It looks like plans to expand the Convention Center in San Diego may have hit a little snag. I'll bet they find a way to work around this.
If you find yourself in one of those debates about whether the con will stay in San Diego, this may be of some interest. It's a list of every event that has inhabited that convention center for the last eighteen months and the estimated attendance. Comic-Con International is pegged at a turnout of 130,000 both times it's listed but what struck me was that nothing else was even close. I think the largest event after us is something called the Rock N Roll Marathon Health & Fitness Expo, which had 60,000 attendees — less than half of what Comic-Con draws — in each of its two stagings. Almost everything else is under 15,000.
So why are they talking about expanding that convention center? For us. They don't need the added room to attract the Western Car Wash Show and its 2,000 folks who are in, I suppose, the car-washing business. They need it, or feel they need it, to keep Comic-Con in San Diego.
(I wonder if, when you pay to attend the Western Car Wash Show, you can also purchase a car deodorizer, a giant-size Mountain Dew and a bag of Funyuns.)
Meanwhile: Several folks (starting with John Heaton) have written to inform me that the photo I posted of the Cookie Monster Imperial Stormtrooper was taken by a Flickr user called mooshuu. Here are a lot of his or her other photos of the convention.
Jamie Coville has posted a nice array of photos from the con and audio recordings of panels, including a couple of mine. The Bill Finger panels will be of particular interest to some.
Lastly: I am in charge of three of the most popular events at Comic-Con each year — Quick Draw!, the Saturday Cartoon Voices panel and the Sunday Cartoon Voices panel. For some odd reason, there's a debate going on over at one message board about who selects the people who appear on these panels. Simple answer: I do. I may consult with others but it's always been my decision.
The decisions are made at least six weeks before the convention and sometimes well before that. The convention program guide, after all, has to go to press long before the con commences. Still, this year, I had a lot of people who contacted me in the week before the con and either asked to be on one of these panels or, in one case, told me they were going to be on it. That was an interesting conversation but I managed to convince him that, no, he couldn't just insist on participating.
Then I had a couple of folks who showed up just before each of my two big events on Saturday — and I mean like two minutes before — and tried to talk their way into spots on the stage. I don't know what they were thinking. I do know what I was thinking and it wasn't flattering.
I actually do not need applicants for Quick Draw! I have more than a half-dozen people I've promised the third seat to, and one of them will do it next year and another will do it the year after and so on. Also, the Cartoon Voices panels for next year may be already close to full. I hate saying no to people so I'm posting this in the hope that fewer people will ask me, thereby forcing me to say no. Which, like I said, I hate doing.