If you’ve been following my site since the beginning or if you know me in real life then you know that I have been trying to go to San Diego Comic Con for years. Why wouldn’t I be? It’s the biggest comic book convention in the world, it is literally the Mecca of nerdiness.

I was never able to go when I was a kid because San Diego was too far away and my parents weren’t about to drive me down there and buy me tickets just for that. When I got older I wasn’t able to go because of work and school. When I got out school and had a job that gave me vacation time I still wasn’t able to go because at that point SDCC had grown too large and too mainstream and because of this they stopped selling tickets at the door, instead if you wanted to go you had to go through an online lottery to register for passes.

For the next couple years my desire to go to San Diego Comic Con had stayed the same but my motivation to actually try to go was pretty much non-existent. Due to me being too ignorant to pay attention to things I had missed the registration deadlines for like 5 years in a row. After missing the registration deadline in 2014 I decided to take a more active approach to going to. The Kevin and Bean Show, a morning radio talk show on KROQ was known to be doing Comic Con ticket giveaway contests every year so I decided to try winning tickets from them. Unfortunately, for me I wasn’t able to win any tickets despite getting really close. In 2015 I had missed the registration deadline again, and when summer came around and Comic Con was right around the corner I took a very active approach to winning. I woke up everyday at 6AM to listen to Kevin and Bean and called in at every prompt and that year all my persistence paid off because on the very last day they were doing a ticket giveaways I was able to win two free single-day passes to Comic Con.

At this point I had become already become a casual con-goer so I thought I knew what I was getting into, but after getting to Comic Con I was just blown away. The best way to describe me that day was to picture a child on his first trip to like Toys R’ Us or Disneyland—I was that excited. I gave my spare pass to a coworker and I remember she was so amazed at how energetic and lively I was—how I basically did not eat that entire day or was so unwilling to stop and sit down just because I wanted to see and experience as much of Comic Con as I could.

After that day in 2015 I knew I had to get back somehow. I was told that by attending I would qualify for preregistration for the following year but unfortunately that was not the case due to the fact that I won my tickets instead of buying them. Because of this I paid more attention to Comic Con International, the company that owns San Diego Comic Con’s website so I wouldn’t miss the online registration dates. Unfortunately I was unable to purchase tickets through their lotteries. When this happened I started calling radio stations trying to win tickets again but unfortunately I couldn’t recreate that same level of luck I had back in 2015. Hell, I’ll admit, part of the reason I started this site was the hopes that I could use it to get media credentials but right now I still have a long way to go to get to that level.

In 2019 my luck changed. Like in previous years, on the day of online registration I had all my computers on and signed into the Comic Con International’s website waiting for an opportunity to buy tickets. Past experiences taught me that I could be sitting there for a good 2-3 hours and even then there would be a good chance that it would all be for nothing—that there are more people waiting than there are available tickets, and that they could be sold out before they ever got to me. But this year was different, one of my computers did something weird when the browser auto-refreshed. At first, I thought it got disconnected due to my shitty internet connection, but no, instead when the page reloaded I was taken to a screen that asked me how many tickets I wanted to buy and what days I wanted to attend—not only was I able to buy passes this year, but I was also able to buy them for all the days I wanted to go.

A few days ago my badges for San Diego Comic Con came in the mail. I was a bit surprised they were sent out so close to Comic Con, especially given my experiences with C2E2 and New York Comic Con, two conventions managed by Reed Exhibitions whom mail their passes out months in advanced. My only guess is that Comic Con International mails passes out so late is because they’re trying to give scalpers and fraudsters less time to figure out how to create counterfeits. I had a coworker who was diehard Comic Con attendee and he told me in the past that he saw people being led out of Comic Con in hand cuffs over fake badges.

