SDCC 101: Day One. The Ground Floor
Welcome to SDCC 101. If you’ve never been to Comicon, or if you’ve never been to a large science fiction/comics/popular media convention, but are at all curious about it, this is the guide for you. Over the next three days I will attempt to introduce you to some of the ins and outs of Comicon and let you know what you’re missing by not attending.
First, a little history. San Diego Comicon was started in 1970 at the U.S. Grant Hotel. The first convention drew about 300 attendees but has grown over the years and changed venues several times. It has variously been held at the El Cortez Hotel, the University of California, San Diego campus and the Golden Hall before moving to it’s current home at the San Diego Convention Center in 1991. It’s ballooned from the original 300 attendees to an estimated 140,000, which is the maximum legally allowed inside the convention center. However, that only reflects the number of same-day attendees, if you calculate all the one-day ticket holders, there are probably close to 175,000 attendees every year. This makes it the largest fannish convention in the United States by far and depending on how you define “convention”, perhaps the world. The only larger gathering is Japan’s Comiket, which pulls in about 400,000, but since that’s mostly a doujinshi swap meet, it doesn’t really qualify as a convention of the same type as SDCC.
Comicon fills the San Diego Convention Center to capacity and beyond, every inch of available convention space is used. San Diego has reportedly started planning to double the size of the Convention Center, starting in 2011 or 2012, specifically to keep SDCC in the city. For the first time in 2007, the convention completely sold out, people on-site attempting to buy tickets for Saturday were turned away. In 2008, the convention sold out entirely before it started, there were no more tickets to be had after June. In 2009, the convention started only selling tickets online, they had no plans whatsoever to sell memberships at the door and all tickets were gone by late April/early May.
The most recent development is reportedly three cities, Anaheim (yeah right), Los Angeles (even worse) and Las Vegas (absolutely) will be at this year’s convention trying to convince SDCC to change venues. My vote is for Las Vegas, as I’ve written before. It remains the only city in the United States that can handle not only the convention as it is now, but the next 20+ years of growth.
Here is the front of the convention center, decked out for the convention. The entire city turns out every year to welcome the con, and for good reason. The population of San Diego more than doubles for this one weekend in July every year, every hotel room for 30 miles around is booked solid and the city makes millions in revenues from the convention. It’s no surprise that “welcome con-goers” signs can be seen almost everywhere.
Once you get inside, which is often an adventure in and of itself, 
you’re in the central lobby, which houses badge pick-up, shipping services, lost and found, bag check, etc. From the lobby, you can go into the dealer’s room through a number of large doors across the back wall, or up the stairs to the mezzanine level which we’ll cover tomorrow. For today, let’s take a trip into the truly massive dealer’s room and see what we can see.
The exhibit hall is over 460,000 square feet and features hundreds of exhibitors selling everything from comics to toys to t-shirts to DVDs. All of the biggest media names attend to preview their newest movies or show off their latest TV shows. You can get a map of this year’s exhibitor hall here. It is often blocked off into particular genres, such as toy manufacturers, featuring companies like Mattel, Hasbro, Toynami and Lego; gold and silver-age comic sellers; illustrators; modern-age comic books, etc. Most recently, we’ve seen a surge in video game producers from Konami, Hudsonsoft, Activision, Capcom and SquareEnix, premiering their newest games. Most have promo versions available for the general public to play, often months before they are ever released in stores. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to take a picture that really gives a feel for the scope, but no matter how I tried, you cannot see from one side of the exhibition hall to the other, it’s just too huge. Hopefully the map will give some indication of the true scale of the place.
Perhaps the biggest recent change is the attendance of major Hollywood studios and television production houses to showcase their upcoming films and TV shows. Comicon has become the place to premiere new theatrical films and televised productions, most major films in the science fiction, fantasy or horror genres end up getting major announcements at SDCC. This year, MGM, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox all have a large presence and reportedly, major television networks are bringing 9-15 new shows each to premiere at the convention. If you want to know what’s on the horizon in film or television, it’s hard to beat Comicon. Not only that but the network news was out in force, there were at least 6-8 network news satellite vans parked out in front, almost in numerical order I noticed, channels from 4 to 10 and everywhere in between.
Tomorrow, we’ll take a walk upstairs and look at what’s happening on the mezzanine level, plus some of the special events that come to Comicon. Join us then, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.
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