Comic Con 2008 (Day 2)

Too excited to sleep, I woke-up at 5:30AM and emailed Karen about the con. I was distressed to read in USA Today that Hugh Jackman had made a surprise appearance at the “X-Men” panel on Thursday while we were still on the train. Bummer!

The doors opened on Friday at 9:30AM so we boarded the Comic Con shuttle at 8:45AM, along with a couple of elves and an entire family of Star Wars characters. It was madness at the convention center.

“It’s like Saturday,” someone yelled in amazement. “Only it’s Friday!”

We fought our way through the crowds and headed upstairs to the “Big Bang Theory” panel. The actors were all very cute and had good chemistry with each other. Between panels, we dashed downstairs to the exhibits, where I bought a copy of “Shatnerica,” an encyclopedia about “Star Trek” captain extraordinaire William Shatner (2nd edition—who knew?!). We also fell in love with—and subsequently purchased—a framed, limited edition print of characters from Disney’s animated movie “The Incredibles.” They promised to hold it for us until Saturday.

The rest of the day was spent in dark rooms attending various panels: TV showrunners from some of our favorite shows (“Lost,” “Chuck,” “Pushing Daisies,” and “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”); the upcoming Star Wars “Clone Wars” movie and TV show (so boring, I read the Shatner book cover-to-cover while waiting for the panel to end!); a Q & A with “visionary filmmakers” Judd Apatow, Kevin Smith, Zack Snyder, and Frank Miller (funny); and finally a panel promoting Kevin Smith’s new film “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” (very, very funny). We left the convention center at 8PM, exhausted but happy.

What else did we see? After the previous day’s incident when I failed to take a picture because I was so flustered by the two faux Star Trek captains, Tim assumed control of the camera. As you can see below, he went berserk.