I almost feel relieved that LA Comic Con has come and gone because it represents the end of the convention season for me. Looking back, I can say that 2019 was very successful for me from a convention standpoint but also really expensive as well. I ventured out of my comfort zone with my trip to Chicago for C2E2 which got me thinking that I should really try to plan at least 1 out of state convention trip a year. I got to go to my dream convention, San Diego Comic Con which made it possible for me to attend SDCC 2020, and I explored a new convention opportunity with D23.

If there’s one lesson I got from all the conventions I attended this year its’ that I am really in over my head with this. Even though it’s months later I still have so much San Diego Comic Con content that I’ve been meaning to put up, an art show, and some content I managed to pull out of D23. Normally I prefer to work in chronological order when putting stuff up but I decided to shift my focus to LA Comic Con partly to hopefully capitalize on spikes in searches on search engines and social media but also because as a break from the SDCC content which I’ve been trying to get through.

If you follow me on social media you probably figured out by now that I work for the Motor Trend Group more specifically Super Street and Lowrider Magazines. Recently I had a chance to talk to Joey Lee AKA Stickydiljoe of The Chronicles who used to freelance for Super Street. Joey’s site was the inspiration for me starting my site, I mean while Joey’s site focuses on car culture because that’s what he’s into and that’s what he knows about I figured I’d focus on what I know and what I’m into and that is pop culture.

I look at Joey and I see somebody I want to be-a self-made success on multiple levels. Even though he’s a freelancer he’s as well-known and respected in the car scene as the actual editorial staff of Super Street, and he has just as many if not more industry connections as them. On top of, that Joey’s site gets huge amounts of traffic and his merchandise store makes him enough money to live comfortably.

I wish I could reach Joey’s level of success especially considering how he was able to do so much on his own. I remember being a kid and hearing all that stuff about how if you work hard enough you can accomplish anything, and maybe if I put the work in I can reach a level of success equal to if not better than the level Joey is on, but after talking to Joey and people who know Joey really well I learned that while Joey did work hard to get where he is now Joey did also does have some advantages that really helped him out.

One of the advantages that Joey had to sell himself is his position as a freelancer for Super Street and the other sister magazines like Honda Tuning and Import Tuner. Even though Joey was a freelancer and not a regular staffer that freelancer position did have some weight behind it in terms of opening doors and getting opportunities, also as a freelancer Joey was able to get his name out through all the owners of cars he’s shot for the magazines over the years.

Another advantage is that Joey isn’t a one-man operation, he does have a lot of friends that help him. I’m sure in the early days he did everything on his but if you look at him now he haspeople who help him out with this site here and there. Now while I have mentioned how my programmer friend David help me with the design and programming of my site, I unfortunately don’t have anybody who can help me with content generation.

The final and in my opinion biggest advantage that Joey has is that he doesn’t have a regular job. Like I said before his merchandise store makes him more than enough money to live comfortably so he doesn’t need to work a regular job which leaves him with plenty of time to work on his site. In fact, if anything his site is his regular job because that’s how he generates interest in his merchandise store.

I’m trying here, and while I don’t have the same advantages that Joey has I am at least doing what I can with what I have which is part of the reason why I’m so late with this post on LA Comic Con and why I have so much backlogged stuff to go through.

I’m not going to lie, I didn’t think LA Comic Con was that great this year. The vendors they had on site were pretty so so as were the celebrity guests and programing. I don’t really think it was the organizers’ fault though, I think it was just bad timing. In the past LA Comic Con was always held on the last weekend but for whatever reason, I’m guessing a scheduling conflict with the LA Convention Center they forced them to move it up to 2 weeks earlier, making LA Comic Con happening not only on the same weekend as ACE Comic Con Midwest but also a week after New York Comic Con which created all kinds of conflicts.

