[SDCC ’24] Naked in San Diego (Ramses’ Version)

HOW THE HECK HAVE I BEEN TO 15 OF THESE THINGS IN OVER 28 YEARS!?

To quote Murtaugh from Lethal Weapon:
“I’m too old for this S-”

Yeah, it’s that time of the year folks, when all of nerdom converges to my backyard and people always ask me “hey Ramses! Did you go to comic-con this year?” and the answer this year is… “yes! Yes I did!” and believe it or not, I had the best time of these post 2005 Hollywood Nerd FOMO Era SDCC that I may or may not have created or be the poster child of. 

Don’t believe me, dear reader? Wel, I’ll tell you how it was and you decide if I had fun or not.

So let me start off by saying something that I didn’t mention last year: If there’s one thing SDCC has done to mitigate large crowds is that it’s more organized than other years. A Lot of stuff you need get a ticket online via a lottery system and most likely if your like me, and just want one thing (in this case, I just wanted the “ONCE A MAN” Cobra Commander) you’ll most likely win the lottery. If you’re one of those people that need EVERYTHING to flip.. Then may the luck of the gods shine on you. This year, something that I actually did support and liked is they experimented with a Ticked Hall H event and to be honest, thats one of the better moves SDCC and Hollywood has done to stop people from camping at Hall H and getting more opportunities for people to go into it. But, if there is one constant that 2024 had with 2023: they still underestimate their audience size and how many people to put in a room for said things. Though this year, it was much easier to get into many things I wanted to see, I still feel like there are too many panels in the wrong rooms to do it in. A Masters of the Universe toy panel featuring Melendy Britt (Filmation She-Ra), Cam Clarke (200X He-Man/Prince Adam) and Anthony De Longis (MOTU Live-Action Blade) should of not been held in the same room we had our Anime Fandom in the Turn of the Millenium panel. I wish I was kidding, also, this means I sat down in the same seat Cam Clarke did.

But many panels last year that I had problems getting into last year were THANKFULLY put in bigger rooms. The G.I. Joe toy panel and the Transformers toy panel where both held in a HUGE room and it was filled to the brim with fans of the Real American Heroes and the Robots in Disguise, but the story is what you go into before or after as you either wait for the panel you wanted to see, or stay after because your too lazy to leave the seat. 

The first one I sat through before the G.I. Joe panel was Adventures in Horror, Memoir, & Sci-Fi From Abrams ComicArts A panel by the famous Abrams Books publishing house, famous for various art books for the Louvre art pieces and many books based on Marvel and Disney over the years. It was about their offerings for the year and some of the books they have planned where very interesting like “Enlisted” a comic about the Author’s time in the military after being drafted for Vietnam, and a pop-up book for the Peanuts made by Chip Kidd, plus his new Avengers book he’s writing for Abrams, which sounds INCREDIBLE and i’d love to see in the future. 

Then we had the G.I. Joe toy panel, a majority of it was taken up by the INCREDIBLE new Classified Series Cobra Rattler Haslab fundraiser. 10 minutes was just of a video explaining what the damn thing does. The rest of the announcements were leaked from China earlier in the day, but it was good to finally see stuff like Raptor and Road Pig. The biggest surprise for me was Sgt. Slaughter coming out to the panel to announce his new G.I. Joe X Transformers Collaboration figure: Kup as the Triple T Tank with o-ring styled Leatherneck and the Sarge. That was an INSTANT day one for me. Me and Scarlet then met up and we started hearing rumors about the mess that was the ticketed Hall H event. “BUT RAMSES! HOW CAN YOU SIT HERE AND TYPE THAT WAS A GOOD THING WHEN YOUR BRINGING THIS UP?!” because 1) I still support this idea and 2) this was the first year doing it, of course there’d be issues like this, in this case, it was that they distributed too many tickets and many could not get in, this lead to many who did get chosen to be rejected at the door, however, they did get that EXTREMELY cursed Deadpool and Wolverine Popcorn bucket as a consolation prize. Speaking of which, we did end the night with us watching Deadpool and Wolverine and… now I want that cursed popcorn bucket. 

Great movie.
MCU is saved out of 10.

Friday was my first time at the San Diego Cat Cafe and it was amazing. I met a cat named Stubs who had Cauliflower ear and a missing tail after an unfortunate encounter with a Coyote and I just wanted to take him home. I’m a much older gentleman and I like having “older” pets around because they are low maintenance and I can understand their “old souls”; also, the Coffee is one of the best I ever had. 

Regarding what I did AT the con on Friday, I attended the tail end of the What’s Coming to Major Bendies and Big Rubber Guys hosted by Matt Cardona (the former Zack Ryder), Bryan Mayers (the former Curt Hawkings) and many other indy and toy personalities discussing whats up with their toys. I came in as they introduced a new line of Chibi wrestlers and showed off their Danhausen… with Macho Man’s Skin… and it was beyond cursed, even for Danhausen standards. 

I didn’t even know what I was in for the next panel and it was 70 Years of Godzilla: A Nostalgic Journey featuring Ryuhei Kitamura (Director of Godzilla Final Wars, Versus, Midnight Meat Train), T.J. Storm (motion capture for Godzilla in the Legendary Monsterverse movies), and Allan Henry (Motion Capture for Kong in the Legendary Monsterverse movies) and hearing all 3 of these guys hang out and discuss all things Godzilla was incredible. 

