Finally. I’m at San Diego Comic Con.

If you know me in real life or if you’ve been following me for a while then you know that going to San Diego Comic Con has been a goal of mine for a long time.

I never went when I was a kid because we lived too far away from San Diego and my parents were too busy to take me, they also weren’t too keen on spending the money on passes. When I was in college and working despite the fact that Comic Con is held in the summer I still didn’t go because I was too busy with work and summer school and didn’t the disposable income to go. By the time I was out of school and had a somewhat decent paying job along with some vacation time I still wasn’t able to go because at that point Comic Con had stopped selling tickets at the door, you could only buy them from the online sale and those always sold out quick.

For the next couple years, I slacked off and kept missing the day tickets went on sale. Then in 2015 fate decides to throw me a bone as I’m lucky enough to win a pair of tickets from the Kevin and Bean Show on KROQ.

The tickets I won may have only been for one day but it was one of the most amazing days of my life. I saw so much cool stuff and experienced so much that I was just so overwhelmed.

After that day I has such a strong desire to go back that I got off my ass and did everything I could think of to get back. I paid more attention to social media to learn when the online ticket sales are held but unfortunately, I couldn’t get through their online lottery system. I tried winning tickets again off of the radio as well as entered other contests that were giving away tickets but I wasn’t as lucky as I was back in 2015. Hell, part of the reason why I started this site was so that I could try claiming to be from a media outlet and apply for press passes but so far I am no where near that level.

For 2019, I don’t know if my persistence paid off, or I just got lucky, or maybe because 2019 is Comic Con’s 50th anniversary so Comic Con International decided to open up attendance but not only was I able to purchase tickets but I was also able to buy tickets for all the days I wanted to attend.

Being able to go for those extra days was especially important for me because as massive as San Diego Comic Con is there’s no way that it can be truly enjoyed in just one day. There’s just too much to see and experience that you need as much time as possible to do it all.

In case you haven’t noticed already with my previous posts on San Diego Comic Con given how big the event was I was trying to segment the content I brought back into themed-posts to make it easier to consume from a readability standpoint as well as hopefully improve my site’s SEO value. I still have a few more themed post to put up but after taking a look through my photos I realized I still had a lot of good photos and commentary that I can’t really segment any further which is why I’m doing this generic highlights posts.

Please enjoy these highlights from San Diego Comic Con 2019 and also don’t think I’m anywhere near done because on top of all my themed posts I still have enough content to crap out another 2-3 highlights posts.

I remember when I first went to San Diego Comic Con in 2015 it was my first time in that part of San Diego so I wasn’t that sure where I was supposed to go since all I had to go off of was the GPS on my iPhone. Luckily, I was able to figure it out by all the promotional banners that were put up to promote stuff. Since I had time to explore the area surrounding the convention center this year I decided to wander around before SDCC officially started. I didn’t realize how much the city of San Diego is behind Comic Con until I saw how big the banners were on the buildings and how many there were.

Considering that Amazon Prime already sponsored the collector’s box that the passes came in with art work to promote their upcoming The Boys series I wasn’t too surprised to see these murals up along the streets of the nearby Gas Lamp District.

I took this picture of the signs hanging in the convention center lobby while we were on our way to get our lanyards and giftbags. For the last couple years I always felt severe FOMO when Comic Con came around and I would see an image of these signs on social media. I really wish I did a better job but I took this while we were going up the escalator and considering all the foot traffic that was going on I didn’t want to be an asshole and hold people up as I try to get a perfect picture for the “‘gram”

The first booth that really caught my eye was DC’s. Like with C2E2 and Wondercon a big theme with DC was Batman’s 80th anniversary which was pretty evident considering how aobut 90% of DC’s booth was dedicated to Batman. Most of DC’s displays were costumes from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.

Here is Michael Caine’s suit from Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises along with Christian Bale’s batsuit and Morgan Freeman/Lucisous Fox’s suit from Batman Begins.

Anne Hathaway’s Catowoman costume alongside the Batpod.

Cilian Murphy’s Scarecrow costume with Ken Watanabe’s Ra’s Al Ghul costume and Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent suit all from Batman Begins.

Tom Hardy’s Bane costume. I’m kind of digging the fleece-lined overcoat. If the weather was cold enough I’d wear one.

Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate/Talia al Ghul’s red formal party dress.

Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon’s police uniform.

Here’s a life-sized statue of Harley Quinn marking the area that DC had sectioned off to show off stuff items from DC Collectibles. It’s pretty obvious that this version of Harley is modeled after the incarnation from the Bruce Timm.