The conflict with ACE Comic Con Midwest is pretty apparent because unless you’re Hermione Granger with her time turner you can’t be in two places at once. From what I’ve learned about ACE Comic Con they may be a relatively new Comic Con tour but whoever is behind them seems pretty well-connected or at least well-funded because they are bringing out some big name guests with them. On social media they’re advertising how they’re bringing out stars from the MCU and Game of Thrones, and those are just the people they’re pushing on social media, I’m sure they probably have a few more special guests that they bring out and when that happens that’s less special guests for LACC.

One that that makes me curious about ACE Comic Con are they exhibitors they’re able to bring out. Are they just vendors from the local swap meets and reps from local comicbook and toy stores or are they able to bring out some big name vendors and companies. I’m really debating flying out to check out one of their conventions but I’m kind of hoping that they’ll just come out to California someday.

The conflict with New York Comic Con isn’t as apparent though. You’re probably thinking: “Where’s the conflict? They’re taking place on separate weekends.” This problem was best explained when I stumbled on Bluefin’s booth at LA Comic Con which was significantly smaller and less impressive than what I’m used to seeing from them. When I asked one of their reps why they had such a small setup at LACC this year he told me it was because at New York Comic Con they had the equivalent of six booths so they had a lot of elaborate stuff setup out there. On top of that Bluefin was also scheduled to have a setup at Anime NYC so rather than ship stuff back and forth they decided just to leave it all out there.

This year’s LA Comic Con was probably the busiest and most packed I’ve ever seen it in the 7 years I’ve been attending. Previous years taught me the best time to show up at LA Comic Con is at about 9AM even though the Con doesn’t officially open until 10, this way you have plenty of time to find a parking spot in one of the LA Convention lots as well as waiting in line to get your pass. Unfortunately, LA Comic Con was also the day that San Diego Comic Con’s returning registration was taking place and since I had finally gotten SDCC passes after wanting to go for how many years and actively trying for the last years I wasn’t going to pass up an attempt to go again so I decided to suck it up and try going later.

Although I’m not sure if going early would have helped me that much because LA Comic Con was just nonstop craziness.I think we waited for 15-20 minutes alone in a deadstop on the freeway trying to get off on the Figueroa Street exit before realizing there’s a good chance all the Convention Center lots are full so we’ll have to park a couple blocks away. While I was running around taking pictures I met a woman around 2 o’clock who told me she just got in and the line to pick up passes was like a 2 hour wait just by itself. Even the security screening checkpoint for people who already had passes because they came on Friday was a good 40 minute wait. I will admit I did have one trick up my sleeve that helped me bypass some of the lines, I don’t want to really say what it is and I feel a bit bad for using it but honestly I think I need as many advantages as I can get when doing things.

Despite the long waits and the lackluster experiences I still did what I could to make the most of it tried to find stuff I could generate content around. It’s something I need to learn how to do if I want to be a successful content story teller and content generator.

I’ve probably went on too many tangents with this post so I’m just going to say here’s all my photos from LA Comic Con.

The first thing that caught my eye were these custom Lego sets Bricks LA.

Here’s a recreation of the Han getting frozen in carbonite scene from Empire Strikes Back.

Iron Man’s Hall of Armors or “Armory” as some people call it.

Two pieces recreating two famous Beatles albums, A Hard Day’s Night and Let It Be. No offense to the guy who created these but the piece representing Let It Be looks incredibly terrifying. From far away it looks good but up close it just looks like something out a child’s nightmare.

Here’s another piece inspired by a Beatles album. This one recreating their famous Abbey Road album cover.

Here are a couple pieces representing variants of the famous TIE Fighter from Star Wars. I know most of these were from the expanded universe source material but after the whole Disney deal I’m not sure how many are canon now.

The TIE Lander, a trooper carrier from Star Wars #60.

The TIE Heavy Starfighter.

And a TIE Reaper which supposedly made its first appearance in Rogue One but I don’t remember seeing it there. Maybe it’s from the novelizationof Rogue One?

Here’s a Lego Mosiac made to resemble the poster for the movie Silence of the Lambs. It might not look like it zoomed in but if you look at a thumbnail version of  it looks just like the poster.

The same goes with this mosaic recreating the poster to the movie Scarface.

