Today we gathered ourselves together once more and made our way to the
Convention Center. We attended the second Cartoon Voices panel, and the
actors (Billy West, Katie Leigh, Cheryl Chase, Dee Baker and Chris
Edgerly) gave a good panel. Their reading of the script was a bit more
restrained than that of the previous day's panel. I think this was
partly because Sunday was more or less a kids' day, and it was partly
because of both the energy created by Chuck McCann, and the chemistry of
the previous panel. After the panel ended, we wandered the convention
floor one last time. I bought a Red Robot shirt from Dumbrella so I
wouldn't be leaving empty-handed. Then, we left.
For your viewing pleasure, the few pictures that weren't too dark or
embarrassingly blurry are in this
photo set.
My overall impressions? Well, I'll try not to be influenced by the slightly
negative post that I read over at Blogography.
However, I will cheerfully admit that he's completely right about all of
it. For now, let's just set aside the issue of crowds and crowd
management. The Comic-Con, this year, kind of reminds me of an MMORPG.
In theory, you are having fun. However, much of your time is spent on
the grind in order to get to the point in which you can do
something interesting. Experienced players may know ways to bypass some
of the grind, but as that knowledge spreads through the player base,
everyone will have to start doing things that way or they won't get
anywhere. Eventually, the game designers become aware of this and
actually cater content toward this style of play.
Yesterday, for example, both the Joe Michael Straczynski and TV Guide
Presents panels had a captive audience waiting to see the Mythbusters,
and the day before that, the XBOX Live Original Content panel had a
captive audience waiting to see the Venture Brothers panel. Now, don't
get me wrong, the producers and writers on all of those panels were
interesting people and had a lot of interesting material and ideas to
share. However, one can't help but wonder how TV Guide and
Microsoft both got the panels showcasing their upcoming programming to
be scheduled just before two popular panels and not, say,
at the same time as those panels. Hmm. I'm sure there's a perfectly
reasonable explanation.
Anyway, back to the analogy. If there's one MMORPG that this year's
Comic-Con reminds me of, it's City of Villains. As I've said
in the past, aside from the new costume bits and the fact that you
get to rob a bank once or twice, it's not that different from its
predecessor.
Don't get me wrong. I had a really interesting weekend and I encourage
anybody who is interested to attend at least once. I'll probably go
again next year, too, but I think that perhaps I'll try and make things
really interesting— by going in costume and attending the famous
masquerade party.
