[SDCC ’23] Blank Space

I never know what to expect for San Diego Comic Con. I go into this con blindly, and to be honest, it’s much more fun that way. We normally stay at a resort hotel, Town and Country Inn. This takes place a few weeks after Anime Expo; the largest anime con in the world is mostly business for us. We’ve always treated San Diego Comic Con like a vacation. No rush to make it to preview night. No rush to get any collectables. No huge cosplay plans either. For us, it’s usually hosting panels and seeing what the dealers hall, indie creators, and fan run programming has to offer.

 

Getting Around

Every year, we make it a point to stay at Town and Country Inn. This is further up in Mission Valley. Thankfully, there’s a shuttle that takes you directly to the convention, but it is a bit of a hike from the shuttle stop to the main convention center. It took about 20 minutes without traffic to get from the hotel and to the shuttle drop off point. The trick is to plan accordingly; you don’t want to take the shuttle during traffic peak hours, especially if you’re on a time crunch. The other option was to take a rides hare to the convention. For early morning panels, taking an Uber directly to the Marriott to secure a spot in line without having to rush is a heaven sent.

For those with mobility issues, such as my partner, we were able to get an accessibility sticker on his badge. I was able to get a sticker indicating that I was the able bodied assistant. No further questions asked. The ADA folks were very friendly and accommodating.

 

The Exhibit Hall: Shopping!

With Hall H panels being near empty, there have been many reports by comic con vendors that sales were at its highest this year. There was more traffic and people flow into the massive vendor hall. Even on Sunday, you felt sardined in like Anime Expo ’23 Day 1. However, people were very rude getting around. No apologies from con goers for accidentally pushing and shoving to get around. (manners would be nice!) Also, on Thursday, the aircon was not working. We spent most of our waking time navigating the massive exhibit hall. Even if you were not into shopping and throwing your wallet around, there were still exhibit booths from the major, major companies to check out.

Gundam: The Witch from Mercury brought in gunpla builders; unlike Anime Expo, there was no line to shop for gunpla. Gundam fans got a stack of free Suletta x Miorinne stickers and a lanyard showing off the somewhat toxic space lesbians. The largest place for foot traffic had to have been where Mattel, Star Wars / Lucasfilm, Lego, Nickelodeon, Marvel, Bandai Namco, and several book publishers were all intersected. Though the Hollywood strike was going on, these booths brought people to take selfies and view / shop product. (Again, with the release of the Barbie movie, I’m disappointed that Mattel did not have a Barbie section).

Funko Town always drew in crowds whether or not you have a shopping pass or just curious to see what was there. Funko Asia had a few of the new Genshin Impact pop figurines (but sadly, no Trese).

There was a lot of engagement in booths selling single issue trades. It’s the busiest I have ever seen that section of the dealers hall – even compared to Wonder Con! If you weren’t there for the Good Burger photo op, selfie with Final Fantasy’s Ifrit, or the Jujutsu Kaisen showcase in the Crunchyroll happy fun ball, there were plenty of dealers selling lanyards, figures, vintage toys, Geek fashion, and more.

 

Independent Creators and Artists

My biggest reason to keep coming back to SDCC! Ever since I interviewed artists and writers at the indie press section in 2008, I have a fond appreciation for taking time to review and browse through stories that might not be seen by the mainstream. In addition to helping a friend re-connect with some indie creators for a film project, I made it a point to support what seemed interesting here. One indie artist was selling BTS and Filipino flair; this booth was consistently hounded! Another booth was giving away free books advertising their story as a Star Wars x Lord of the Rings crossover.

I visited the Kid Heroes booth as they were selling comics based on characters from the indie film, Lumpia With a Vengeance. I wanted to read the continuing tale of Gemini. I had the character designer sign my SDCC exclusive cover. I also stopped by Despop Entertainment and picked up the diesel punk SDCC exclusive,  Eva Strongbird and the Marine. They also threw in Jacqueline Jones, another diesel punk aesthetic book from the same creative team. I stopped by two more Filipino American creatives – Diwata Komiks and Kwento Comics to support their work on stories about Filipino mythology as it intertwines with Filipino American life.

I’m also big on checking out Artist Alley. The Artist Alley was on the far side of the dealers hall close to the Funko Town zone. While I loved seeing familiar faces and following new people, this zone was difficult to navigate, especially on Sunday. I do love that artists are getting the attention they deserve and are getting a crowd for autographs and signings, but it was hard to browse around when you’re squished in. This was close to Anime Expo levels of being sardined in.

 

Filipinos @ SDCC

Let’s Volt In! SDCC ’23 was a bonga (or “extremely fabulous” in Tagalog) year for Filipinos entertainment and creatives. First of all, Filipinos in the states were surprised to find out that GMA was bringing the cast and creative team behind the live action remake of Voltes V Legacy. While this has no official stream in the states, us Filipino otaku have our ways to watch Voltes V defeat bougie aliens. We had to be up bright and early for the 10AM panel at one of the smallest panel rooms for Voltes V. We knew, based on our experience with the Lumpia movie screening, Filipinos will go all out to support Filipino geek media. Thankfully, we took an Uber directly to the Marriott Marquis and were to secure a spot to watch the panel.

