I know I’m really really late on this but at this point I’m just happy I finished it. As massive as it is San Diego Comic Con was just so overloading and on top of that I kept finding so many other things that would make great posts, then things got really hectic in both my personal and professional life that I just found myself buried underneath so much bullshit and so burned out that I had so much trouble finding the motivation to get things done.

If It wasn’t for this whole COVID-19 epidemic essentially shutting down the world, I would still be running myself ragged trying to get things done for my site as well as dealing with everything else in my life. When the COVID-19 quarantines started I remember seeing a meme that said:

“If you don’t come out of this quarantine with either:

1. A new skill
2. Starting what you’ve been putting off like a new business
3. More knowledge

You didn’t ever lack the time, you lacked the discipline.”

Currently, instead of laying me off or having me furloughed, my job has me working from home full time. The good side of this is I still have a steady source of income coming in to take care of things, the downside is that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week are still not automatically mine, however, I’m not wasting 3-4 hours of my day driving to and from my work so I have that time to do things. On top of that, except for nonessential businesses, everything is closed so I have nowhere to go to procrastinate. Then there’s also the fact that COVID-19 has also shut down most of my content sources. Conventions, art exhibitions, and other events such as Corgi Beach Day have either been postponed or straight up canceled. With all that freeing up my time what is my excuse for not getting shit done other than I don’t have the discipline to do it? Nothing.

I know realistically blogging solely about conventions and art shows wouldn’t be a sustainable model given my lack of resources and connections, which is why my back up plan for generating content would writing essays on movies and TV shows as well as doing write ups and taking pictures of all the toys and collectibles I’ve been gathering over the years. This is so much content I’ve been sitting on but I haven’t even gotten close to touching because I’ve been so behind and preoccupied with other things.

Normally I’m pretty good with getting things done in school or at work but I think the problem with getting things done for my site is that this site is a side project for me and it lacks the same obligations placed on me that I got in school and at work. I need to stop looking at my site like that because it has the potential to be so much more. Aside from a potential source of revenue this site is also my key to getting hook ups to all the events and products I’ve always wanted as well as that extra thing on my resume that could make me stand out and land me the job making the money I want or doing the things I want. However, I can’t get my site to work for me if I’m not willing to work on my site. Which is why I really need to focus more of my energy on this thing.

Back to San Diego Comic con, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: San Diego Comic Con was such an amazing experience. Ever since I won those free tickets to Comic Con and a had brief taste of how fun and awesome it was I have been desperate to get back and after finally achieving that goal I have to say it was even more fun and awesome than I last time. Aside from seeing so much cool stuff and meeting so many people it was also such a huge learning experience.

One really important thing I learned about content generation in my career is that you should always try to squeeze as much as possible out of your sources. During my career I’ve seen most people make the mistake of assuming that that is just taking pictures, but that is because they don’t understand that pictures can only tell so much of a story and that a good content creator is not only capable of fully telling his story but also getting people to understand that story.

When I first started my site I made the amateur mistake of jumbling everything into these ginormous posts which might work for some bloggers but it doesn’t work for me, especially given the amount of content I’ve been generating especially that I’ve been generating from conventions. I learned a long time ago that segmenting my content has several benefits.

1. Shorter posts help with readability, making it easier for my audience to absorb more of my content before they get bored and drift off.
2. Segmenting my posts gives me the chance to release some content on a slightly faster timetable allowing me to establish a somewhat visible presence on the internet when it comes to things like conventions and other events.
3. By segmenting my content I can easier establish a theme with my posts, making them more specialized and giving me the chance to go into more detail, and hopefully improve the SEO of my posts so that it can be easier found online.

That last reason was something that I just recently realized is a very important benefit to have because it will allow me to create a better product for any companies or entities I could establish a relationship with. A while ago I had the crazy idea that I might some day be able to have sponsorship or partnership deals with. If I saw these people at a convention I need to take care of them and the best way to take care of them isn’t giving them a little blurb in a 5,000 word post from a convention, it’s giving them their own spotlight. I’ve been meaning to segment my convention content further than what I’ve currently been doing and cranking out a few themed posts, but most of the conventions I’ve attended in recent years haven’t really given me the opportunity or inspiration for themed posts.

