Fish and Cherries Productions

Ahh, Comic Con. The place I truly feel at home. I can’t even remember my first Comic Con, but I know that it’s made every July that I can remember something to look forward too. Of course, being the long-running con that it is, it’s had to change the way it’s worked to keep up with the times and the ever-growing popularity. Some changes are good, others are… yeah. With all that’s said, let’s take a look at the good and the bad from San Diego Comic Con 2016.

The Good

Badge authenticity has always been a concern for the Comic Con staff, but they have finally come up with a solution. Each of the badges now has an RFID code on it that gets scanned on entry. This was something that was implemented at Silicon Valley Comic Con and it makes the transition here without any traffic congestion. The scanners are even themed around The Walking Dead, so that’s pretty neat. On top of that, it’s structured in a way that doesn’t require a photo ID, so those who share their passes can breathe easy. But that’s illegal by Comic Con standards… and I would never tell you to break the law… noooooooooo, not me…

Then there’s the improvements to getting into the infamous Hall H, which is so popular that congoers have had to camp out overnight to get in. Well, now that have a wristband system. From what I’ve been told, if people camp out overnight, they get an electronic wristband that will let them know when their time to get into the hall is, leaving them free to explore the con until then. It certainly beats waiting in that line for 28 hours to get into the Marvel panel. Speaking of, apparently it’s so easy now that my godniece-in-law stood in line for only a half-hour before she got in and saw loads of stuff, including the Game of Thrones panel. And it was her second Comic Con ever. I still haven’t forgiven her for this.

The Bad

I’ve always had questions about how management at Comic Con worked in the past, but this year the right hand really didn’t know what the left was doing. Weapons Check was a total mess this year because of some new edict that came down that nobody, and I mean nobody else knew about. When I met to check my claws for my Wolverine cosplay, they said that I couldn’t take them into the hall, as there was a ban on Wolverine and Freddy Krueger claws and the like. That would have been nice to let people know beforehand in an email or something! Apparently they went as far as to ziptie people’s weapons to their costumes themselves, but this seemed completely arbitrary. In fact, walking the halls, I saw plenty of Wolverines and Freddy Kruegers that had their costumes intact and other weapons like that ones that got ziptied waving free. So either Weapons Check was asleep at their job or none of the other staff was aware of this edict.

Also, let’s talk about the big complaint for this year: the new design for the bags. I was initially on board with them, but as time went on I joined the masses in disliking them. The addition of a flap makes the whole thing cumbersome and if you really pack the bag full, the velcro on the flap comes loose and it just hangs there like a limp tongue. A lot of people I talked to complained that it was harder to just reach back and slip stuff into your bag, though I’ve never been able to do that in my own personal experience. Another complaint a lot of people had was that they got rid of the poster holder, which I didn’t know they had, but enough people mentioned it that I have to lament with them. Suffice to say, the bags were not a hit.

***

Well, that’s all about the ups and downs of the experience. Come back next week for some previews of things to come in the world of geekdom.