I think the convention underestimated the stateside support for Voltes V. Even the cast – Miguel Tanfelix, Ysabel Ortega, and Gabby Eigenmann – went out to the line to greet Voltes V fans. This was such a huge event for SDCC to see mainstream Filipino produced media featured on such as stage as San Diego Comic Con. The cast and crew talked about filming challenges during COVID lockdown and exploring San Diego. However, for this cast, there were tears being held back. For Miguel, Ysa, Gabby, and Director Mark Reyes, it was a dream to be here at comic con. Tearful testimonials from the cast were shared. Finally, GMA showed a trailer of an upcoming teleseries, Enkantadia, Filipino fantasy that focuses on mythology. Dogu Publishing will be working on the graphic novel.

Seeing Voltes V Legacy, a Filipino property based on Japanese anime, take stage meant more to me than any tentpole Hollywood production getting an announcement or trailer reveal. It really felt like a victory for all Filipinos that we did belong here at SDCC.

But wait… there’s more!

I attended the Harnessing the Power of Pop Culture of Mental Health Awareness panel. While not necessarily an AAPI panel, it did have quite a few AAPI in the mental health and creative field presenting on the intersection of geek culture and finding one’s identity. This panel was moderated by Lorraine Garrison and I was able to pick one of her books at the end of the panel. The panel also discussed Geek Therapy, a Facebook group for mental health professionals. I found this panel inspiring and it also encouraged me to reflect on my personal experiences with pop culture and identity politics. Thank you panelists for being inspirational and leaving us audience members something to take home and think about!

I also attended Halo Halo: A Scoop on Filipino Voices. This panel had several Filipino folks behind indie publishing companies. Diwata Komiks, Kwento Comiks, and Kid Heroes were companies I knew of and just wrote about in this report. I learned about the current works of Whilce Portacio, X-Men veteran and creator of Stone. Stone seemed interesting because it was like Fernando Poe Jr. realizing he was one of his franchise characters who has to fight a Tikbalang (aka a horse demon that looks like Bojack Horseman) at the Shoe Mart Shoe Source. I was also introduced to Mark Bayani Teodosio, a FilAm New Yorker that discussed the nuances of the Filipino experience around the globe – a Filipino in New York is going to have a more nuanced experience than say one in the San Francisco Bay Area. My biggest takeaway was from Whilce Portacio; it’s important to focus on story and to acknowledge the good and the bad from personal experience.

All of the above panels were in one way or another inspiring which is the best professional development I could ever ask for.

 

Offsites

San Diego loves comic con. So, even if you don’t have a badge, you could explore what downtown San Diego had to offer to celebrate Geek St. Patrick’s Day. Everyone is a geek at the Gaslamp District! We kept our tradition of visiting the Cat Cafe. This time around, Paramount had a photo op zone promoting Pet Sematary. There was another cat themed offsite where you could wine and dine with felines, but we weren’t sure if we had the time. There was also Hero High Tea, while we love afternoon tea, we weren’t sure if the 1PM to 3PM schedule would fall in line with panels we wanted to attend. Hero High Tea sold out immediately.

There’s always a bit of a wait for the Dragonball exhibit, Fox’s Futurerama / Rick and Morty zone, etc. However, we were able to check out the Beagle Scouts gallery and pop up right across the street. Also, we had friends at the Tekken 8 offsite where you could pose with cosplayers, play the arcade version of the game, and get free G-Fuel.

Offsites can happen around and about the greater San Diego area. Anime voice actors also had a ticketed boba party, but according to our friends it was too out of the way to check out with so little time to spend at SDCC.

 

In Conclusion

There’s a lot of media sites that report on the lack of Hollywood, favorite cosplayers, and Gaslamp District shenanigans. Everyone has their personal purpose for attending SDCC. This wasn’t the year if you wanted celebrity. However, I’m a firm believer that the con is what you make of it. I choose to make it a good one. Likewise, we hosted our “Why Your Kids Love Anime” panel emphasizing on the fact that manga is outselling western comics. We were able to talk about the values behind popular anime protagonists and team dynamics found in today’s best selling manga. It went well! We’re always down to talk about anime and Japanese RPG’s at SDCC. I think we’ve earned a reputation as “the anime people” in this space and I’m more than okay with that.

This year’s SDCC was professional development for me as a writer working on her first book about fandom. Seeing Filipinos talk about sharing their stories and not being afraid to explore joy and sadness was outright inspiring. I feel creatively refreshed after attending SDCC (despite muscle pain and blisters). I wasn’t focused on cosplay meet ups this year; most of line up was anime themed. However, we did get a lot of compliments cosplaying as Stereotypical Barbie and J. Robert Oppenheimer in light of the Barbenheimer meme.

Overall, SDCC can be an exhausting 4 day weekend. It’s important to hydrate (free G fuel doesn’t count), take breaks, and if there’s an empty panel room, you never know…you might learn something new just by sitting down and keeping an open mind (and free ac ain’t bad either!). Planning my days for Comic Con can be a bit challenging especially if there are offsites I want to make reservations for, but I generally pick 1 or 2 offsites and commit to those. Schedule for SDCC doesn’t come out until a few weeks before the con.

Either way, good times had by all. Looking forward presenting panels again in 2024 and having drinks at Hashira Oasis (aka the Monkey Bar at Town and Country).