Later on in the day, before the Transformers toy panel, I sat down on Secrets from the Spy Museum: Real-World Espionage Technologies and Techniques, a panel about spy era comics and real life situations using comics as a cover, such as the infamous Argo rescue where they had Jack Kirby come in and do art for that “movie” without ANYONE knowing it was to rescue hostages. It was SUPER Fascinating hearing these CIA stories from the height of the cold war and how alot of it affected comics at the time.

Soon after, it was Transformers time! Pretty much the panel can be described as “the world’s worst kept secret, the panel” as the majority of what got announced was leaked earlier this year, but to be honest, everything they announced was PERFECT for me as alot of it was stuff I never got access to and getting another shot at many of these figures like Tarn made me very happy. The biggest pop was the official announcement of the Movie Series 86 Devastator, something we knew for some time, but finally discussing it and saying all 6 components, divided into 2 Voyagers, 2 leaders, and a two pack that will act as next year’s Commander class figure for Studio Series and will ALL be available in 2025 made me VERY happy.

Oh yeah, the Iceberg Lounge caught on fire and I saw it in real time. No word if this was Firefly getting his revenge on the Penguin for an unpaid hit job, or if Batman had finally snapped.

Saturday was the “Ramses was too lazy to get out of bed” show as I left the hotel at 2pm, I did some wandering around the dealers hall, which was a HUGE mistake, made even worse when I was at a booth and they were selling Legacy Metroplex, a Titan Class figure, for 50 USD. I went around asking if they had the new 86 Bumblebee and Springer, but no one had it, so I went back to the booth and took the figure. Most of the day I was carrying this thing around like a baby since I had no bag big enough to carry it, so we jokingly called Metroplex at times “Ramses Jr.” 

Before our panel, I sat on another panel Collecting in Our Senior Citizen Years, a panel about collecting as we get older and how to preserve many of the things that would get lost such as older comics, receipts, memos, behind the scenes photos, ect. A fascinating panel to sit on as I started to notice many similarities in the digital era with what Scarlet is doing keeping Kevin Liliard’s legacy alive with her Con’s View Friday streams.

We then did the first of our two panels of the con: Anime Fandom at the Turn of the Millennium, an overview of how things were before the current year of 2024. It was interesting discussing the past on how we used to consume our anime, from my experiences living in Tijuana on the border of Mexico and USA, watching anime uncut and censored to hell and back, and how QUICKLY things evolved with technology. One of the things I wish I had time to discuss was how quickly we went from tape trading, buying DVDs, to downloading anime, to streaming anime with advancements in technology. The first anime nerdom boom I can remember with stuff like Geocities sites and whatnot was around 1997-ish, maybe before, and the first gen Iphone wasn’t till 2007, so a lot of what influenced our viewing habits and what we had access to was RAPIDLY changing, from getting stuff months or years behind, to getting it fresh from japan a few minutes after airing.

Also, we may have been witness to the announcement of Robert Downey Jr. as Dr. Doom via our panel room shaking VIOLENTLY since our panel room was DIRECTLY on top of Hall H.

Sunday was pretty lowkey and a low energy day. I went to the Arcane: Magic vs. Tech panel, a panel with experts in the fields of tech and science discussing how much of the ethics discussed in Arcane and how it applies to real life. A very good academic panel overall, something worth checking out sometime. I then hung out for a bit with Scarlet as she was making her way to the League of Legends gathering.

A bit after, we did my panel The Works of Masami Kurumada. We’d done this panel at Anime Expo, but we turned off the lights in the room with our panel and it was incredible. One of the things that caught people’s attention that was mentioned by my co-host is that I have a HUGE passion for this stuff and it shines in the way I talk about the subject matters that I love. This was one of those moments where I had my time to shine and people praised the panel for its enthusiasm and its love for the subject of Masami Kurumada, his works, and his influence in anime. After doing it at two conventions, I’m down to do this at many more down the road, hopefully too, with my actual podcast co-host. As much as I love Stan and Scarlet and forever grateful for helping me with the SDCC and AX ones, I need my team of Benjas and Jackie for this panel down the road.

We soon said our good-byes, I went back to my home where a Lolitas Burrito was waiting for me. Overall, I had a great time at the con. I missed a lot at first, but I also did so much more and I felt like this year, through the chaos, there was ALWAYS something to do with everyone, and it’s always fun to do stuff like sit in panels you had no intention of staying in and learning something new. This is the first year in a while where I got to do nearly everything I wanted to do, saved for the MOTU panel and the Energon Universe panel, sadly; it help A LOT my friends were with me all the way and there was always something to do with them as well. That’s what made this con so special for me: while we are much older and doing our own things, like scarlet doing her amazing cosplays, knowing shes nearby and always down for something was always comforting to me and made me less lonely, something I always hated at cons was that feeling of abandonment because I am not doing the same thing other people are and for the first time, I never had that kind of disconnect and it was just fun vibing with everyone.

Overall, SDCC is a huge con with many moving parts that can be very easy to get lost in, especially in a sea of people, but when your with the right friends like I was all weekend, the pain of loneliness, isolation, and claustrophobia all goes away as you know someone that cares for you is just a text message away. Even at my old age, I can still have fun like old times.

You can find me talking into a mic about Saint Seiya or anything Masami Kurumada on the Saint Seiya Cosmocast, about fandom on the Saturday Morning Squadron, and putting my digital hand up a digital PNG puppet up on my twitch stream as Professor Ramses where I make model kits, reacts to old tv shows, streams podcast recordings, and plays games.