Going into San Diego Comic Con I knew given how massive it is and how they attract so many advertisers and vendors it would be no problem to be able generate several themed posts. In fact, it would have been the easiest way to release things given how much I was expecting to see and gets pictures of.

Like I said before, San Diego Comic Con was a huge learning experience for me because it taught me how I should be approach things at a convention, how I should constantly be aware of what’s out there, the stories I could find and how I could bring them back. I also learned that while I need to manage my time carefully by not letting myself get overloaded I should also still approach things with an open mind so I don’t accidentally ignore something that could potentially lead to great content pieces. On top of all that I also learned that as a one-man operation I am way over my head with this stuff. I brought back a long of good stuff from Comic Con but being by myself is part of the reason why it’s taken me almost a year to get through it all. The easiest answer to this problem would be to find somebody to help me with all this but that is a whole other mess I don’t want to deal with right now.

In case you haven’t paid attention to the news one of the events that COVID-19 has canceled is San Diego Comic Con 2020. While it has been canceled Comic Con international has been kind enough to automatically roll passholders over into San Diego Comic Con 2021. I’m trying to look at it as a blessing because aside from giving me the time to work on my giant backlog of content, it’s also giving me another year to polish my site off to impress people with, as well as another year to strategize how I can handle content generation.

Anyway, please enjoy my remaining photos from San Diego Comic Con 2020.

The Marvel booth was loaded up with a bunch of costumes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, most of which I don’t remember seeing in any of the movies so I’m guessing they were either rejected designs or if anything were just used in promotional materials. Even though they weren’t used in the films the designs are very reminiscent to how the characters looked in the comicbooks.

A Black Widow costume complete with the batons. In the MCU ,Black Widow used black or dark colored gauntlets and accessories which make sense given that she’s a black ops soldier but I just really think the gold gauntlets give off more of a commanding presence. The black widow symbol on the belt buckle is a recurring element that has been on almost all her costumes except the one she wore in Avengers: Infinity War.

Captain America costume. This costume looks like a bit of a mismatch, incorporating elements from all the different movie costumes from over the years. The star design on the chest is reminiscent of the Winter Soldier costume while the vertical red and white stripes on the torso was an element used in basically every other costume except the Winter Soldier, while the helmet looks like it was inspired from the helmet from The First Avenger. The torso pouches are a subtle detail and a logical thing for Cap to have considering that he’s a soldier who needs to be able to comfortably carry anything he would every need into battle and it looks cleaner than having him wear a utility belt like Batman does.

Bruce Banner lab coat ensemble. To be fair they really should have used purple pants with this since the Hulk was always known to be wearing purple pants.

Thor. Like Cap’s costume this is a bit of a mismatch of elements. The color scheme appears to be inspired by the costume Thor wore in Age of Ultron, while the helmet has elements from Ragnarok in it.

Iron Man armor. The way the mouth slit on this one makes the armor seems less than intimidating than other versions of the armor because it looks like the armor is showing a perpetual look of surprise. The Unibeam/ARC reactor piece in the center really bothers me for multiple reasons. One it just looks too high on the chestpiece and the other is the square shape makes it look so bulky and ugly.

The Kingpin’s costume from the Daredevil Netflix series. Unlike the other costumes I believe this may have been screen-used or at least is one of Vincent D’Onofrio spare costumes. At the cery least it might have been one of the pieces that was shown in a scene where the Kingpin goes about his morning routine and opens a closet full of identical white suits.

Various props and costumes from Captain Marvel. Considering that Captain Marvel came out earlier that year and was supposed to be a launch title for the at the time upcoming Disney Plus service it was no surprise that Disney would be hyping it.

Originally I thought this display would remain the same all the weekend. I was quite surprised while walking around during my last day at SDCC when I saw that they swapped out the Captain Marvel stuff and replaced it with various costumes that the MCU heroines wore throughout the franchise. If you can’t tell who’s who here I’ll tell you going from left to right starting with the back row: Captain Marvel, The Wasp, Nebula, Okoye, Shuri, Scarlet Witch, Valkyrie, and Gamorra.

At this point the rest of Comic Con was made up of various statues and miniatures that caught my eye.