As you can see from these cases showing some items from DC Collectibles the Batman 80th anniversary celebration is still going strong.

This Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collectible showcasing Michelangelo as Batman was the only real thing that caught my eye. I know he’s supposed to be modeled after how Michelngelo looked in the Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated film and comicbook mini series but I really wish they made him look more like the Michelangelo from the ’80s cartoon I grew up on.

Walking around my mom noticed they were passing out free fans at the Square Enix booth. While she was stocking up on free fans I decided to check out what they had around.

I found this case of Final Fantasy IX figurines from Bring Arts. I never played FFIX, mostly because it came out towards the end of the PS1 lifespan and at that point I had shifted my focus towards the PS2–that and FFIX’s character designs just really turned me off from it, they just seemed too cartoony and at that phase in my life I was focused more on playing more mature games like Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid.

Here’s Amarant Coral and Kuja.

Garnet Til Alexandros XVII and Zidane Tribal.

Freya Crescent.

Beatrix, Adelbert Steiner, and Vivi Ornither.

Quina Quen, and Eiko Carol.

With the Final Fantasy VII remake expected to come out next year (finally) it was expected that Square Enix would have a few things out to help promote it.

Here’s a full-scale replica of Cloud’s Hardy-Daytona motorcycle that they were using for photo opportunities.

Here are Play Arts Kai figures of Barret Wallace, Tifa Lockhart, and Aerith Gainsborough. These things look pretty legit. I wish I could have taken more photos. I feel at the right angles I could have made them look like real people. Unfortunately the glare off the case was severely limiting my ability to take photos of them.

Cloud with his motorcycle.

The Star Wars booth had a pretty impressive setup featuring various Imperial uniforms from throughout the franchise.

Scout Troopers from Return of the Jedi.

The standard Imperial Storm Trooper armor which was seen in pretty much all the Star Wars movies. Everybody couldn’t help but notice how big the cod piece on this suit was.

Imperial Tie Fighter flight suit complete with the helmet and mask.

Imperial Death Trooper armor. If I recall correctly while the Imperial Death Troopers make plenty of appearances in the expanded universe materials I believe the only movie appearance they made was in Rogue One where they served as Krennic’s bodyguards.

Red Storm Trooper armor. These guys are supposed to be making an appearance in the upcoming Rise of Skywalker. Outside of the fact that they’re supposed to be in Rise of Skywalker there isn’t really that much to know about these guys. There wasn’t even an information sign next to this costume.

Shoretrooper armor. Like the name suggests these are Stormtroopers suited for fighting in tropical environments.

First Order Tie Fighter Pilot flight suit. Judging by the shape and size of this suit I want to say this suit is designed for a woman.

Captain Phasma’s chrome Stormtrooper armor.

First Order Stormtrooper armor. Not to sound too weird but I wonder why his codpiece isn’t as huge as the Imperial Stormtrooper’s.

Here are some Japanese-themed statues of DC Superheroes At first I thought these were part of a sequel to the Batman Ninja animated film that came out last year but when I saw how different Batman, Robin, and Harley Quinn were I realized they were for something else.

To complement the little Statues DC also had life-sized versions of their statues.

Here’s the Flash.

Batman. Like I said this is very different than the version of Batman from Batman Ninja.

Superman.

Green Arrow.

Robin.

And Harley Quinn.

I found these Sideshow Collectibles statues of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in a random booth. As you can see the designs are based on how they looked in the ’80s/’90s series. The Turtles look so different in the new Nickelodeon series so it’s really refreshing to see the Turtles looking like they did when I was a kid.

Shinji Nishikawa, a Japanese artist who worked as a designer on Godzilla films as well as an illustrator on Godzilla mangas was on site drawing a giant Godzilla mural throughout the weekend.

I’m really glad I got tickets up through Saturday because I was able to see what the finished mural looked like on my last day at the Con.

I’m going to close out this post with a picture I got of Kevin Ryder and Allie Mac Kay from the Kevin and Bean Show on KROQ. I bumped into Kevin and two of his producers in the convention center lobby. One of the producers with him was actually the phone screener I talked to when I won tickets back in 2015. Not only did I get a picture with them in the lobby but I also made sure to show my gratitude and thank both her and Kevin for giving  methe opportunity to have such an amazing experience back in 2015.

I feel really bad how late I am getting this post up but things have been so hectic for me the last few weeks. I’m really trying to kick things into high gear and get all my San Diego Comic Con content and D23 stuff up before LA Comic Con comes up.

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to come back soon for more.