Tag: SDCC

SDCC 2023: Paramount Plus’ “The Lodge” Takes You To The Peak Of Ben Lomond Mountain!

by Derek Kraneveldt

With the SAG/AFTRA and WGA strike in full swing and cancelled panels, signings, and appearances aplenty, there’s a ton of uncertainty circling around this year’s always-epic San Diego Comic-Con.

While the Hall H schedule is looking a little bare (I don’t expect to see many attendees waiting overnight this year) and some of your favourite booths (we’re still in our same old space at #3919) may not be around (it seems like for every company that pulled out, the Funko booth has grown even larger) nobody currently in San Diego really knows what the exhibit hall may look like over the next few days.

Walking around the Gaslamp District today, however, a couple of things became very clear — there are still like a billion people here (maybe more), and offsite activations appear to be back and in full swing.

We’ll be taking a look at many of this year’s offsite offerings over the next couple of days, but Shane (yep, Shane is back in San Diego for the first time since 2018) and I were lucky enough to check out Paramount’s ‘The Lodge’ in the hours before preview night officially kicked off.

The Lodge is located at the Happy Does bar (340 5th Ave), and its hours are as follows:
Wednesday, July 19 from 6pm-10pm
Thursday, July 20 – Saturday, July 23 from 12pm-10pm
Sunday, July 23 from 10am-7pm

Naturally, tickets went up awhile ago, and sold out for the entire weekend in just a few minutes — a standby line will be running through the weekend, and from some Twitter impressions a lot of people with reservations (at least for tonight) weren’t showing up so the standby line was moving at a decent pace.

The Lodge itself features a ton of small activations for a number of Paramount + offerings (small is a pretty key word here). Here’s a quick breakdown before we get into some thoughts:

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts: Visit Energon Station to replenish your energy and unleash your inner beast with some tantalizing PRIMAL BREW (cold brew) and AUTOBOT TEA (iced tea).

Good Burger 2: Munch on delicious tray pass sliders from the classic Good Burger counter.
Yellowjackets: Step inside Lottie’s serene compound, where there’s more than meets the eye. Guests will explore a path through the activation to the secrets inside, and those lucky enough to reveal the iconic antler queen will leave with their very own bespoke Yellowjackets playing cards.

SpongeBob SquarePants: Take a trip under the sea to Bikini Bottom and visit The Krusty Krab. While at the iconic restaurant, grab a seat at the boat set for an underwater selfie photo moment.

Special Ops: Lioness: Crime awaits in the CIA safe house, where guests will be asked a series of “tests” matching with one of the three female archetypes. Fans will then receive a card with a character-match write-up and tune-in info. For guests passing by, the space features a spycraft wall where consumers can discover secrets.

Star Trek: Returning by popular demand, Star Trek’s Caricature Studios welcomes guests to take a seat at one of three rock thrones where artists will sketch visitors as their own Trek character. While at each studio, guests can select from a menu of preset characteristics adding details like uniform weapons, specialty alien-race touches, skin tone, etc.

1923: Discover a hidden speakeasy where you’ll find yourself in the Silver Dollar Soda Shop. Step inside and order a glass bottled root beer or a specialty cocktail within the existing nook. With a tasty beverage in hand, guests can then take a seat in the 1923 portrait studio for a vintage-style photo moment.
CBS Sports: Reimagine the iconic CBS Sports desk with a winter twist celebrating all sports, all the time. While walking around, take a peek at the CBS Sports “Hall of Fame” memorabilia wall, including items from NFL, UEFA & NWSL (San Diego Wave FC), and play a friendly game of shuffleboard.

Ink Master: Experience a day in the classic Ink Master banquette booth while flipping through a book of airbrush tattoo options from your favorite Paramount+ shows. Stencil options from beloved Paramount+ shows include Beavis and But-Head, Spongebob, RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, and more.

Pet Sematary: Modeled after the film’s themes, guests will be invited to the Pet Sematary portrait studio for a photo moment where aftereffects will be added to invoke the dead in a beautiful yet dying environment. Post-photo, digital versions will be available for consumers to share on social media.

I loved the styling of the offsite — from the outside it totally looked like a lodge you’d find at a ski resort (complete with snowed-up trees). I definitely wondered how they’d fit so many things into an area that didn’t seem all that large, and it turns out that to do so most of the offerings were pretty tiny.

The Transformers piece amounted to a stylized mural and a counter with the aforementioned Cold Brew and Iced Tea, while the Spongebob section had a Krabby Patty themed corner and an Instax-powered photo op where you were able to sit behind the counter (I think that there was a secret here too, but it wasn’t working during our session).

Pet Semetary had a great photo op, and 1923 had its own themed cocktail and photo op area too. There were Goodburgers servers walking around serving up some tasty burgers.

The Yellowjackets area reminded me that I really need to start season two of Yellowjackets, but it we walked away

The Star Trek caricature area looked to be one of the absolute coolest memories that you could take home from SDCC, but these things take time, and as such the lineup was really long. We jumped out of line after about half an hour (half an hour of not really moving) as it seemed like it would be ages before we’d finally get through (and despite taking place on top of a chilly mountain, it was hot as hell in the room).

The Special Ops: Lioness activation was a bit of a weird one for sure. Participants sit down and are taken through three timed ‘tests’ to see if you have what it takes to join the special ops. The first test seemed to be some simple-looking (but not actually simple) riddles. The second one basically amounted to the actor being like ‘assemble this’ without any context as to what you were supposed to be assembling, while the third was akin to the online videos you see of people trying to remove a bar of gold from a small box with a hole in it. I’m not sure if the swag differed depending on how well you did on the tests, but since I was only able to finish the third (and was unreasonably stressed out about the second), I was rewarded with… a business card sized ad for Lioness.

Some cool giveaways were available for attendees — upon entry, we were given a voucher for a (Goodburger) burger and two drink tickets, as well as a retractable belt clip perfect for your SDCC bagde, and a lift-ticket inspired tag complete with a code for a free month of Paramount Plus. Around the activations you could score (naturally), the afformentioned Spongebob, 1923, and Yellowjackets photos, but you could also obtain a small jar of themed honey and playing cards in the Yellowjackets activation. For the coolest swag, you’ll need to go further than the activation itself and complete the Paramount Scavenger hunt in eight locations across the convention area.

Take a look at some of our photos from the activation below, and let us know if you make it to The Lodge!

Pros:

+ Tasty snacks and sips (that 1923 cocktail was delish).
+ One location showing off a lot of fun properties.
+ The Yellowjackets swag felt very appropriate and is absolutely a keeper.
+ A few neat secrets around for those with an eye for detail.
+ If you’ve got the patience, the Star Trek caricature looked like an amazing take home.
+ A free month of Paramount Plus if you don’t already subscribe (and come on, Survivor is on there).

Cons:

– The Lioness activation was unclear and stressful and gave you a business card.
– Only the fastest and/or most patient fans are walking out with caricatures — timed slots have a 50 minute cap on the whole experience so it can be reset for the next group.
– If you’re a swag hunter, the best merch is locked away behind the Paramount Passport.
– If you’re a sports fan, the sports activation seemed to amount to some football helmets and a shuffleboard table.

SDCC 2022: Captain Kirks Unite In Unique Comic-Con Handprint Ceremony

by Derek Kraneveldt

This is exactly the type of amazing experience that you can only have at San Diego Comic-Con.

Kicking off the first full day of SDCC 2022, Legion M commemorated the era-spanning journey of William Shatner (who actually sits on Legion M’s board of advisors), and united old and new with a special handprint ceremony tied to their upcoming (as yet untitled) William Shatner documentary (which is set to be directed by Alexandre Phillipe, who also directed the Geekscape co-produced Doc of the Dead).

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the event in person, which was hosted at the Theatre Box in San Diego and featured a unique meeting of the generations between Shatner and Paul Wesley, the Captain Kirk featured in the lauded new series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Things kicked off with Legion M’s co-founder and CEO, Paul Scanlan, thanking everyone in attendance, and dialing in on how important it is that Legion M is a ‘for the fans’ company. Paul Wesley thanked Shatner for all of his advice on taking the helm of Captain Kirk, and even handed things over to Shatner with a ”You have the conn.”

Shatner seemed in high spirits throughout the ceremony, and cracked jokes about his “puffy hands” getting stuck in the concrete (too many shellfish), sticking his face in the concrete (he didn’t), and more. Following the actual handprinting, Legion M pulled in all cosplay-laden attendees for a photo op with Shatner, and the pure elation on most of their faces is really what SDCC is all about.

The upcoming Shatner documentary itself will be funded entirely by fans, who will also be able to earn ownership (and thus, even revenues) on the project. This is a pretty neat sounding spin on the standard crowdfunding platforms — if you’re interested, you can learn more right here!

I only had my iPhone in hand for the ceremony, so things aren’t as clear as they could be, but take a browse below to see just how much fun and experience this was. A huge thanks to Legion M for hosting us at the ceremony!


SDCC 2022: “The Audible Beach” Lets Con Goers Relax and Recharge (Their Phones)

by Derek Kraneveldt

Audible’s presence at SDCC 2022 is decidedly smaller than the Stan Lee’s ‘Alliances: A Trick of Light’ offsite in 2019 (reminisce with Mikaela’s write-up of that experience right here), but the audiobook giant is sure to catch your eye with a fast, impressive, and super-visible activation located just off of 1st Avenue + Martin Luther King Promenade.

Audible is celebrating two brand new (fantastic sounding) Audible originals, Moriarty: The Devil’s Game, and Impact Winter, and of course, they’re showing off the bonafide Audible hit (and upcoming Netflix original series) Sandman.

The beach features three giant sand sculptures (one of them was receiving some additional accents during my visit, and the artist told me that he’d been working on the sculpture for eight hours a day over the past fives days), a literal small beach complete with parasols and beach chairs for patrons to lounge on, and a number of cell phone chargers to help attendees ’recharge’. The company is also giving participants the chance to win Audible memberships along with other prizes.

If you’re on the ground in San Diego, the sculptures are absolutely worth checking out. If you’re not (sorry), here are some photos!

When The Sandman, also known as Lord Morpheus – the immortal king of dreams, stories and the imagination – is pulled from his realm and imprisoned on Earth by a nefarious cult, he languishes for decades before finally escaping. Once free, he must retrieve the three “tools” that will restore his power and help him to rebuild his dominion, which has deteriorated in his absence. As the multi-threaded story unspools, The Sandman descends into Hell to confront Lucifer (Michael Sheen), chases rogue nightmares who have escaped his realm, and crosses paths with an array of characters from DC comic books, ancient myths, and real-world history, including: Inmates of Gotham City’s Arkham Asylum, Doctor Destiny, the muse Calliope, the three Fates, William Shakespeare (Arthur Darvill), and many more. 

Check out The Sandman on Audible here.