Since 2017 San Diego Comic Con has been mailing badges out in a special box along with a commemorative pin. With unboxing videos being so popular right now I decided to do an unboxing post. I probably should have done this as a video but I’m still trying to figure out the best way of doing video content for my site especially considering I have zero video prescence online right now and also I don’t want to do a video that looks too crappy—I want to make it look like I’m at least trying to do a good job. Also, and I’ve made this a point in the past many times, even though most of my posts may seem to be long and drawn out sometimes all my rantings do serve to give my content more SEO value so if you Googled San Diego Comic Con passes and found this, it’s probably because I just went on and on for the past 1100 words or so.

I did have have some seconds about doing this. I remember a couple years ago when Conor McGregor challenged Floyd Mayweather to a boxing match I found this video on YouTube about a guy who was able to make fake backstage passes and was actually able to walk out with Conor McGregor and his entourage at the London press conference they held to promote the fight. The reason he was able to do it is because Mayweather’s driver posted pictures of his backstage and staff passes on Instagram and after seeing that the passes were basically one of the posters for the fight with the words “Promoter” or “Guest” written on them along with a colored border, he just went on Google and found a high-res version of the image the passes were based on and just made his own in photoshop. The complete video is right below if you want to see it. I’ll warn you right now the guy is does seem drone on and on at times including a part at the end where he said he wanted to ask Conor if he would rather fight 20 duck-sized Mayweathers or 1 Mayweather-sized ducks but then he ended up pussying out and not asking him.

Honestly though, there are already several unboxing videos on YouTube of people showing off their passes and they’re on social media so if I’m going to get in trouble then SDCC should go after those people too especially since most of them posted their passes way before I did. Also Comic Con International has gone the extra mile to make it harder for counterfeiters to create fake passes including adding scannable RFID chips that are difficult to duplicate. So hopefully I’m okay posting this and Con won’t slap me with a lifetime ban if they find this *fingers crossed*.

Here’s the envelope that the badges came in. Prior to shipping them out an email was sent out saying:

Badges will be delivered in a plain, non-descript package for confidentiality.

I’m assuming they did this so nobody will steal them out of mailboxes. To further ensure confidentiality the return address on the envelope simply states that is from a place called “CCI.” I blacked out the stickers on the envelope because I’m paranoid of people looking me up.

Here’s the actual box that the badges came in. I tried to do some light-painting here. My original plan was to do it in sections and try to blend them all together in photoshop. However given how small the box is I realized that creating a composite shot wasn’t necessary and that if I timed it right I could get it lit properly in one shot.

The side of the box with the San Diego Comic Con International logo. This is actually a composite shot. When I did the light painting I had some excessive lighting in places I didn’t want illuminated so I blended that picture together with a darker shot I took.

On the inside cover of the box is this image to promote the upcoming The Boys series which is set to premier on Amazon Prime shortly after Comic Con.

Along with the badges is this booklet which is basically a Comic Con handbook.

And here are the actual badges and the commemorative pin that I got. There are actually four different commemorative pins and this is the one I got. I covered my name because of privacy reasons but honestly it’s not really necessary on this site, given that this website is essentially my online portfolio. As of me writing this it’s not currently up but I have been meaning to add a page with links to all my social media channels including my LinkedIn profile which has my real name on it. I’m just been really meaning to update them all. Also once I have it updated I’ve have a download link to my resume which will also have my real name on it. If anything, I’m just trying to protect myself in case this shows up on Google Image searches. I would prefer to be anonymous there. If anybody wants to find me then they can click on the visit button and come back to my site.

For those of you who noticed why this badge is colored red instead of gold like in many of the unboxing videos currently online it’s because I didn’t buy a 4-day pass, instead I’ll only be attending Comic Con from Thursday to Saturday. I really regret not buying a 4-day pass because then I could also go to preview night but unfortunately it was just getting too costly, not just the cost of the passes but the cost of staying in a hotel for another night as well as the cost of having somebody take care of my dog while I’m gone. I also felt that I would probably need a day to recover before I return to work which is why I will not be attending Sunday, although I might change it up next year.

Thanks for checking this out and don’t forget to check back soon because San Diego Comic Con content will be on the way soon.