These Lego exosuits built by Nathan Lindsey were pretty cool. My mom was so impressed with them that she was asking where she could buy them. She was really disappointed when I told her they were custom-built kits.

While I wandering around artist alley I was super mesmerized by this Avatar: The Last Airbender-inspired piece by Kehasuk.

I was also really into these Rick and Morty-inspired pieces. Sorry about getting that guy’s head in the shot but this was one of the most popular booths in Artist Alley so it was really hard to get close enough to get a good shot.

Here’s the Hot Topic booth. When I saw they had an extended line marked off behind the booth but no line I was a bit surprised. It wasn’t until I saw a sign saying they were out of most of the convention-exclusive Funko Pop figures that I realized why they weren’t as full as I expected them to be.

Best Buy was on site this year. They had a trailer setup to demoing these super thin and clear-screen OLED TVs. Those things were like 10gs. I tried to get a pictures of the actual TV but the demo videos they were playing were bright and moving too quick for my camera to catch so the pictures of the actual TVs just looked like a blur.

Wild Bill’s Soda was there again, this year they had two booths set up on opposite sides of the convention center. I was really debating trying their sodas but between the lines and the fact I wasn’t a big fan of their souvenir mugs this year I decided not to.

While my parents were taking a break from the Con in the lobby I decided to get a picture of how crazy the atrium area was. Notice the crowds behind the pillars. This is just the atrium. You can bet it was way worse on the show floor.

I decided to cruise around artist alley again and Natalie Ngo, the Author of Golden Ass was saying all this stuff to generate attention to her booth. When she saw my big ass camera around my neck she asked me to get a picture of her. I’ve had people do this to me in the past and usually I toss the photos afterwards because I really don’t like giving into people who do that but for some reason I found myself keeping the pic.

For some reason whoever did the layout for all the vendors and special booths thought it would be a good idea to put this life-sized Hulkbuster Iron Man right here. It would have been a good place to put it except the line to meet Rob Liefeld ran right in front of it which made it really hard to get a picture in front of it.

I found a vendor selling these custom monster dolls. Probably a good thing they’re super expensive to deter parents to get them for their kids because I’m pretty sure that if you gave 1 of these to a kid it would probably eat their soul.

A killer clown Marine doll… why?

This one looks like it walked straight out of a Chucky movie… I really mean it looks like it walked out of a Chucky movie.

The Petersen Automotive Museum is currently running an exhibition called “Hollywood Dream Machines which features iconic vehicles from various movies. I’ve really been meaning to check it out because it seems like something that would fit really well for my site. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find the time to go. Lucky for me the exhibition is scheduled to run until March 2020 so I still have some time to check it out. Until then I’ll have to settle for what the brought out to tease people with.

Here’s the DeLorean time machine from the Back to the Future movies, probably one of the most iconic movie cars you can think of.

This is neat, this is the Acura NSX convertible concept that Tony Stark was driving at the end of the first Avengers movie.

Next to the concept NSX was an actual production NSX. I’m really not a big fan of the orange.

A ’58 Plymouth Fury representing the evil car from the movie Christine.

This ’98 VW New Beetle nicknamed “Shagmobile” is from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged me but I don’t remember seeing it in that movie. If anything they should have brought out the Shaguar, the Jaguar E-Type with the Union Jack theme.

In the last couple years I don’t think I’ve bought that many shirts from conventions usually because they don’t have anything that interest me but I was really tempted to buy something with this fox design because I thought it looked a lot like my pet corgi.

EI was there doing bodypainting demos again. I believe this guy is supposed to be Amarant Coral from Final Fantasy IX.

Legion M had this recreation of the Quick Stop Groceries store from Kevin Smith’s Askewnivere to help promote the fact that they’re working with Smith and Jason Mewes on a Jay and Silent Bob reboot.

I think it’s appropriate that I close this out on the farewell banner that they had hanging in the convention center lobby. I was a bit bamboozled why next year’s LACC would be even earlier but then my dad said it’s probably due to the presidential election next year.

Thanks for checking this out. Come back soon for the cosplayers and more stuff I’ve been sitting on.