Moriarty finds the professor on the heels of an earth-shattering mathematical breakthrough–a formula so powerful, it can predict the future–and at the scene of a gruesome murder he must solve to prove his innocence. With London’s sprawling underworld as their battleground, Moriarty and Holmes match their peerless intellects to gain the ever-shifting upper hand. But as their duel escalates, so does the deadly cost of pursuing the truth. “What will it take to get your justice?” Dr. Watson asks an utterly ensnared Moriarty, “And if you do get it… what will you become?”

Moriarty: The Devil’s Game is available on Audible now.

In the British countryside, a band of survivors forms a resistance in the fallout shelter of a medieval castle. Darcy is a battle-tested vampire hunter who is at the front line leading the charge to save humanity. Meanwhile, her younger sister Hope wants life to return normal so she can go above ground and know what it’s like to live again. And she just might be willing to risk it all. 

A story of apocalypse, horror, and adventure, Impact Winter is a wholly original new saga created just for Audible with immersive 3D audio that dares you to pop in your earbuds and listen in the dark. Venture into an eternally sunless world of swords and crossbows; primal hunters and shape-shifters; leaders and lovers. Hear how a brave few fight to survive the impact winter. 

Impact Winter (from Geekscape pal Travis Beacham) is available on Audible now.

SDCC 2022: Netflix’ ’The Gray Man’ Training Program Kicks Off SDCC With A Bang!

by Derek Kraneveldt

I’m so excited to be back in San Diego.

The spectacle of the convention itself, and the fact that it spills out through what feels like the entire Gaslamp District of San Diego, is simply baffling. The scale of SDCC is simply like no other event that I’ve ever had the privilege of being to, and as incredible as the exhibit hall, panels, and exclusives are, the offsite activations have to be my absolute favourite part of the SDCC experience (aside from seeing my Geekscape friends).

I wasn’t quite sure how offsites would look this year — without a convention for the past two years, would studios realize that they didn’t actually need them to build excitement for their upcoming projects? Would they be fearful of staffing issues (or sickness) and do things on a smaller scale to combat this? Would it be business as usual?

Before preview night opened on Wednesday, I had the fantastic opportunity to check out the huge offsite that Netflix built for their new star-studded Russo brother direction action thrilller, The Gray Man.

Interestingly enough, this offsite has been set up for a movie that drops in just a couple of days, rather than a property that’s still months away (or years, as it was with Prime Video’s Jack Ryan series, which popped up at SDCC for multiple conventions before it finally released). This should definitely help the film’s early numbers (not that a cast including folks like Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, and Billy Bob Thornton won’t) — I might be a pretty impressionable guy, but even just walking by the setup I was thinking that ”maybe we should check this out when we get back to the hotel tonight.”

The event is hard to miss, but for those in San Diego this week The Gray Man Training Program sits at the ABM Parking Lot at the corner of 1st Ave and Island Ave (this is where Prime Video was set up back in 2019 for The Boys, Carnival Row, and The Expanse). The offsite is open from Thursday, July 21 – Saturday, July 23 10am-7pm, and Sunday, July 24 from 11am-4pm.

The activation is a high-energy, interactive escape experience set on a tram car, inspired by the epic chase scene in the new Netflix Film The Gray Man. Once aboard the tram, fans will have to prove they have what it takes to become the next Gray Man in a test of skill, strength, and speed while transporting a top secret file to safety before the mercenaries catch up and the time runs out. The heart pounding mission will include various obstacles and special effects, and will culminate in a rooftop sprint as fans race against the clock to complete the mission. Fans will leave with a badass customized social takeaway that puts them at the center of their own action film.

Once you hit the front of the line, this is the start of the actual experience.

There was a decent lineup of press members present when I arrived at the activation. For those attending during the daytime, some umbrellas are set up to shield you from the San Diego sun. A giant display shows off the trailer for The Gray Man on repeat, and it’s loud enough that you’ll probably hear it if you’re pretty much anywhere close to the activation itself. Note that even for the press preview, this line took quite some time — attendees were completing the challenge one or two at a time, and took about two minutes once you actually began. Also, I’ve now memorized this trailer verbatim, as it’s the only thing that plays… over and over again.

Once you get closer to the actual activity, it looks pretty phenomenal. A life-sized crashed subway car greets you, complete with flying sparks and regular bursts of smoke. It’s a little tough to know exactly what you’ll do once it’s your turn, but it’s pretty clear that a ton of cash went into the activation, and that it’s going to be a damned good time.

Spoilers for the offsite activity ahead — you’ve been warned.

You finally hit the front of the line, and you’re sent in to be briefed by an agent. The agent tells you that they’re trying to determine who has what it takes to become the next Gray Man, and gives a brief overview of the challenges that you’ll be facing. You also receive a small metal necklace — one side has The Gray Man’s logo, while the other side has a pattern of sorts on it (I’m not quite sure at this point if the pattern is associated with the film, but I’d guess that it is).

Another agent then puts you into position at the end of the tram car, and instructs you to enter and get to work as fast as you possibly can once the door opens. Once you’re inside, you’re told to look for visual queues that will help you move on to the next area.

The first area was super easy and really took just a few seconds to solve. The second area however, really seems to require two people to have much success. I found instructions that I thought I was following, but then second-guessed myself when they wouldn’t work. Time ran out, and I failed this portion of the challenge (someone later confirmed that I was doing the right thing, but that it really took three hands to be able to fully solve it).

For the final portion of the activation, you end up on top of the tram car, and have to run across and insert your necklace into a briefcase of sorts to finish things up. A camera on a wire captures your run, and afterwards you can email yourself a cool video of your time on top of the tram.

Overall, the experience that Netflix crafted for The Grey Man was a very fun one. At the time of this writing, I don’t believe that Netflix is doing any sort of pre-registration to partake in the activation, and due to the one or two people nature of the experience itself, I’d anticipate lines to be long (well duh, it’s SDCC) and slow moving. In any case, if you have the time (or will be wandering the Gaslamp without a badge on one of the convention days), The Gray Man training program should definitely be on your to-do list.

Derek’s SDCC 2022 Recap: Pre-Con / Preview Night

by Derek Kraneveldt

What the heck is this? Every year that I attend SDCC, I do recaps of my experience. These are typically wordy, fun (I hope) reads, that give non-attendees a look at what a trip to San Diego Comic-Con may look like. I hope you enjoy!

…and we’re back.

It’s a little tough to believe that I’m sitting in a San Diego hotel while writing this. Naturally, the last time that I was in the city (accompanied for the first and possibly last time by my partner Mikaela) was all the way back in 2019 (you can see our SDCC 2019 content right here for a nice look back), and we had no idea what the world had coming for us just a handful of months down the road.

But we’re back. Thankfully, attendee safety seems like somewhat of a priority with strict always-on mask guidelines that many cosplayers are sure to hate, mandatory proof of vaccination or recent negative COVID-19 tests (which nets you a standard disposable wristband that definitely won’t be gross after several days in the California sun), and even security staff that will ensure con-goers are adhering to these rules.

Even with all of these guidelines in place, it’s hard not to be at least a little nervous. Sure, since things began to really open back up early this Spring, I’ve felt pretty comfortable venturing out for some fun again. I’d guess that I’ve been to over a dozen decent-to-large-sized concerts in the past few months, have returned to movie theatres regularly, have felt more comfortable with larger groups of friends, and overall things have felt pretty great (well, except for that time I got COVID, but that wasn’t due to any of those things).

A random, now terrifying crowd shot from SDCC 2019.

But this is San Diego Comic-Con, where (at least in the past) you’re shoulder to shoulder with what feels like every single other attendee for almost every moment you’re here (including when you’re outside in the Gaslamp District). Never in my life have I felt so incredibly close to so many people at once, and with the new BA.5 variant of COVID-19 now running rampant, being close to so many people once again, on days of little sleep, absolutely has me skittish. If I get sick, I can’t fly back to Canada for ten days, which sounds very hard and expensive, and I’m feeling more iffy just thinking about the possibility.

Maybe I (definitely) should have given it all more thought before flying in… but here we are, so let’s try to make the most of it.

Pre-Convention

I’m not yet sure just how messed up US airports are at this point (I’ll find out when I head to the San Diego airport on Monday), but Canadian airports are pretty screwed (to the point where one day recently, our largest airline, Air Canada delayed 70% of its flights). As such, I ended up at YVR preposterously early and had to sit around for hours for my 8AM Saturday flight to LAX.

Economy flights seem to have become even more nickel & dime-y since I was last in the air. In the past, I swear that you had the ability to choose almost any seat in the general economy area (aside from the few with an actual appropriate amount of leg room), and that checking in the very moment you could gave you an advantage, since more seats would still be readily available. This time around, my 6 foot, 3-inch frame was assigned a middle seat near the rear of the plane, and moving even one seat over in order to be in the aisle would have cost nearly $50. That felt new (and super lame).

Wanting to save more funds for the exorbitantly expensive ”Special SDCC” menus at the restaurants near the convention centre, I stuck with the middle seat, and naturally ended up next to another tall guy named Eric. We mostly kept to ourselves, but had a little bit of banter here and there — we came up with a strategy where an airline’s check in policy would also ask your height, and then seating would automatically be staggered between short and tall people in order to provide any amount of comfort. When departing the plane, I let him know that I hoped that he was able to sit next to someone shorter on his way back, and he did the same for me — fingers crossed, buddy.

After landing at LAX, I hopped on the FlyAway LAX bus to Van Nuys where I finally, after three years, reunited with Jonathan. At some point in the past few months it came up that I’d never had a Rueben sandwich before (I don’t think that they’re a common menu item up in Canada), so we’d already discussed that our first goal once I arrived in Los Angeles would be to change that fact. Jonathan, Heidi, and I ended up at Art’s Delicatessen — a popular sandwich joint that opened back in 1957, where I had a delicious (albeit expensive) introduction to the Rueben sandwich. Seriously, it was $26 USD for the sandwich and a small side, which is nearly $35 in Canadian dollars. Damn.

A poorly framed photo of the Art’s menu.

We spent much of the rest of the day preparing / inventorying items for the booth… and watching the new Netflix Resident Evil series. The series felt very so-bad-it’s-fantastic to start and slowly devolved from there into something all but nonsensical. There were certainly cool moments here and there, and a handful of great easter eggs for video game fans, but overall it was pretty rough.

That said, Jonathan spent much of the series yelling at the television and talking about how bad it was… but we still ripped through all eight episode in about two days.

https://youtu.be/uIdjcDTc9Vk

On Sunday morning, I had my first round of In-N-Out in nearly three years and it was just as tasty and fresh as I remembered it being. Those animal style fries are everything.

I’m home.

Matt finally showed up a few hours later, and it was phenomenal to be reunited with him as well. We all spent some time catching up and grabbing some Chinese food, and then spent much of the night watching Nathan for You and preparing mentally for the days to come.

Monday was mostly a day of hanging out (the Los Angeles heat, 36 degrees Celsius at one point in the day, made it fairly unbearable to do anything else), aside from picking up a small UHAUL trailer that would help us transport the booth (#3919, as always, if you’re at the show) and all of our merchandise to the convention centre.

