As with any convention day, we started out early in the morning. We didn’t take a chance on being late. But then again, this is the first of its kind in Long Beach. As usual, I met the Brillo’s at their place. I didn’t know at the time that Lawrence was still home and we had to pick him up. I thought he was already at Long Beach and attended the first day, yesterday. So we went to pick him up. On a tangent, this was the first time in a long time that I actually watched the moon set. It was an amazing sight as I drove west on Alessandro Boulevard.

The drive to Long Beach was a smooth one. We were totally early, about 7:30. When I pulled up to park at the convention center, the attendant told me that the convention started at 10. I think we didn’t know what time it actually started, or at least I didn’t know. But anyway, we thought there would be line already. When we walked up to the convention center, it was empty. I noticed people lining up at the entrance of the Hyatt. Then some guy carrying a box of comics came up to us to ask for info. We didn’t know what was going on, yet where the registration lines were going to be. So out of curiosity, we went over to the people in line at the Hyatt to ask what they were in line for. It was a line for a book signing for some author. It wasn’t for comiccon, so we left to find someplace to eat breakfast.

We walked over to the pier area where all the restaurants were, once called Shoreline Park. It was a nice, cool morning to walk around. This was a nice added change to the heat we’ve had in the Inland Empire during the summer. I was actually chilly. I guess I was already used to the heat. Now I have to adjust for the cooler weather coming up. We decided to take a short break near the Aquarium of the Pacific to snack on some cereal bars and cashews I brought along for such an occasion like this. I miss breathing in the ocean air, since I always had lived within 10 miles of the ocean half my life. A short while later, we continued our quest to look for breakfast. Nothing was going to open until 10. At one time, there was a woman who walked past us with a coffee and danish in hand. I remembered that there was a Starbucks nearby, but when we got to the place where I thought it was...nothing. It was a Seattle’s Beast inside Borders which was closed. Failure.

As we walked up to the convention center, the doors were already open. There were already a few people around, but nothing was still going on. Registration was already open so we got our “badges.” Samantha and Lawrence got real badges. The remaining three of us got these gay-looking red wristbands that had “LBCC Saturday” printed on them. Oh well, it can’t be helped. We still had almost a two hour wait before the con opened. So to kill time, we found some chairs, waited and made plans on what panels to attend. Like the plans we make always worked out!? More and more people started to show up. From the vantage point where I sat, I couldn’t see that there was already a long line to get into the exhibit hall.

Ten finally arrived and the doors were open to the exhibit hall. The exhibit hall was different from when Anime Expo was held there. The main differences are that there were hardly any cosplayers and nothing anime-related in sight. What a change...I guess. Samantha and I split from everyone else. We all had different agendas. Luckily we were early. It gave us enough time to check out the entire hall for what the dealers and retailers had to offer as well as for prices before the crowd grew. I’m glad I brought my iPod Touch with my comic database. It gave me a good idea what to look for to “rebuild” my collection. My age really shows when I realize I had no interest in buying any of the “newer” late 90s+ comics. All I was interested in was buying comics from the late Silver Age, Bronze Age and early Modern Age. I found a few places that had one dollar comics, which were mostly good to fair condition comics. People were already hoarding those places. There was also this vendor was selling comics for half off, so I decided to look. I found a few that I wanted and bought those. Samantha also wanted some manga (Japanese comics), so we went to this vendor that I found that sold used manga...for a bit cheaper than new ones. By this time, it was almost lunch. We went back to the main lobby to get away from it all. The guys met us with us soon after.

On our way to lunch, we dropped our stash in the car. We had lunch at Island’s, which was across the street from the convention center. This was a most excellent junk food laden lunch. Nothing of healthy value worth noting. After having lunch, a la cardiac arrest on a plate, we took a side trip to the bank. I was also refreshing to walk along Ocean Blvd. again after a couple years. It was good that it was such a cool day and the ocean breeze coming in. Back at the convention center, we all went back into the exhibit hall. Round 2. Samantha and I again walked around and took some pictures. As I walked around, I took notice of all the some of the guest appearances of some actors and actresses that were signing autographs. I saw Lou Ferrigno (the O.G. Incredible Hulk) and Richard Hatch (the O.G. Battlestar Galactica). Also not knowing by name, I also saw the guy to play Captain Christopher Pike in the O.G. Star Trek, Ms. Limelight on Who Wants to be a Superhero, the blue alien on Farscape and a few others. Samantha and I decided to take a break from it all again. We went to Borders, which was across the street, to look for some book Samantha wants. Well, they didn’t have it. Adrian and the guys took a break too and gave me a call. We met up with them again.

After relaxing for about half an hour, Round 3 of the exhibit hall. All the plans we made about what panels we wanted to go to were thrown out the window. The good thing is that the panels were all comic related, unlike San Diego’s comic convention. Tim mentioned that this convention in Long Beach is all comic related. San Diego’s has been completely taken over by Hollywood. I guess this could be a good thing to most people, but in my opinion, it takes away the real purpose of having a “comic” convention. This is another case of Hollywood forcing itself into a niche genre and taking it over. Has anyone noticed all the “comic” related movies that come out in the past decade?

Walking around the hall had become boring a tiring...seeing the same things over and over again. By this time of day, it was really crowded in the hall. The Nintendo area was interesting. Only that...interesting. There were a lot more autograph signings and more long lines of people waiting for them. It became like the 405 or 91 freeways during rush hour(s). We picked up a couple more things and waited for guys out in the lobby again. Samantha fell asleep because she was really tired from walking around and from having to wake up so early. I was beginning to fall asleep too, but for different reasons–boredom from this point on. But to keep myself from falling asleep, I kept looking around–hint, hint, hint–to see what was going on. I’ll remind myself about the couple who sat down in front of us.

The guys showed up again. We were contemplating whether to leave or stick around. I did have one more reason to check out the hall one more time. So...Round 4. After picking up the last few things I wanted, we happened across a wrestling match that was about to begin. We stuck around to watch. I was kind of worried that Samantha was with me for this. But my worries soon faded away after watching this staged wrestling match. It was so staged that it was comedy. That’s it. We’re all tired so we went home, but....

There was a damn accident on the 91 and 241 that made the 91 into a parking lot!

As for the first comic convention held at Long Beach, it was very, very good. It wasn’t very, very bad either. It stayed true to what a comic convention was about. It wasn’t overly crowded unlike the other one–based on my one time experience. Comiccon was a success for it’s first time. Let’s hope it continues the way it is.