SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON WRAPUP: Day Minus-One/Preview Night

Comic-con is on! For those of you stuck at home, the Ace of Geeks is here to fill you in on what's been happening - be sure to check out our twitter account during the show for live updates, videos and photos. We'll also be providing wrap ups of each day here on the blog. Today, we've got John Garcia with a wrap up of the goings on before the con has even opened, and Megan Marie Fox with her thoughts on preview night.

JOHN GARCIA - DAY MINUS ONE

My group of friends got a good deal at an extended-stay hotel, but only if we get a certain number of days, so since last year, my group has done the Monday to Monday stay for SDCC.

Most of Monday was spent traveling and we got to the hotel really late, so I figure I would start filling you guys in on Tuesday, July 22.

We still had a lot of last-min costume construction to do. A lot of my hotel-mates and friends are from the 405th Infantry Division of Halo cosplayers, so they were working on missing bits of armor pieces, while I was working on leftover touches on my Brother Warth costume.

We decided to take a break and do some fun, touristy things around San Diego. We went to this amazing place called "Hash House a Go Go" on 4th street.  They are famous for their amazing breakfast things like a chicken and waffles tower with amazing country friend sage-flavored chicken and waffles that have bacon inside. (Next time, I'd better eat breakfast before reading your articles, John. -Ed)

This year, though, after a 30 min wait, I got a giantic 18-oz hammered, country-fried pork loin. It was around a 16 inch by 16 inch monster.  

That's a regular-sized ketchup bottle to scale. It's a GINORMOUS  dish.

It's also a breakfast dish, so it comes with scrambled eggs, biscuit "sstuffing", some vegetables inside.  Look:

I was only able to eat a quarter of that monster.  Even the to-go box was a 9 by 12 inch foil tray.

We also went to the museums at Balboa Park, and there were a lot of museums... Natural History, Automotive, Sports, Space and Aerial, Photography, and some specialized ones.  What got our attention was the Air and Space Museum, which had a lot of full-scale or reconstructed planes, from a life-sized da Vinci glider, to a full-size Predator drone, to an actual decommissioned SR-71 Blackbird .

Plus, I always wanted to be in a space museum (and because I like Kamen Rider Fourze) to do this:

IT'S SPACE TIME!

One of the two full-sized drones.

We spent a couple of hours around the different museums. We were a bit disappointed that general admission was $15 (since we had student IDs, but not San Diego County residents), and each additional museum was around an additional $7.  Some of the smaller exhibits, however, were free.

After a quick trip at Fry's for some last-min electronics like my extra cell phone charger, and some soldering materials, we are back at the hotel room, at work, finishing up costumes for Thursday, and we know we won't be able to work on these things tomorrow because tomorrow is... SDCC DAY ZERO/ Wednesday, July 23!

MEGAN MARIE FOX - PREVIEW NIGHT

Made it to San Diego in a record 8 hours!

The badge pick up line was well organized and we walked through at about 5pm. We waited to get into the convention hall, and were nicely let in 20 min early. I snagged a few exclusives and got some nice light traffic video of the convention's big industry booths.

The Weta booth - as usual - has a plethora of amazing things to look at. There is a giant Smaug head whose left eye opens and scans the showroom floor - very nice. Hasbro, Mattel, Entertainment Earth and other toy vendors are once again pulling hundreds of people into lines to get exclusives, Mattel is specially popular this year... I think it's the Darth Vader exclusive hot wheels car, personally.

Feet tired, I went to view the tail end of Teen Titans Go! This show makes my brain hurt with the psychotropic force equal to that resulting from my lack of sleep last night.

The Constantine pilot was pretty good. It reminded me of the best parts of Supernatural though it was a bit clunky in explanations. Conversations were formulaic, but for a first episode, the amount of world building accomplished was impressive. I look forward to seeing what this show can become (optimistically) when it is allowed to develop.

The Flash was a fun romp. It's great for what it is. I've never seen an episode of Arrow, so I can't say how similar it is, but it hit a nice stride after his powers are exercised. The visuals were a bit hokey, but what can you do - it is, after all, TV.

Nerd HQ @ Petco Park is flashing their lights testing for something - likely their big party tomorrow night.

Did you enjoy this article? Follow us on Facebook to get more great content! We have a weekly podcast you can find on our main site. Also follow us on Twitter and Tumblr!