This first recap is getting pretty lengthy already, so here’s a bit of a rapid fire on the rest of my pre-convention journey:

– We left early Tuesday morning to San Diego and I learned along the way that US Denny’s is just slightly rougher than Canadian Denny’s.

– Once we arrived at the convention centre, things devolved into chaos pretty quickly. Our plan was to park in the garage below the building in order to unload the booth, but no trailers were allowed in and we were instead routed around to the back of the building, and then further back, and then finally to the lot where all of the larger booths were being unloaded and brought to the convention center via forklift. The workers there acted like we didn’t belong (we didn’t) and seemed kind of angry when we weren’t using their forklift services to move our basically five boxes. One of the workers finally told us we could go in through a loading door, and told us “If they give you any trouble, tell them Jim sent you.” Of course, the security guard at the loading door wouldn’t let us in, and told us ”Well you better go talk to Jim then.” In the end, we had to walk down (booth in tow) the vehicle ramp into the underground parking, walk across the underground parking lot, take the elevator back up to the other side of the convention center, be told a few more times that we were in the wrong place, then be told that we needed to get our COVID wristband before we could dump our stuff, and then eventually we made it inside. I swear we’ve done this plenty of times before. The convention center also doesn’t turn on the air conditioning in the building during setup and that seems kind of mean for the people that are working inside all day (it’s so freaking hot in there).

– As soon as we hit the city, I was immediately enthralled with the spectacle. You’d think that this feeling would wear off after all of these years of attending, but especially after a three year break it’s simply amazing to be in this energy again. From the incredible work that goes into all of the hotel wraps (only to be removed a few days later), to the literal buildings that are being put together for amazing offsite events (again, only to be torn down a few days later), to the sheer size of the convention center, it’s simply so good to be back.

– Matt puts butter on Pop Tarts and it’s possibly the weirdest thing that I’ve ever heard.

– Again, for someone who seemed to hate the new Resident Evil series so much, Jonathan sure ripped through it quickly.

– Nathan For You is possibly the best television show ever made.

– COVID has changed Rockin’ Baha. The nacho / salsa bar is no more, which makes complete sense and they instead bring chips to the table, but the limitless supply of pineapple mango salsa is also gone, and instead you pay $2.50USD per minuscule portion. It’s delicious as ever, for sure, but during our post-setup lunch I was certainly more reserved in my pineapple mango salsa consumption than I would have been in the past. Our server, Ruby, has only been working at Rockin’ Baha for a few months, and hasn’t experienced an SDCC before. I feel bad for her.

@geekscape Geekscape headed back to #ComicCon! We do an #unboxing on the way and build the booth! #SanDiegoComicCon #singingtexttospeech #sdcc #comics #sdcc2022 #fyp ♬ Smoked out Phonk – TREVASPURA

After walking around the surprisingly-quiet Gaslamp District for a while (and grabbing a few supplies at Ralphs), Matt, Jonathan and I returned to our hotel (the Hilton Bayfront, which is thankfully just across the street from the convention center for an early night. I’m tired already!

Wednesday / Preview Night

Yep. Still tired, and we haven’t even done anything yet!

With not much planned until an early preview of a fantastic-sounding offsite activation for the new Netflix film The Gray Man, I wasn’t too sure what the first half of the day would look like.

Jonathan was already out for a November Project workout before I even woke up, and Matt was really worried that he would need nine hours to count shirts at the booth (again, #3919 if you’re in San Diego) so he dipped out pretty early too.

I decided to hang back, work on this recap, and just enjoy my last few hours of peace before SDCC 2022 finally arrived — that is, until El Chucho showed up to tear up the show floor well before it even opened (look for him on the Geekscape TikTok here).

I’ve been a big fan of G4 (well, and TechTV long before) since I was a young boy, so when Attack of the Show tweeted about a meetup / cosplay contest, I just had to head over. Of course, cosplay isn’t my thing, and it would have been way too late to set anything up anyways, but I absolutely wanted to see what was up.

Those that made it to the ’secret’ meetup spot were able to take part in a Kassem G hosted satellite segment that felt like a blast. You can take a look at pieces of the segment below! G4 is also running several panels throughout the week, including an Attack of the Show panel on Thursday at 6:45 (Room 6A), an XPlay panel on Friday at 6PM (Room 6A), and a special ’G4’s Return to SDCC’ panel on Saturday at 12PM (Room 25ABC).

Following the Attack of the Show fun (and still before the show floor opened), I was fortunate enough to be invited to a preview event for the fantastic-looking offsite activation for the new Netflix action thriller, The Gray Man. I’ve posted a couple of photos below, and you can head here for more!

The outside of the crashed train car. Inside is a short escape room style experience.

Since preview night is typically the easiest night to browse (due to the floor being the least crowded) I’d planned to head over to the convention centre after tackling The Gray Man activation. Instead, at the offsite I met a dude named Shaun, we connected over AEW, and decided to head over to HBO’s House of the Dragon activation instead.

The best offsite event that I’ve ever experienced at Comic-Con was 2013’s ’Godzilla Encounter’, and next up might just be this year’s House of the Dragon experience. Take a look at a couple of photos of the event below, and look for a larger piece about the offsite in the coming days! If you’re down in San Diego, the offsite opens tomorrow (Thursday) at 10AM at MLK Park.

My new pal Shaun on the new (old?) Iron Throne.
Rough quality, but this is really inside the event.

Seriously, House of the Dragon is a must-see if you’re at SDCC. Shaun and I finished up at the activation just before the show floor closed. He was headed to meet some friends at Rockin’ Baha (he had never been before, and yes I recommended the pineapple mango salsa), and I headed back to the hotel to get some writing done.

Matt returned to the room (bearing water, thanks Matt) and after what turned out to be a pretty long day, we didn’t feel like venturing out to the now overwhelming Gaslamp District. Thank goodness for Door Dash, as, as of this writing, Wingstop (which I’ve never had before) is currently on its way to our hotel room.

That’s it for now! Check back tomorrow for my recap of the first full day of SDCC!

Geekscape 557: Grae Drake Returns To Geekscape!

by Jonathan

Grae Drake is a host, journalist and film critic who has been featured on outlets like CNN, Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango… but first and foremost, Grae Drake is a friend! After first meeting Grae on a WonderCon press line who knows how many years ago, I knew that her specific brand of outspoken weird would be perfect for coming on the show. But it’s been too long and now we’re in the midst of a global pandemic! Grae returns to the show today to check in, catch us up on some news, share a cry about the lack of Comic Con in our lives this summer and more!

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Lauren Ridloff’s Casting In Marvel’s ‘The Eternals’ Is A Huge Win For Disabled Representation In Film

by Melissa Sanchez

On Saturday, July 20th, Marvel’s president Kevin Feige took the stage at SDCC (San Diego Comic Con International) to announce the much awaited Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Among the numerous projects slated for release the next few years are Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Widow, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Also being developed is a handful of TV shows like Hawkeye, Wanda Vision, and Loki created for the upcoming Disney+ streaming service (set to launch in November), with most of the original actors from the films reprising their roles. What caught our attention the most though is the movie adaptation of Jack Kirby’s 1976 comic series The Eternals.

Arguably including lesser known superheroes than its Marvel predecessors, The Eternals is about a group of celestial beings with superpowers who are sent to Earth to protect mankind from the Deviants, a destructive alien race. At the much anticipated Marvel Studios panel in Hall H, the upcoming cast for the movie adaptation was unexpectedly announced and presented to thousands of screaming fans. With a mixture of big A-list actors and smaller names, Angelina Jolie (Thena), Richard Madden (Ikaris), Salma Hayek (Ajak), Kumail Nanjiani (Kingo), Brian Tyree Henry (Phastos), Lia McHugh (Sprite), Don Lee (Gilgamesh) and Lauren Ridloff (Makkari) took the stage as the titular characters. For us, the most exciting casting announcement came with newcomer Lauren Ridloff who will take on the gender-swapped role of Makkari, a speedster with super strength. 

Ridloff, who you might recognize from the most recent season of AMC’s The Walking Dead as Connie, is a Deaf American actress. A former teacher and Miss Deaf America (2000-2002), she’s been nominated for a Tony for her Broadway performance in the revival of Children of a Lesser God. With an already diverse cast, Lauren’s inclusion in The Eternals marks not only the first deaf superhero in the MCU, but also the first disabled actress to star in a mainstream superhero movie. In the original comics Makkari is not deaf, so the fact that they cast a deaf woman because of her talent and not her disability is a huge step for Marvel and the film industry in general. Marvel’s parent company Disney is no stranger to inclusion and diversity in its TV shows with openly gay characters (Andi Mack) and people with disabilities (Raven’s Home) being series regulars and making guest appearances. Even this Summer’s Toy Story 4 featured a little boy with a cochlear implant. 

Less than 2% of characters in movies and television are disabled. It’s not due to the fact that there’s a shortage of disabled actors, there’s plenty, but rather it’s the industry’s unwillingness to give the chance to those actors, to showcase their talents and abilities despite their disability. To complicate the situation more, disabled actors are rarely even cast in disabled roles! Heartbreakingly, 95% of roles that feature characters with disabilities are played by able bodied actors. Take in point the controversy in Bryan Cranston playing the role of a person in a wheelchair in 2017’s The Upside. This was a huge issue in the disabled community because once again instead of first offering the role to a capable disabled actor, Hollywood went for a big name draw instead of authenticity and accuracy of telling the story. Cranston himself saw no issue in taking the role comparing it to “playing a gay character as a straight man or a poor character as a wealthy person.” His argument was that an actor’s job is “to act”, to play a role of which is not your norm. While technically he is correct, the point is he took a role that could have potentially went to a disabled actor, which he was well aware of, yet defended his choice as purely a “business decision.” Yes, actors play different people in different roles, but think about it this way: Bryan Cranston, an able bodied man, is playing the role of a man in a wheelchair, but say for example if Daryl Mitchell (NCIS: New Orleans) a wheelchair bound actor, went in for a role and they wanted him to play a man who could walk, then what? There is no physical way he could do that! Disabled actors are limited to the roles they can play already, so when Hollywood casts an able bodied actor in a disabled role it makes it that much harder and scarcer to find work.

Currently, 1 in 4 Americans live with a disability, yet are the most overlooked minority because they are not as vocal as other groups. Disability Representation in film and media is important. In 2015, actress and singer Ali Stroker became the first woman in a wheelchair to star on Broadway. Micah Fowler, who has Cerebral Palsy, starred for three seasons in ABC’s Speechless which also featured comedian Zach Anner – who also has CP –  as a writer for the show. And we can’t forget the extraordinary Jamie Brewer from American Horror Story who was born with Down Syndrome. Things are starting to change! Think about how many people went to go see Avengers: Endgame or Black Panther? Now imagine how many people are going to see The Eternals when it comes out because of it being a Marvel film?! Millions of movie watchers are going to be able to see Ridloff on screen kicking ass in a role that primarily goes to able bodied actors. Makkari from The Eternals is a white male with no physical disability being played by a half Mexican, half African-American deaf woman! Can we just take a minute to applaud Marvel for looking past disability and purely casting on talent alone? Which is really how it always should be. Whether they know it or not, The Eternals is going to bring awareness to actors with disabilities and how they can do just as an amazing job as any non-disabled actor, despite their limitations.