This piece titled Batman: Family from Q-Figs is a a bit bamboozling given the mixing of tones.. Batman seems to be based on how he looked in the Batman: the Dark Knight Returns, a miniseries from 1986 that features an older, more grizzled, and more brutal Batman fighting mutants in a dystopian version of Gotham City while the chibi-versions of the Batman Family just look too cute to be hanging out with him.

Here are the chibi-versions of the Bat-Family acting like kids. I’m assuming this piece and the Batman: Family piece were inspired by the Batman Incorporated series.

This Deadpool x Ghostrider piece I thought looked really cute.

Here’s a look at what else Q-Figs had on display.

The Pinky and the Brain and Goodfeathers pieces really stuck out to me since Animaniacs had ended like 20 years prior. I’m guessing interest in the upcoming Hulu reboot is what inspired the creation of these pieces.

This Deadpool piece had everything. The giant chimichanga, and his catchphrase “Maximum Effort” as a background. Although if I recall correctly, Deadpool doesn’t actually like chimichangas themselves he just likes the word “chimichanga.”

Q-Figs wasn’t the only one who had some cool stuff on display. These next pieces were from the Dark Horse Direct, Dark Horse Comics merchandise line.

Here’s a Leschen from The Witcher.

A Terran Battlecruiser from Starcraft. There’s a really good amount of detail on this thing.

Note the big hole in the center of the bow for its main weapon, the Yamato Cannon.

The UNSC Infinity from Halo. Seeing this thing next to the Terran Battlecruiser model made me think of how much science fiction design aesthetics have changed over the years.

Viserion from Game of Thrones, Daenerys’ dragon who gets killed and resurrected by the Night King. Dark Horse Direct has this thing listed on their site as the “Game of Thrones Ice Dragon & The Night King Premier Statue.” I’m not sure why they didn’t just use his name.

Here are some figures I came across from First 4 Figures AKA F4F.

A big-headed, cartoonish Solid Snake. Considering how Solid Snake is supposed to be this crazy badass special ops guy I feel this is almost an insult to him. I do have to say they did a good job replicating the look of his SOCOM pistol which is based on the Heckler & Koch Mark 23 handgun.

Princess Zelda as she looked in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Amaterasu from Capcom’s Okami.

Spyro the Dragon from the videogame series of the same name.

The following pics are of a variety of statues and figures from Icon Heroes. I didn’t catch this right away but almost all the items they had on display were of DC Comics characters. At first I thought it was because they had a partnership with DC/Warner Brothers but a quick look at their website reveals that they make statues and figures of other properties. I guess it is just a matter of who’s willing to deal with them or what they can afford the licensing fees to.

Here’s a good mix of DC Extended Universe and comicbook versions of characters. In the back you have Jason Mamoa Aquaman, Melissa Benoist Supergirl and the DCEU Black Manta while in the front you have comicbook versions of Shazam/Captain Marvel, Vigilante, and Black Adam.

Here’s different versions of the Arrowverse’s Green Arrow and Flash.

Some statues of the New Teen Titans. Clockwise from the bottom right you have Nightwing, Deathstroke, Cyborg, Starfire, Raven, and Beast Boy.

Here’s a Joker Santa that is highly inspired by the Bruce Timm iteration of the Joker from the ’90s Batman: Animated Series.

Wonder Woman. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out what era this version is from considering how expansive the DC Universe is between their long history and messed up multiverse.

Batman from Batman: Damned, a recent supernatural-themed Batman miniseries.

I’m going to close this out with some statues from Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina starring Kiernan Shipka.

Here I am, I’m finally done with all my San Diego Comic Con coverage. It’s super late but I can at least say I got it all done. It’s unfortunate that COVID-19 has shut down so many events because I was really hoping that I could try to redeem myself with another convention. Like I said earlier, with COVID-19 and all the other stuff going on causing people to dig in and stay home I should look at this as an opportunity to get caught up on things because at this point I have no excuse why I shouldn’t be working on all the stuff I’ve been putting off for so long.

With that being said I do want to say thank you to everybody who has gotten this far, both on this far and with everything else I’ve been putting up these last couple years. It’s been a rough ride so far but I’m hoping I can get it all smoothed out.