ohhh.... mmm.... yessss." He completely owned the room with his wonderful voice. The clip that they showed started out with a man waking up and realizing that parts of his body were hooked to sections of the room. A TV turns on and out comes everyone’s favorite puppet, Jigsaw. Turns out that there is a bomb in the room and he has something like 60 seconds to yank out the hooks. What comes next was very brutal and hard to watch. You could feel the whole room flinch.

We journeyed out to the autograph area and noticed that only two people were by Ken Foree's booth. You can't pass up a legend like Ken Foree, so I walked over and got a picture with him and his autograph. Really nice guy.

Went back down to the exhibition hall and was hoping that Tim Bradstreet would be at his booth. He is a fucking bear of a man. We talked a bit and I ended up buying a couple art prints from him (they were two Punisher MAX covers). He told me to wait a second and he pulled a poster out from his bag and said that he hadn't put these out yet for sale. It was a poster with Snake Eyes from G.I. Joe looking pretty bad ass. He gave it to me for free. His reasoning? "You bought two art prints and, well, I like ya." How cool is that?

We walked around a bit more and took some photos of people down there; the only really good photo was of Q from Star Trek. He was talking on his cell phone and noticed that my friend was snapping his picture so he turned and posed for it.  It was very unexpected and completely cool of him to do.

Day Three – Comics, Comics, Comics!
Jammed my way over to the DC booth on Friday and got my Absolute Hush signed by legendary artist Jim Lee (Uncanny X-Men, WildCATS). That guy is very short! He seemed thrown off guard because I did not have a million things for him to sign like most people. Also, that guy is very short!

Waited in line for two hours to meet Robert Kirkman (they fucked his schedule up), the creator of The Walking Dead and writer of Marvel Team-Up, among many other titles. He is a wonderful guy and even had the Invincible Encyclopedia out for his fans to peruse through. I did make a comment about his screwed up schedule and I think I came off as a bit of a jerk. Robert if you’re reading this, I didn’t mean to sound like a jerk, I would have waited at least two more hours to meet you. Tell your zombie minions that I am on their side.

Day Four – The Grand Finale!
Saturday was Hall H day, when they were showing a lot of movie previews and panels. I saw footage for 300 and Grindhouse.

The footage for 300, based on the graphic novel of the same name by Frank Miller (Sin City, Dark Knight Returns), was my vote for best of show during the whole thing. After seeing the footage, everybody was picking their jaw up off the floor. There were some unfinished shots in it, but the finished shots were just gorgeous. They stayed very true to Lynn Varley’s colors from the graphic novel. For the viewing they had Zack Snyder, Gerard Butler, David Wenham and Frank Miller to answer questions. I really wish they had filtered out most of the fan girl questions towards Gerard, they got very old after the first two.

My view on Grindhouse can be summed up in two words: fucking and awesome.

Rosario Dawson took over Kevin Smith's Q&A since he was late; traffic was horrible that day. She called him up about halfway through and he said it was due to "too many people dressed up like fucking Robin" blocking the streets to the Convention Center.

I have the biggest fuckin' crush on Rosario now. I never knew she was such a huge comic nerd. She was funny, cute and just plain awesome. She even sang a song for the audience.

And those are most of the highlights of my time at the San Diego International Comic-Con. I'm leaving stuff out – with four tightly-packed days, I'm leaving a lot out - but these were probably the coolest moments. (And full disclosure: I look like shit in the pictures since it is a sauna of nerd spooge and sweat in most areas of the convention center.) My only major complaint about the whole thing was that the layout of the exhibition hall was atrocious. They need to space out the major booths a lot more than they did. When you would hit the middle of the hall it was a complete traffic jam. People were waiting in line for all of the booths and none of the security (who had hilarious shirts that said ELITE on the back) would do anything to prevent the congestion.

But damn, it was a lot of fun. I definitely look forward to going next year.