That is why representation matters. That is why Ridloff being cast in The Eternals is a huge deal. This is a giant step for Disabled America. Most importantly, think of all the young kids who are deaf and hard of hearing who will see Makkari on screen and see themselves! We’ve already witnessed the positive effects of movies like Black Panther giving strong newfound role models to so many people that may have felt unrepresented. Compared to a few years ago, Hollywood has come a long way with diversity, but how many on screen heroes and heroines are there for a little boy in a wheelchair with Spina Bifida or the pre-teen girl who uses a walker because she has a rare muscular condition? None. In an interview with NowThis Entertainment, Ridloff states “I feel representation is so important whether it’s in real life or on TV or on the big screen. We need to see other people who are like ourselves to help us define who we are.” Lauren Ridloff is paving the way for Hollywood to include more disabled actors in major blockbusters for years to come. We are excited to see what she brings to the character of Makarri and once again we applaud Marvel for looking past the disability of a person, but at their abilities. *cough* Now we just need Disney to make a princess in a wheelchair *cough*.

The Eternals is currently in production in London and will kick off Phase 4 of the MCU. Be sure to mark your calendars for Friday, November 6, 2020 when The Eternals is expected to open worldwide.

Geekscape Roundtable: Our Top 3 Moments Of SDCC 2019!

by GeekscapeStaff

It’s still hard to believe that it’s over, but SDCC 2019 has come and gone. Our blisters are beginning to heal, our sunburns are beginning to peel, and we’re here to reminisce about some of the amazing moments that we had over the past weekend.

If you weren’t able to make it to SDCC yourself, there’s tons of coverage right here on Geekscape.net to catch you up. Derek and Mikaela provided numerous recaps detailing just what can happen over the course of a day at this massive, massive event. Among other things, you can read (and watch) all about the impressive offsite events from around the Gaslamp District (including Amazon’s amazing Prime Video Experience, and FX’s terrifying and hilarious Fearless Forum), Mikaela also chatted with the co-creators and author of the new Audible Original Stan Lee’s Alliances: A Trick of Light, and Jonathan has posted up the annual SDCC episode of Geekscape, where he interviews many of the multitudes of individuals that stop by the Geekscape Booth each year, including Daryll ‘DMC’ McDaniels, whose conversation with Jonathan about mental health is worth the download alone.

We had a myriad of amazing moments at SDCC this year, and here are some of our top three!

Jonathan London

For me, San Diego Comic-Con is more than just the biggest pop culture convention in the world. It’s what I have long used as a  barometer for Geekscape’s growth and success over the years. Are people still discovering the brand? Are they excited to find out what we’re all about? Do old school Geekscapists still use SDCC as their yearly chance to hang out with us face to face? The resounding answer this year was “YES”! So with that being said, here are my Top 3 experiences from SDCC 2019!

#3 – Super Action Man announces his 2020 Presidential campaign at the Geekscape booth.

Many of you enjoy Super Action Man’s antics. Perhaps you see them as a necessary evil for all the good he does day in and day out in keeping America safe from various threats around the world. Personally, I don’t like him. I think he’s a psycho. That being said, his multiple appearances at the Geekscape booth this year had everyone who witnessed them talking. He handed out campaign buttons, took photos with fans, kissed babies and shouted campaign promises like “Make DC Comics great again” and “Less Alt Right and more All Night!” I for one am glad that SAM has finally chosen to perform his All-American antics in the bright light of day instead of clandestinely carrying countless unspeakable acts of violence in the name of patriotic babes, barbecues and bravado.

#2 – Mandatory Geekscape team dinners unless your name is Derek Kraneveldt.

This is an SDCC Geekscape tradition that I had let fall by the wayside for the last few years. I’ll admit it. I was not in a good headspace and after spending the day at the Con I often found myself wanting to just step away from everything. But in retrospect, what I was stepping away from was the entire purpose of going: experiencing a week with the Geekscape team and keeping my finger on the pulse of how the team was doing (see above on the whole “yearly barometer” thing). What’s worse… I had missed countless hilarious moments with Matt, Derek and the team that were crucial to what larger companies would call “team building”. Since I’m not going to have anyone from Geekscape walk on coals anytime soon, not attending our nightly dinners are a pretty big missed opportunity for me. I found myself so distant by this past January that I literally told Derek and Matt that I was instating mandatory team dinners at SDCC. Matt responded “oh, Jon… we’ve been doing them. You just haven’t been around.” That was a pretty heartbreaking moment. Well, unless you’re Derek and have promised yourself to Amazon Studios every single night in the pursuit of free food and liquor (I’d say he’s a cheap date but his fiancé Mika was shackled to him for these events… read more about them here), our nightly team dinners were some of the brightest moments of my SDCC. From singing “God has a new thang” out loud in restaurants to hearing how the Geekscape team spent their day and acquainting myself with new members like Stephen Bay, the Geekscape dinners were the best parts of my day. I love my team, they crack me up and I can’t wait until we’re causing a scene next year or just picking on Matt for continuing to insist on Old Spaghetti Factory.

#1 – Talking mental health with Darryl “DMC” McDaniels at the Geekscape booth.

I’ll tell you right now why none of the SDCC 2019 exclusives, panel announcements or giant parties and events are on this list: I intensely do not care about them. In fact, other than an hour on Friday and Saturday night spent at parties, I actively avoided all of them, choosing to put my limited time and energy (during the single week each year where these are in the shortest supply) towards what I really care about: all of you! This is my 15th straight Comic Con. None of the big pop culture events or announcements or parties have lived in my brain during that time like the conversations, dinners and times shared with friends, both old and new! The majority of what is celebrated at SDCC each year is so incredibly disposable that I suggested to the team that we should start a betting system on our site to see which shows, properties and brands wouldn’t exist in just one year (but, you know… “don’t hate, create” and all that). What matters are the people who are there and make up our community. And we are suffering through a real mental health epidemic that is costing people their lives. Knowing that, I don’t really enjoy the disposable pop culture stuff anymore but I see the importance in using metaphors, stories and the shared passions that bring us together to keep us all going. I’d rather talk about the “real shit” than the things that just don’t really matter. Because of that, the highlight for me was my talk with Darryl “DMC” McDaniels on the podcast we recorded at the Geekscape booth. Darryl started the podcast interview thinking he’d be talking about his comic book and I think he was taken a bit by surprise when I turned the conversation towards mental health and his battles with depression. But like the “real gangster” he is, he didn’t blink and went all in in talking about it. Listen to the conversation on this week’s episode and tell me that wasn’t some real shit. And the real shit is what Geekscape is all about. Thanks for an awesome week full of real experiences, everyone!

Stephen Bay (of Analog Jones and the Temple of Film)

This was my very first time going to San Diego Comic-Con, and the journey definitely did not disappoint. I had a ton of experiences that I could have listed here but for speed, I’ll narrow it down to three. Without further ado, here we go!

3. Ray Harryhausen: The Lost Movies Book Panel

If you know me, then you know that I love stop-motion animation. There was no way I would turn down a chance to hear about the godfather of stop-motion himself, Ray Harryhausen, and his lost movies and scenes. Filmmaker John Walsh put together this book with never before seen drawings, projects, and characters from more than a dozen films from Ray Harryhausen. His presentation of how talented and hard-working Harryhausen was was a fantastic window into Harryhausen’s incredible career in Hollywood. 

A bonus was sitting with two of Weta Workshop’s special effects contributors that were just as big of fanboys as I am. I loved every moment of talking with them before and after about how he affected their childhoods and their work today. 

The book will be available on September 10, 2019. Pre-order today! That should earn me a free book.

2. The Angry Video Game Nerd Panel

Not many YouTube stars are as well known as James Rolfe in the gaming community. He’s the angry video game nerd that plays the sh*tty games, so you don’t have to. James Rolfe shared his experiences of being a YouTube star and filmmaker. He’s always well-spoken and honest about the struggles and successes of his long career on YouTube. 

The most memorable and bizarre moment of the panel came at the Q&A when a fan asked about James Rolfe’s friend and contributor on AVGN, Mike Matei. A fan waited in line to ask about the size of Mike Matei’s penis. I’m not kidding. Why anyone would ask that is beyond me but talk about a strange moment! 

1. San Diego’s environment!

San Diego’s embracement of nerd culture was by far the best experience for me. The entire city just gave me a big dorky hug that I will never forget. Every restaurant and bar had drink and food specials based off comic hero’s and villains. The streets were loaded with cosplay characters and street performers at night. On top of all that, it seemed like every block had events planned with stars or personalities based on anything comics or anime. All this was before you even stepped into the convention center to be overwhelmed and amazed with trailer drops and displays of future movies and streaming shows to come out soon. 

I have to take a second to call out the Geekscape crew that gave me this opportunity. I can’t thank them enough for getting me a press pass and letting me experience SDCC 2019. All seven of us stayed in one hotel room and got along great. It was like I knew all of them, and we had just met. Thank you Geekscape for one hell of a trip. Let’s do it again!

Josh Jackson

3: The Nintendo Lounge

I was expecting to ignore the Nintendo Lounge this year since nearly every game on display was either out already or was covered during E3. Then I found out that MyNintendo members could scan their QR ID’s for free Splatoon 2 keychain sets that represented Team Chaos and Team Order from the Final Splatfest, (which happened to be going on during the con). That may have got my foot in the door, but there was plenty of reason to stay, including a special Southwest Airlines sponsored stage in Mario Maker 2 and a very odd digital claw game. Plus, being able to play games like Luigi’s Mansion 3 that I can’t wait to own come October was a huge plus.

2: Borderlands 3 Museum of Mayhem

Coincidentally, I had just finished Borderlands 2 a few days prior to the convention to prepare for the upcoming third game, so I was on a huge Borderlands kick when I happened to walk by the museum. Once inside, the room was filled with framed concept art, character statues, game themed paintings and a variety of cover ideas that ultimately failed to make the cut. Speaking of cutting, a free barber was on site to brand the game’s logo in the hair of fans, while Moxxi’s bar and photo ops kept the party going in the back. But it was easy to ignore all of that when we learned that codes were hidden throughout the exhibit that would grant points on the Borderlands VIP website to unlock in-game gear. We’d have to be psychos ourselves to pass that up.

1: Ryme City (Detective Pikachu Activation)

It was cool enough to be surrounded by the sights and sounds of Ryme City. From the subways to the alleyways and storefronts featured in the movie, I would have left satisfied based on that alone. It wasn’t until we got to Howard Clifford’s office however that it became my favorite activity of the convention. Mocked up like his desk from the film with Mewtwo leering in the background, (but not in a way that would lower our Defense), the room was loaded with a collection of items from the game that an evolution obsessed mastermind would surely collect. Seeing classic items like the Fire, Water and Thunder Stones and newer ones like the Shiny Stone and Prism Scale was a lifelong Pokemon fan’s dream come true. Even non-evolution based items like the Nevermeltice sat proudly on display. I literally wanted to leave with the entire office!

