Here's some downright presidential pictures from Friday and into Saturday of this year's Comic-Con! Let's get to it.
The gentleman above not only bore a striking resemblance to our current President of the United States, but he surrounded himself with fake Secret Servicemen as well. Here he is with equally impressive Supermen (even if I hate that New 52 costume) and Captain Marvel.
Friday brought a signing at the Tick booth with Ben Edlund. A healthy number of fans showed up to meet Ben, and this guy brought a spot-on reproduction of the Little Wooden Boy from an episode of the cartoon. I wanted to get a picture of it, and Ben just kind of slowly leaned in while I was framing the shot. Afterwards, Ben asked something to the effect of "was I not supposed to be in the picture?" But if you're Ben Edlund, you do what you gotta do. And I'm happy to oblige.
Later on in the day, Patrick Warburton, he of the live-action Tick series as well as the Venture Bros. and Seinfeld, stopped by for a few minutes. I was lucky enough to get to say hello and I'm happy to say that I only did a minimum of gushing while he was around. What a treat it was to meet this guy who is a part of so many of my favorite television programs! In my hand I'm holding the Comic-Con exclusive Brock Samson figure, which he was kind enough to sign for me.
There were a number of celebrity sightings on Friday and Saturday, and I was able to snap a picture with more than my share, which was really fun. While walking outside of the convention center, I spotted Christopher Mintz-Plasse, of Superbad and Kick Ass fame, walking casually in the other direction. There were hundreds of other people around, but no one else seemed to notice. If this took place anywhere else, I probably would have figured that I had spied someone who simply looked uncannily like Mintz-Plasse, but since this was Comic-Con, I caught up to him and asked him for a picture, to which he kindly obliged. For some reason, I forgot all about how to snap a picture on my iPhone (wilting under pressure, let's call it what it is), but he said "I got this" and took the photo himself. Thanks, dude.
Yes! SPAAAACE GHOOOOOST!!
Notice the tiny cameo by Hypnotoad. These were great, simple costumes.
After the show ended on Friday, and as people poured out of the convention center, I saw a veritable comic celebrity in the person of Rob Liefeld talking to who I assume were his sons. Rob is such a firebrand within the comics community. It was fun to say hello and he was gracious enough to take a picture with me.
Friday was one probably the longest day of the five for me, as I woke up before 5:00 am, stayed at the convention the entire day and had a few things planned for the evening. I was pretty tired by the time the show let out, but the Walking Dead Escape at Petco Park was on the list and I wasn't about to let it slip on by. In 2012, I had considered running the obstacle course filled with the undead, but the event closed shortly after the convention center closed, and I was never able to get a ticket in time. This year, the event stayed open later into the evening and I snatched up a ticket for the evening. Here's a nice picture of a zombie on a cell phone.
The event was a lot of fun - I hear that the zombies were a lot more docile than the year before, in which a few people got banged up a bit from the high-intensity chase. Even so, it was a challenge filled with half an hour of running, climbing, dodging and crawling...still very intense. I made it through the course winded but mostly intact, though I did stumble over a road block, wiping out onto the cement concourse of the baseball stadium. I think I ended up scaring the event staff (and nearby zombies) with my fall more than anything else, which was kind of funny.
In the above picture, I'm climbing over one of the larger obstacles in the course. I've got the easy-to-spot yellow hat on.
This picture is particularly spooky. The light in the background makes it look like I've got a skeleton arm.
After some much needed rest, we got up on Saturday morning and headed back to Petco Park for the Nerd HQ Joss Whedon panel. We were lucky to get tickets to this event and were excited to make it to the enclosed section of the baseball stadium; you can see the field in the background!
Joss Whedon came out and put on a great show. He talked about Firefly, Avengers, SHIELD...all the hits.
As an added treat, Nathan Fillion served as moderator for the event! What a treat. Nerd HQ really outdid themselves this year, as they provided an experience seamlessly complementary to Comic-Con. They provided, I think, a little glimpse of what Comic-Con will become in the years ahead: not only will the convention center continue to host great, gigantic events, but outside attractions such as this will become more elaborate and more involved. You could have spent a few days at Nerd HQ with all of the various events and you wouldn't have gotten bored. This will get as big as Nerd HQ wants it to.
As we were leaving the panel, we ran into this photo shoot taking place.
And here we have some early promotions for the upcoming X-Men movie!
It's not Comic-Con without at least one guy dressing up as Galactus.
Pretty neat.
After making our way back to the convention center to get in line, we saw this Khal Drogo coming our way. This guy certainly has the face and the eyes for the part.
I'll stop here as I've got a number of pictures to show from the panel we stood in line for! Which panel was it? Come back and find out! Okay, it's the Tick panel. You forced it out of me.