It was Charles Shultz's birthday today, and I was at Comic Con... and I talked with Chris Sanders! (Lilo and Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon) and next year he'll likely have a new sketchbook out (with Stitch I asked hopefully!)

 Comic Con didn't even happen last year, and this year most or all of the big corporations were not there. There was no Hollywood component like the past 20 years.

There was no Hall H. No Ballroom 20. 

None of the movie companies were there, no WB, Sony, etc. No AMC with Walking Dead, and Walking Dead has been a booth thing, a zombies in the stadium thing, and a Hall H panel, for about 10 years. No movie props, no tv show focused booths. No cars, motorcycles, rvs, etc. Remember when Agents of Shield brought Colsons Corvette? Walking Dead brought the RV? Total Recall brought the flying cars? Elysium bought the Bugatti space ship? 

There were no posters covering the nearby hotels. I looked out toward the Gaslamp area, and it was not possible to guess comic con was in town, there were no banners, posters, painted buildings, spotlights, etc. Even the trolley train had no promo vinyl wraps about Dexter, or whatever the next best show will be. 

No Sideshow booth, as they opted to stick to the LA Con in a week or so, and bring Zachary Levi, Frank Miller, Tom Kenny, Ming-Na Wen, and Giancarlo Esposito.

There was no IMDB yacht, no Marvel booth, no Rick and Morty or Robot Chicken by the bayside. 

Comic Con, was gutted. What's Eddie Ibrahim been up to? Dunno, as there was no programming that he typically announced the celeb panels for in Hall H and Ballroom 20. Eddie? Are you ok? Can you hear me? 

It was still a great place to shop/browse at all the booths, as the exhibit floor was so quiet, you could hear the disappointment. About 10-20 percent of the booths were empty, some had company names, some didn't. 

The gaming area at the far north end? Now a eating table area. Funko moved to that end. 

Artists alley was about twice as big, and flanked by another huge table area. 

ABC, WB, CBS, Fox, UPN, all the tv show companies that had booths, and showed clips, previews etc, missing from the exhibit floor. 

It was quiet, and roomy. 

If you like that sort of thing at a convention, well, SEMA and Comic Con were on, instead of whatever last years online nonsense was (I didn't bother with either last year, it's pointless to me)

But I did find a half dozen cool artists, projects, etc that I'll be posting about tomorrow. They seriously prevented me from depression and disappointment. Even a couple fun people can turn around an entire wash out of a convention that failed to meet expectations, and hit you in the feels with cute characters, great art, phenomenal ideas they've made a marketing push with... I'll get to posting them tomorrow. 

Why? Walking miles inside a major convention center tired me out. I dig a grid pattern, was in every row, saw every table and booth, and doubled back a lot covering my own tracks to make sure I saw what was on both sides of a row