Derek Kraneveldt

3: The Offsites (it’s too hard to narrow it down to just one)

I absolutely adore experiencing all of the different offsite events at SDCC. The fact that these incredibly impressive events are built from scratch at the level that they are… just to be torn down a few days later is just baffling to me. Every year these things seem to get bigger and bigger (and I always wonder just how much return these companies get from them), and this year was no exception. From the Amazon Prime Video experience (check it out here) that took fans through memorable experiences for upcoming shows like The Boys and Carnival Row, and the anticipated return of The Expanse (or even the premiere events that had the likes of Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne dancing around in animal costumes), to the FX Fearless Forum, which turned sunny San Diego into a terrifying 1980’s Summer camp (and right across the lawn provided much-needed It’s Always Sunny sunscreen to those waiting in line), to the activation for EPIX’ upcoming Pennyworth, which transported visitors to a 1960’s club rife with influence from the mysterious Raven Society.

I could go on and on and on, but while the charm of the show floor itself starts to fade after this many years (and as it gets busier and busier), the insane offsite events are an experience that I’ll never tire of.

2: The Team

SDCC is tough, because the event itself is the only time of year where much of the Geekscape team comes together, and there are simply so many things pulling for your attention that you never get to spend as much time with everyone as you want to.

Usually I’ll try to fly into LA to spend a couple of non-convention days with some of the Geekscape crew, but this year I wasn’t able to make it happen. That said, the moments that we spent together this week are moments that I’ll remember for far longer than any activation or exclusive. From reconnecting at Rockin’ Baha (pretty much my favourite place in the world) just an hour after my plane landed, to standing in line waiting for badges while Jon and Matt badgered me to experience ‘Nu Thing’ (see Jon’s list above), to nearly dying of laughter as we reminisced about old SDCC stories in Seaport Village one night after the convention, to realizing that in our ‘Goodbye SDCC’ photo that Matt looked like a ventriloquist’s dummy without a hand in it, to running into Josh and Megan completely by accident while in line for the Borderlands 3 Museum of Mayhem. There were just too many moments to list them all, and I absolutely adore all of them.

I consider all of these people family, and I wish that I could spend more time with them than I do.

1: Seeing the convention through fresh (Mikaela’s) eyes

This event is crazy. This event is exhausting. After seven years, there are absolutely elements of SDCC that don’t feel as fantastic as they once did (like the actual show floor, for instance).

SDCC is an event that you can describe, show photos and videos of, and tell people just how insane it actually is, but until you’ve experienced it yourself you really have no idea.

This year, my fiancé Mikaela joined me for SDCC. We don’t actually get to spend all that much time together, so if this wasn’t sweet enough, being able to experience the convention with someone who has never been to an event of this size before was absolutely reinvigorating. Seeing her excitement for grabbing an exclusive here, or for spotting a celebrity there, or for experiencing an offsite here, or for figuring out how we were going to get all of our crap home was simply phenomenal, and was a stark reminder as to why I started attending these things in the first place.

She also did a ton of work at SDCC that I’m still catching up on, and I can’t wait to see all of the incredible cosplay that she captured on the @GeekscapeForever Instagram page!

Mikaela Maxwell

How does one even pick a top 3 of SDCC!? I feel like I could have a top 3 of each day, however I will try to narrow it down so this isn’t a novel! So here they are in no particular order: 

Meeting Daniel Danger

We have been collecting prints by Daniel Danger through Mondo for years now, and some of my favourite art is by him. I totally did not realize that he would have a booth at SDCC and was so pleased to accidentally stumble across it! I got to meet him, and hear him talk about the meaning of some of his pieces, and I got to buy a couple of prints directly from him (check out his store here)! Amazing!

Getting to go to the premiere of Carnival Row.

It was super neat to attend this exciting atmosphere where everyone was so jazzed about this project and stoked to present it to the world. The actual show was really great too, I’m now anxiously waiting to see the rest of it! And to top off the experience, Orlando Bloom was there!

Having the b’jeezus scared out of me at the American Horror Story activation.

This activation was so well done that I was almost grabbing the stranger in front of me to avoid getting lost or murdered in the middle of it. I haven’t watched American Horror Story in a few years, but I’ll probably have to now cause it was freaking intense!

And as a side note, my personal favourite was getting to spend so much time with Derek. We don’t very often get to spend so much time together and it was a real treat to get to share so many fun experiences! On top of that I got to meet the Geekscape team who are a bunch of his favourite people in the world! All in all the trip was amazing and I am so glad I got to go to SDCC 2019!

Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for FX

Matt Kelly

Most of my Comic-Con is spent by sitting at a table and shaking hands but that doesn’t mean that I left SDCC without a few highlights!

3) Scooters with Derek & Mika

Some people complain about the scooters but just riding through the streets with Derek and Mika and taking in the beautiful city is a blast for me.

2) Hacking at the table

Multiple times this week we’d start some hack circles with Jonathan’s Punchline branded Hacky Sack which lead to some great memories and a fantastic way to meet new people.

1) Dinner with the Team

Didn’t matter if it was Rockin’ Baja, Old Spaghetti Factory, Lolita’s or Coin-Op. Everywhere we ate had great food, even better conversations and laughter for hours.

Mikaela’s Journey to SDCC 2019: Part VI

by Mikaela Maxwell

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! (I really hope you are hearing that announcers voice when saying Sunday 3 times in your head!) I hadn’t actually scheduled anything for Sunday, so I kinda figured it would just be a day of wandering the floor, lookin around, and not really having anything to write about. Welp, I was wrong.

Sunday did start off pretty chill, having a coffee in the lobby of the hotel so I could catch up on writing and not be distracted by wanting to hang with our posse. When I did decide to mosey over to the convention centre it was well past the early morning crush of standing in line for an hour to just get in the building. As I casually strolled in, I immediately started coming across the most amazing cosplay. I easily hung out in the lobby for a couple hours just snapping pics of all these amazing outfits. So keep an eye on our Instagram @geekscapeforever over the next couple months to see what I found, and here are a few of my favourites!

@fellowhermit As Faun from Pans Labyrinth
@claire.e.rose As Eleven from Stranger Things season 3
@cosplaymom99 as Carl Fredricksen from Up
@magnetomystique as Mystique from X-men

Once I’d had my fill of cosplay and Derek tracked me down, we decided to check out the harbour side area of the convention centre, to grab a street meat and enjoy the salty windy air, before it was time to go to the FX area to experience the newest American Horror Story activation. This visit with FX was a last minute gig for us so it hadn’t really been on my radar, but I am sooo glad I got to experience it. Hard to say what my top experience was, but this definitely falls into my top 3!

The FX set up was pretty sweet. It was all on the lawn between a hotel and the back of the convention centre, in these big white irregularly shaped structures that kind of formed a circular central area. In addition to American Horror Story they had an It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia sunscreen station, which I didn’t use soon enough 🥵, an Archer oxygen bar, a Mayans temporary tattoo trailer, a Fox swing station, and a What We Do in the Shadows vampire house.

We sampled some flavoured oxygen, which allowed you to switch between various fruity smells for you to enjoy through the nasal prongs pumping O2 into your face. That was a weird experience! Derek wasn’t able to tell the difference at all and said it just smelled like plastic, so we’ve decided in addition to his colour blindness, he also has oxygen smell blindness.

We then headed into the American Horror Story: 1984 area, where you and 6 other people walk into a camp councillor’s office as the new recruits, and are greeted by the friendliest and most enthusiastic camp running guy you’ve ever met! The room is set up as the perfect picture of what I imagine a camp office would be in the 80’s, with a CB radio, a rolodex filled with marked business cards, a dart board on the wall and some mounted canoe paddles. Within moments, you start to hear another camp councillor over the radio panicking that something has gone horribly wrong out there in the woods.

The friendly old man leaves to solve the problem and we are left with a bubbly ditzy terrified camp councillor, sporting the perfectly crimped hair (in a side pony) and bubblegum pink lipstick. Shortly after we all run out into the woods, which is legit terrifying, it’s so hard to see anything, there are trees everywhere and I wanted to hold onto the stranger in front of me so I wouldn’t get lost in the forest (it’s mind boggling to me that they can create an atmosphere that feels so real and creepy that I was legit scared of getting separated from our group)!

Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for FX

As we are rounding a corner to get into the shelter of a cabin, a man with a balaclava emerged from the bushes and started heading our way. I don’t remember the last time I was so legitimately scared by something that I knew logically was all a ruse!? I’m pretty sure I tried to push past people so that I could be further away from him.

Once in the cabin we had to search for a key, and then were instructed to hide in a closet which turned into a long hallway, while the scary tall man continued to stalk toward us. As we ran down the hallway hands were coming out near the ground and grabbing onto our legs. Once at the end of the hall we managed to close a door and lock ourselves in another room as the masked man almost reached us. At which time lights flashed and a chain saw began to cut through the wall.

Turns out the lights flashing was actually a photo being taken, which managed to capture the back of my head as I both turned away from the lights to avoid what ever terror that was about, while nervously inspecting the closed door behind me sure that the masked man was about to burst in!

I can not give this activation enough praise! It was absolutely immersive, I was on edge (or terrified) the entire time and convinced that I was deep in some creepy camp woods. This experience has me well ready to get back into watching AHS when 1984 premieres this September .

Once we finally escaped from that horror, and took a minute to recovery and laugh our faces off, we headed over to the What We Do in the Shadows installation.

For Shadows you go through an elaborate door and enter into the living space of two Vampires. The space consists of dark Victorian era decorations, making up a bar area and two little living areas, with a photo opportunity in one corner. I’m not sure if the two Vampires in this place were actual characters from the show, but either way they were right on point with the shows humour! They were improvising like nobodies business with such amazing dry humour, working off of each other, as well as the visitors. Just standing around watching them bicker at each other was perfect! Once again I have another show to put on the list as a must watch!

We got out of FX shortly before their activation shut down for the day at 2pm, and finally it was time for me to try to walk the convention floor!

Almost as soon as we got in the building I wanted to escape. My previous experience of conventions has taught me that the final day of the show is usually a lot more chill than the rest of them. Oh how very wrong I was. We headed into artist alley, and I swear I couldn’t actually see any artists or their art cause there were so many freaking people!

We did manage to walk most of the show floor, but I really didn’t feel like I saw that much, and it definitely wasn’t very enjoyable. It’s so stressful trying to even move, and if you want to stop and look at something or god forbid change directions, well you better be ready for a trampling!

I managed to find my way back to Daniel Danger’s booth, where I got to meet the artist himself. He was so lovely and open, sharing with the people in the booth the meaning behind some of the quotes on his prints and what the art represents to him. He was willing to talk about mental health and some of the struggles he has faced. It was so amazing and refreshing to meet someone you admire, and have them be so kind, honest, and vulnerable. Honestly he is so talented and I am such a fan he had the opportunity to be snooty and above it all, but was the most approachable stranger I met all weekend.

Daniel Danger and I, with a backdrop of his amazing work!

After much deliberation I picked a print for my self and went on my way. About ten minutes later while searching for a gift for Derek’s dad I realized Danger had done a print of Batman standing on top of a Blockbuster building and it would be the perfect gift for Derek’s dad. His dad is into comics and super heroes, and pretty much every conversation I’ve ever heard Derek and his dad have has started with ‘So have you seen (insert movie title here) yet?’, plus we are both huge fans of Danger, so this seemed like it would be the perfect meaningful gift.

“i’m sorry again for everything i’ve been”
By Daniel Danger on Instagram @tinymediaempire

We rushed back to the booth only to find that the spot where these prints had been was now filled by something else. Knowing there had only been 2 left I was sure we had missed our opportunity, but upon asking discovered they were sitting underneath the new print, PHEW! We asked him to write a note to Derek’s dad to which he agreed and then proceeded to write the most hilarious little love note from father to son. I’m stoked. What a great experience, and lovely gift. Maybe sometimes it is ok to meet your heroes 🙂 (Now we just have to cross our fingers that it makes it home on the plane!)

Shortly after that, SDCC 2019 came to an end. Our posse gathered at the Geekscape booth and took a final group shot before immediately heading to Old Spaghetti Factory for a much anticipated (by Matt and Derek) final meal! After which we broke down the booth, said goodbye to Gui and headed to the hotel for a much needed hot tubbin! What a time!

#GeekscapeForever. (Sorry Matt, I had to use the lifeless ventriloquist dummy photo, cause it’s just too good!)

Overall I had an amazing time at my first SDCC! The activations were amazing, everything felt like a spectacle, the floor was huge, the variety insane, the literal amount of different entertainment and products to consume were absolutely baffling. Some of these things were a double edged sword which left me with a little FOMO, such as being so I busy I didn’t end up getting to any panels, the crowds made wandering the floor less enjoyable, and getting your hands on many of the exclusive exciting SDCC products next to impossible. But the incredible experience of getting to see premieres while seated next to their stars, being immersed in the worlds of various tv shows, meeting new and interesting people, eating yummy food, and getting to meet and spend time with the Geekscape team, all of these far outweighed the drawbacks.

Thanks for following along with my journey. Keep an eye on the site for more in depth looks at a few of the things we got up to while at SDCC. And remember to follow @geekscapeforever on Instagram to catch some of the sweet cosplay we saw on this crazy journey!

Xoxo Mika!

SDCC 2019: FX ‘Kills’ It With This Year’s ‘FX Fearless Forum’!

by Derek Kraneveldt

I’m so sad that San Diego Comic-Con is already over.

The Geekscape team descended from all over (like Philadelphia and Canada) to take in, hang out at, and cover the phenomenal event. If you’ve missed our coverage so far, you can check out the brand new Geekscape.net for daily recaps from myself and Mikaela, as well as coverage on some of the amazing offsite events that we were privileged enough to attend. There’s more coming down the pipeline as well, so be sure to keep your eyes tuned right here!

Mikaela also spent hours taking photos of so much of the next-level cosplay on display at SDCC, so be sure to follow the @GeekscapeForever Instagram page for a steady stream of incredible outfits.

As I mentioned in my spot on the recent SDCC special episode of Geekscape, I feel like after seven years, as the show floor gets unfathomably busier and as the few things that you actually want to buy require more and more and more work to do so, the expo hall itself definitely begins to lose some of its lustre. What continues to amaze me, however, is the absolutely insane work that these studios and distributors put into these temporary installations. The amount of work required to build these temporary buildings and giant logos and building wraps is just unbelievable… just for them to all be torn down like they never even existed days later.

This was Monday morning. Nothing is sacred.

Over the past few years, FX has been located on the back side of the convention centre, right across from the Hilton Bayfront hotel. In previous years the offsite event has been labelled as the FXHibition, and has always featured some cool art pieces, and absolutely impressive activations based on some of FX’ flagship shows, like the mixed-reality experience for Legion in 2017, or the insanely freaky ‘Fearless VR’ for American Horror Story. Looking back on previous years (not just for FX, but for SDCC as a whole) it’s certainly interesting to note that there appeared to be very few VR-driven experiences vs. previous conventions — this time around, nearly everything was practical.

As always, this year’s event was all new, and it brought with it a new name. The FX Fearless Forum was in the same location, and featured awesome (and practical) activations for series like Archer, What We Do in the Shadows, Mayans, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and an incredible haunted house for American Horror Story: 1984. Keep scrolling for a few photos and impressions for each activation, and a description of the haunted house that basically had Mikaela peeing her pants.

The Fearless Forum seemed to have decent-length lines all of the time, but one thing that I was super thankful for was an open area where essentially anyone could just walk in and help themselves to sunscreen and hand-sanitizer. The area was themed after It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and I think it’s really nice that something super practical like sunscreen wasn’t locked behind a giant lineup, so a huge thanks to FX for this.

There was also a small setup for Mayans, that had a small trailer, a few motorcycles, and some biker-looking dudes giving airbrush tattoos to fans of the show.

Archer had a cool oxygen bar setup for Archer: 1999. I had no idea what an oxygen bar was prior to this event… and I kind of still don’t but it was a neat setup. The activation looked like a spaceship, and had a few interactive pieces around the area (and even a trivia game on some tablets, which you can also play at home using your Amazon Echo). At the bar itself there were a number of different oxygen stations. You stick a plastic tube in your nostrils (thankfully FX provided a new one for each person), and select between different ‘flavours’ of oxygen to breathe, like Piña Colada, Orange/Peach, Chocolate/Cherry, and Lavender/Balsam Fir needles. I think that my sense of smell may be nearly as bad as my sense of sight, because while Mikaela could sense a stark difference between each ‘flavour’, I was definitely struggling to tell any difference. The oxygen apparently perks you up, but I didn’t really need it, as the next activation for American Horror Story: 1984 absolutely pumps you full of energy.

The next activation was called American Horror Story: 1984 – Face The Darkness, and is basically a very impressive (and very scary) haunted house experience. Coming out of this experience, I think that it was the very best singular activation held at SDCC this year. I also thought that Face The Darkness utilized its small space so well, and that the way that the aviation weaves you through the different rooms and areas made the space feel far, far larger than it actually was. You start out with six other ‘camp counsellors in training’ in a small room filled with 1980’s paraphernalia like VHS tapes and old board games, and this marks your introduction to Camp Redwood, where you’ll be spending the next ~15 minutes (and probably much of September/October when the show airs). After a couple of moments, the lead counsellor comes in to tell you about all the training that you’re about to go through (this guy was super charismatic and kept making great dad jokes, and was even wearing the same shorts in this 1984 experience as Matt Kelly was that week), like how to use the very convenient and sophisticated night vision goggles when another counsellor bursts through the door to tell you all that something has gone terribly wrong in the forest, and that there is something out there. The lead counsellor tries to reach the camp director on the radio, and decides to go after her when he can’t. Seconds after he leaves, a terrified camp director warns us over the radio that something is in the forest and to get away while we can.

Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for FX

So, just like the 1980’s slasher films that the experience (and upcoming season of American Horror Story) is based on, instead of running in the opposite direction, the counsellor that’s left instead leads us into the forest (and she didn’t seem to hear me when I asked “Why don’t we bring these night vision goggles with us?” either).

So we leave the cabin, and are all of a sudden in a foggy forested area that sort of reminded me of the swamp from the DC Universe Swamp Thing activation last year. You could see a truck off in the distance, you were having to fan through branches and leaves that blocked your path, and you had no idea where counsellor was leading you. Again, we’re inside in the middle of a temporary building in the Gaslamp District of San Diego, but this forest felt real as hell. The counsellor ends up leaving us in a wrong director, and as we turn around, a tall man with his face obscured appears in the fog and begins walking towards us. The counsellor screams, Mikaela and some of the other attendees scream louder, and beginning running through some tight forested corridors towards a cabin in the distance. I’m at the back of the pack, and just as I’m about to turn each corner, I look behind me to see the tall man right there, pacing relentlessly with the classic Jason Voorhees walk.

Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for FX
Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for FX
Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for FX
Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for FX

We get into the cabin — I somehow make it through just before someone else and in their terror they nearly slam the door on my hand (it would have been worth it). Everyone is freaking out, and the camp director has taken refuge here too. She asks us what we’re doing there, and reiterates that we need to escape, and tasks us all with finding a key somewhere in the room (I’m not sure if it was to the truck outside or something else), all while the killer is outside banging on the door. After a couple of minutes, someone screams, as the killer is now crawling through the window on the opposite side of the cabin. The director tells us to all go into the closet, which ends up being a way out of the cabin, and we’re now walking through a nearly pitch-black area with people randomly grabbing at our feet (there was a lot of screaming here, naturally).

Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for FX

We finally make it to another room, where for a moment we think we’re safe, until we see that the walls are covered in bloody writing. We start looking around at what to do next, when a huge banging sound freaks everyone out even more, and when a chainsaw juts through the wall in front of us. The lights come up, everyone starts nervously laughing, and the experience is over.

We’re led into the final room, where we have our badges scanned so we can be emailed the GIF of the final jump scare, and where we could help ourselves to some AHS themed goodies.

Again, the activation freaked the hell out of everyone, and I loved every second of it. It’s still completely crazy to me that they were able to pull of such an insane, and truly scary experience in such a small space.

The other standout at the Fearless Forum was the What We Do In The Shadows lair. This was a small-ish room (with great AC) that was, naturally, a vampire’s lair. Inside there was a photo-op where you could “become” a vampire, which was cute, and the decor of the room felt just like what you’d expect from watching the series. The best part here were the two vampires that were walking around, interacting and making fun of visitors, and bickering to each other in hilarious fashion. I swear I could have watched these two all day, it was wonderful.

The general area itself also housed a few photo opportunities including some cool FX logos (one made of PVC pipes that only looked like the logo when viewed from certain angles), a giant screen that showed just what people were tweeting about the Fearless Forum, and there were even areas where you could get customized merchandise like phone cases or hats. Overall, it was another phenomenal year for FX at SDCC, and the Forum was absolutely successful, as I definitely started watching the What We Do In The Shadows series on the way home, and after a couple of years of not watching American Horror Story, the September 18th premiere of 1984 is absolutely in my calendar.

Geekscape 516: The San Diego Comic Con 2019 Special!

by Jonathan

San Diego Comic Con is always my yearly barometer for how Geekscape is doing! Am I still having fun? Are we still meeting new people? Do people still get excited about being a part of Geekscape? Well, this year the resounding answer to all of these questions was YES! And I think this SDCC 2019 Special episode is evidence to that! We take you behind the booth to talk to Geekscape guests and contributors alike, including our friend Satine Phoenix, Dwarven Forge creator Stefan Pokorny, the director and star of your new favorite cult film ‘Velocipastor’, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer DMC and more! Along the way, Derek and I freak out over the Marvel Hall H presentation, Stephen Bay guests on the show for the first time and Matt Kelly runs the booth like a boss! It’s all here on this brand new episode… which is kinda like going to SDCC for yourself but without all of the body odor! Enjoy!

Subscribe to Geekscape on iTunes!

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Join the Geekscape Forever Facebook Group!

Visit Geekscape.net for more Geekscape goodness!

Derek’s SDCC 2019 Recap: Friday / Saturday

by Derek Kraneveldt

If you missed my pre-con / Preview Night recap, head here!

If you missed my Thursday recap, head here!

Note: Friday was a bit of a chill day, so rather than publishing a smaller piece, it’s been combined with Saturday. That said — the Star Trek Picard Museum here is definitely worth a look!

Friday

With Mondo changing their line policy yesterday, I knew that I had to be at the convention centre early if I wanted any chance to get the Metal Gear poster that I completely fell in love with when it was announced last week.

So, as I did yesterday, I went into Hall E, went up the escalator and around the building, and waited. And waited. And waited. Today’s sea of people took far longer to be let in. The moment we were headed down the escalator to gain entrance to the exhibit hall, every door seemingly opened and people that had just arrived were getting in well before those of us who arrived 90+ minutes prior. This sucks, and I wish that 50 years in they had a better way to manage the opening of the convention. That said it must be an incredible stressful process, and I can’t imagine that any way that they could do it would result in everyone being happy.

Yep. That’s the line to get in.

As I did yesterday, I speed-walked over to Mondo as fast as I possibly could. They ran out of tickets about five people in front of me — as I sulked my way away from the booth, there were, naturally, a bunch of people in the very first line of the day, who also somehow had several tickets for later in the day proudly displayed in their SDCC badge holder.

Lame.

I went to take a look at the Mattel booth, as that Macho Man figure is still calling my name, and it was capped as well. The show floor at this point had a more hectic than usual feel, and for whatever reason I wasn’t feeling super hot, so I decided to dip out of convention centre until the morning rush calmed down a bit.

I traversed over the skybridge to meet up with Mikaela (she was just finishing up at the apparently tiny HBO Watchmen activation). We planned to head into the Petco Interactive zone, but I thought it would be a better idea to go grab some food instead. We walked around for a bit before finding some delicious tacos (and some breakfast soda because the coffee machine was broken).

At this point I just kind of wanted to sit for a bit, so we ate slowly and worked on articles, and after awhile decided to head over a couple of blocks to the Jean-Luc Picard exhibit. This offsite over at the Michael J Wolf Fine Arts at 363 Fifth Ave, from 11-9 on Friday and Saturday, and 11-5 on Sunday. It’s basically a museum exhibit celebrating the life and career of Captain Picard, and even though I’m not super into Star Trek, I absolutely appreciated the event. You can take a look at a couple of photos from the exhibit below, and check out my full write-up right here.

Following the Picard exhibit, we headed up just a few blocks further to a short but sweet meet up for Quantic Dream. We weren’t too sure what to expect here as details were light, but there were a ton of fans in Quantic Dream-themed cosplay (mostly Connor from Detroit: Become Human). Once we were inside, we got some cool Quantic Dream swag like stickers, a lanyard, and a bracelet, and both Bryan Dechart and Amelia Rose Blair from Detroit: Become Human were there to sign posters, chat, and take photos. Mikaela definitely fangirled as she absolutely adored the game (even writing a great piece about it here), and I was very glad we went.

Next up, I actually ended up winning a spot to the Funko X SDCC booth for 1:15. This wasn’t the main Funko booth, but a special booth selling just three SDCC 50th Anniversary items, including a Toucan Pop!, a Toucan PEZ, and a Batman with an SDCC 50 shopping bag. It was the only slot for the entire convention that Mikaela or I won in any lottery, so I’m thankful to have been able to pick up these items (and to start my Pop! collection which Mikaela has been resisting for years.

We then made a quick stop on fifth to check out the Syfy drum line, which featured some cool music, and some 90’s trivia between convention goers hosted by Orlando Jones. It was a super cool time.

Once we were done here, we headed back to our hotel for some water, and to get off of our feet for a bit (and to write up an article), and then Mikaela and and I headed down to the Amazon Prime Video Experience (once again) to try to jump into the The Boys premiere. The line was long, but shaded, and we met a few interesting people from Australia and Winnipeg that made the wait go by much more quickly. We made it in, had some food and drinks, and watched the first two episodes of the upcoming series (introduced by much of the series’ cast, including Karl Urban). As you can probably expect if you’re familiar with the book at all, the show is pretty hyper violent, super vulgar, and got a lot of laughs (and groans) from the crowd. On each seat there was a cool ‘F**k Supes’ foam (middle) finger, which is definitely a cool piece of merch that I didn’t see given out at any other point. Overall the event was a blast, I can’t wait to see more of the series when it launches on 7/26. Also I got to say hey to Karl Urban, which was a pretty rad moment for sure. A huge thanks for Amazon Prime for hosting us!

One the event was over, we walked back to our hotel and promptly went to sleep.

For Saturday, I’m committed to finally getting that Macho Man Randy Savage figure (unless the line is too long and then I’m not that committed), and we’ll also be hitting up the premiere of Carnival Row in the evening!

Saturday

After a semi-late night, I woke up far less tired than I’d originally anticipated.

I didn’t have too much on the docket today, but really wanted to try to get that Macho Man doll. Instead of flooding in and waiting forever in Hall E, I decided to just wait outside for B to open up, which is much closer to Mattel’s location, and which always seems to open up before I’d ever get down the escalator.

Because of this new strategy, I didn’t get to the convention centre until about 9AM. I knew that these doors wouldn’t open until 9:30 or so (and I think everyone else did too) but that didn’t stop much of the line from groaning and complaining every few minutes that they had to wait. I get that this part of the waiting definitely stinks (especially out in this heat), but I just don’t anticipate any good way to get this many people into a building at once. That said — I wish that they’d do as they say they do, and let everyone who goes through Hall E as instructed in first.

I b-lined it to Mattel. Naturally, the line was capped, and the crowd around the capped line was so heavy that security was threatening to shut the booth right down. I hung around for a few minutes to see if things would clear up. They definitely didn’t, and within 10 minutes both the best John Hammond figure, and my precious Macho Man were sold out for the day. I then ran over to Entertainment Earth to see what the cool Kenner Darth Vader Prototype stock was looking like, and it was sold out as well.

Yep, pretty much all of these people were trying to get to Mattel.

So I gave up on that stuff, and instead went over to the Geekscape booth to find team playing hackey sack in the middle of the aisle. I joined in for a bit, and we were freaking terrible at it, but it’s absolutely these weird little moments that make SDCC super memorable.

Shortly afterwards, a signing was about to start at the booth, so I decided to get out of everyone’s way. I ran down to Mondo to check stock on a couple of the day’s drops, not that I had a ticket, but for the last hour of the day, the booth was open for purchases. I asked a couple of guys how they managed to get such early tickets, and which door they entered at as it simply feels like there are no good options. One of them offered to grab the poster that I was looking for (since it was different than anything that they were looking for, and a ticket let you buy up to one of each thing available at any given time), and I was stoked. Then, unfortunately, the poster that he was hoping to grab sold out, so he just gave me and our other line friend his ticket and left.

So… I went wild and bought three more items. I went very quickly from “Oh I haven’t spent very much money yet,” to “Oh shit I’ve spent way too much money.” But I don’t buy anything like this for most of the rest of year, so I’m not too worried about it. I ended up grabbing this year’s limited The Babadook and The Transformers: The Movie poster, along with the somehow-still-in-stock Metal Gear Solid vinyl (the poster, however, was long gone). In any case, I’m super thankful to have had this opportunity at all, so a huge thanks to those friends in line who helped me it.

I then went back to the booth, grabbed my big-ass poster tube, and then very carefully walked everything back to the hotel (new Mondo’s dangling in the wind rather than in the tube, as there was simply no good place to put everything together).

Then, it was time for BBQ. We ended up at Kansas City BBQ, which is just across the street from our hotel, and which was used for a couple of scenes in Top Gun, and has become the self proclaimed ‘Top Gun Bar’. It didn’t take long to get in, but took about an hour for our delicious meat to arrive. They warned us of this though, so it wasn’t a big deal.

Mmm. Bbq.

Next up, we moved onto the Borderlands Museum Of Mayhem, which somehow only had about a 20 minute-long lineup. It was pretty busy inside, but it waiting in line got you some pretty rad swag, like masks, cool posters, and keychains. The are a ton of art pieces up around the museum, including a number of pieces of fan art, alternate key art for Borderlands 3, some amazing pieces made out of stained glass. There are also some huge standees of prominent Borderlands characters throughout the exhibit, and a couple of photo ops as well. You can also find some hidden codes around the area that should unlock sweet goodies in (I believe) Borderlands 3, and also a sweet gift shop covered in cool Borderlands merch. If you’re really brave, you can also have a Borderlands logo shaved into your head.

If you’re in San Diego, you can head to the museum at Sparks Gallery – 530 Sixth Ave, San Diego, CA 92101 from 12-5 on Sunday. It’s a cool experience, with a generally short wait, and some sweet swag for stopping by.

Following the Museum of Mayhem, we grabbed some Berkeley Pizza to bring back to a hungry Matt at the booth, and Mikaela went out to take cosplay photos while I hung out with the guys at the booth. Jonathan and I recorded a quick podcast segment talking about all of the in-progress Marvel announcements in Hall H (fuck yeah Blade) and soon after it was time to head out.

Side note — if you’re leaving SDCC at close, don’t expect to get anywhere quickly, as this is what it looks like, and also, this Starscream cosplay may be the best outfit I’ve seen this year:

At 7, we were back at the Prime Video Experience for the premiere of Carnival Row, a series created by Pacific Rim creator Travis Beacham, which stars Orlando Bloom and Cara Delvingne. The series is “ set in a Victorian fantasy world filled with mythological immigrant creatures whose exotic homelands were invaded by the empires of man. This growing population struggles to coexist with humans — forbidden to live, love, or fly with freedom. But even in darkness, hope lives, as a human detective, Rycroft Philostrate (Bloom), and a refugee faerie named Vignette Stonemoss (Delevingne) rekindle a dangerous affair despite an increasingly intolerant society. Vignette harbors a secret that endangers Philo’s world during his most important case yet: a string of gruesome murders threatening the uneasy peace of the Row.”

Travis himself, and a bunch of the cast, including Orlando Bloom, Cara Delevingne, Tamzin Merchant, and David Gyasi we’re present, and actually showed up dancing in weird costumes for some time before finally revealing their true personas. Take a look at a few photos from the event below!

This definitely ended up being Orlando Bloom

The series looks impressive as hell, and I was beyond excited to attend the event and check out the first two episodes. Reviews on the series are embargoed for the time being, but I’ll just say that I cannot wait for August 30th so that I can see what happens next. The world of Carnival Row is beyond fascinating, and I just can’t wIt to jump into it. Again, a huge thanks to Amazon Prime for hosting us again.

Following the premiere, and with just one day left of SDCC (which both feels like it just started and like it’s been going on forever at the same time), it was then time for some much needed rest.

As Sunday is typically a smaller day at the convention, and as following the close of the show floor I’ll be busy breaking down the booth and spending one last night with my Geekscape family, this will be the final recap for SDCC this year. Look for additional coverage from the team in the coming days, and look for an SDCC wrap-up episode where Jonathan talks to booth guests (and me) about everything SDCC.

Thanks for following along! I really appreciate you coming along for the ride!

Mikaela’s Journey to SDCC 2019: Part IV

by Mikaela Maxwell

Friday! Friday felt like the first reeeally big day of the convention. I managed to go to bed freaking early the night before, and sleep in until after 7am, so that was a win! By the time I was up and getting ready most of the guys had already ventured out into the world. Jonathan was at the Cosplay 5K, and Matt and Gui has headed to the convention centre. I didn’t have to be anywhere until after 9am, and had no desire to wait in the chaotic line to enter the convention centre. Derek was hoping to grab the sweet Metal Gear Mondo print, so he ventured into the line, unfortunately to no avail as by the time his spot in the line was entering the convention floor, all the doors had been opened and people were entering willy nilly anyways. So no sweet Mondo for us today.

It seems like it’s generally impossible to be able to get the exclusives offered at SDCC, as you either need to be randomly chosen, or you try to get in a line that is capped before you were even in the convention centre. The one silver lining to this is we have probably saved a whole pile of money!

Once I left the hotel room I scooted by the convention centre to see if I would have a better shot of organically just walking through the doors once they were all opened. I didn’t. So after hovering for a few minutes, and watching people be outraged that they had to stand in line with the masses, I moseyed on to my first appointment: HBO’s Watchmen experience.

So. Many. People.

I had stopped by Watchmen the day before and was told to come back the next morning during press preview hour. The person who I had initially talked to explained it in a way that left me thinking they were letting 30 people in at the top of each hour. That was totally inaccurate. In actuality the whole experience lasted about 2-3 minutes, so I don’t know where I had concocted my ideas about timing.

The activation was actually pretty freaking cool. It was really tiny, about the size of an elevator, and had doors that slide open to let you in. When you enter you stand in front of a screen which instructs you to move around the booth in order to calibrate the camera to your body.

Once calibrated, your own Dr. Manhattan transformation begins. You watch on screen as your body is electrified and then as your skeleton rebuilds into Dr. Manhattan. Through this process as you move around in real life you move around on the screen in whatever form you happen to be in. In my particular experience however I definitely was a wee bit confused and mostly just sooo still waiting for things to happen. It wasn’t until close to the end that I realized that I coulda been moving around a whole lot more! It was still pretty neat though and regardless of my own slowness, I’m glad I was able to get in there!

Following my transformation into Dr. Manhattan I met up with a grumpy, disappointed (about no Mondo), and very hungry Derek. We decided to head a little bit further away from all the action to find a restaurant that would be a little bit less crowded and hopefully not too expensive. We stumbled across a Mexican place that was suuuper delish! I had no idea what I was ordering but ended up with a sandwich full of yummy seafood.

Post food we had a much less grumpy Derek who was up for some activity! Word on the street was the line up for the Picard Museum wasn’t too insane so we decided to head that way, it also turned out that the lone was on a side walk that was totally shaded *the dreeeam*.

I am definitely not a Trekkie, and have never really been exposed to much Star Trek, I mean I know what it is And I know the Jean-Luc Picard is a played by Patrick Stewart, but other than that I got nothing. It was however still a really cool exhibit. It actually felt like a legit museum exhibition, with glass cases displaying different paraphernalia, and a little write up on the wall about the significance of each particular piece. Even as a none Trekkie I found it pretty interesting. It kinda made me wanna get into it with the upcoming show! (And it definitely got Derek invested, so I imagine I’ll at least watch some of it!)

By the time we got through the Picard Museum I was having a pee-mergency! We had been planning on heading over to the Detroit: Become Human fan meet up at a little pub we had been to a few nights before, and decided to expedite our stroll over there so I could have a pee ASAP.

While in the washroom I received a message that Bryan Dechart, who is the ‘voice actor’ for the character Connor in the game, had just walked into the place. (!!!!) I walked out into the pub and went to turn a corner immediately recognizing Bryan and a mystery girl sitting at a table getting prepped for fans to come in. Pretty danged exciting, I then used all of my will power, and knowledge of my awkwardness, to leave them alone and get back into the line up.

Once we got in we waited in line to meet them and grab signatures. If you’ve ever read my ‘I don’t know how to play video games’ articles, you’ll know that I am a BIG fan of Detroit: Become Human. I played the game all the way through a while back in a very short period of time, and then had to go back and play through the last few chapters a second time so I could get an ending where I didn’t accidentally kill Kara. I was secretly hoping that the super handsome Jesse Williams would be there, but was definitely not disappointed when we discovered the also super handsome Bryan Dechart was there! I feel so bad cause I’m not totally sure who the female actor was, but someone in line thought she was likely the main girl from the Eden Sex Club in the game. Regardless they were both super friendly, chatted with us for a minute, Bryan talked about how even his mom had played the game all the way through and done really well at it, and they took a selfie with us!

Next up we headed back to the convention centre, I to our Geekscape booth and Derek to the FunkoxSDCC booth for our one and only opportunity at getting SDCC exclusives. I was shocked and delighted to find out the Darryl McDaniels was at our booth selling and signing his DMC graphic novels. I was very confused when I walked up to the booth to find a huge crowd around it, and delighted when I figured out why! He even freestyled about hanging out at the Geekscape booth, such fun! He is supposed to come back to the booth Saturday so it’ll be fun to see what he gets up to next!

A little while later I met up with Derek again and we headed over to the Gaslamp district to catch the SYFY drum line. I had no idea what to expect from this but it was actually super fun! This group of drummers and general music makers and dancers took over the street playing drum line versions of popular music, while creating an awesome dance party. Then they invited members of the crowd up to do trivia competitions, hosted by Orlando Jones. It was super fun and so freaking random. SYFY is doing a really great job of creating a presence and a street party vibe both with this, as well as their trivia trolleys and karaoke bus.

We took a breather at the the hotel for a couple hours in the afternoon to catch up on writing and recharge both our batteries and ourselves. Then got ready to go out for the evening.

Due to Derek’s thoroughly preparedness we had scored general admission tickets to The Boys premiere party, where the first two episodes would be shown to an audience for the first time. This would be my first premiere party type situation and I was pretty danged I excited for it. However because it was generally admission, even though we technically had tickets it would still be a first come first serve thing. So, although the parted started sometime after 7pm, Derek assured me we needed to be in line before 5pm. Although I would usually roll my eyes and whine about this, I decided to be a good sport and go along with his plan. When we walked up to the Amazon Prime Video Experience activation I was immediately grateful for Derek’s habit of getting to places ridiculously early, as already there was a line up forming and chaos was about to ensue.

As we were standing near the entrance to the line up we over heard conversation between staff members discussing how many people would be let in and who would be controlling the line up etc.. Derek was luckily able to download the tickets onto his phone so we could prove we were legit and get into the line ASAP. When we got into the line at 4:45 it turned out there were approximately 150-200 people ahead of us already! We stood there for over 2.5 hours and made friends with the people in front of us, who turned out to also be Canadians, from Winnipeg! Initially I thought I would melt, and was so grateful for the umbrellas covering the line. Then the sun ducked behind the trees and immediately I wished I had brought a sweater! Luckily I didn’t have to be cold for too long as they had graciously provided blankets for the viewing, which took place in the open space of the Prime Video Experience area.

Caught this sweet Ghost Bustin’ ride while waiting in line, so… worth it!

The Amazon activation was the first one we had gone to during Wednesday’s press preview, and it has been my favourite one so far (although Pennyworth’s set up was wicked awesome too). So it was neat to see the open space transformed for the party.

The central structure was being used as the DJ booth, as well as another short The Boys performance, There were bars and food stands for people to enjoy, the open area had been filled with rows of seats for the screening, and The Boys activation was still being run for party goers to experience. Shortly before they began airing the first episode the stars of the show all filed into the activation area, and I really hope they got to experience it they was we all do, as I imagine it would be pretty trippy. It was very Meta as some would say.

Right before the show began there was an introduction by Eric Kripke, and all the cast was brought to the front of the stage for applause and pictures. It was all very exciting and pretty cool to be a part of. I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to rub shoulders with anyone big and famous (as far as I know), and especially disappointed that Seth Rogan (who is part of the providing team) wasn’t on site (as far as I know), but really those were just little things in the big scheme and the experience in all was absolutely super rad!

It was also an effective marketing strategy, cause I definitely want to see more of the show now! It’s such a neat premise to consider what it would mean if super heroes weren’t all happy sunshine and following all the rules. There were lots of laughs and a few shock and awe moments. I think it went over pretty well and I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes off!

We got back to the hotel around 11pm to a room full of sleeping people, and after trying not to wake anyone while stumbling around in the dark, I passed the eff out!

SDCC 2019: ‘Jean-Luc Picard: The First Duty’ Feels Like A Real Museum Exhibit!

by Derek Kraneveldt

Sadly, I’ve never been much of a Star Trek guy. I’ve seen the recent movies, and watched (and do plan to catch up with) some of Discovery, but aside from a kick-ass Super Nintendo game, the franchise has eluded me for most of my life.

Though I hadn’t heard too much about it, the idea of Captain Picard returning for a new series sounded like a super neat idea. The series is set to debut on CBS All Access sometime this year. Details for the series itself still seem fairly light, but it sounds like it has something to do with Picard being ‘haunted’ after something that occurred in 2009’s Star Trek, and EW has also learned that the series will be serialized rather than episodic like The Next Generation.

Over at Michael J Wolf Fine Arts at 363 Fifth Ave, from 11-9 on Friday and Saturday, and 11-5 on Sunday, CBS has prepared an exhibit called Jean-Luc Picard: The First Duty. It’s a beautiful space that literally feels like you’re walking through a museum exhibit. There are tons of props, costumes, and other items on display, and there’s even a gift shop selling shirts, mugs, and other cool, limited merchandise (you also get a cool limited edition pin when you enter the experience). If you read the descriptions on some of the items, you’re treated to some powerful world-building that fills you in even more on what you can expect whenever the series actually decides to drop. The plaque as you enter the exhibit brings you a little into the story as well:

One of Starfleet’s most decorated officers, Admiral Jean-Luc-Picard retired from Starfleet in 2386 after more than 50 years of service, returning to a quiet life tending to his family’s storied winemaking tradition in the Chateau Picard vineyards of La Barre, France.

Many of Picard’s personal mementos and rare artifacts from his life and career are stored in the Starfleet Museum Quantum Archives located at Starfleet Command headquarters in San Francisco.

For the first time, many of these artifacts are now available for view in a special touring exhibition celebrating his career of service and lifetime of dedication to the principles of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets.

You can take a look at some of the items on display via the photo gallery below, and again, if you’re in San Diego for SDCC, the line for this one seems to move quickly, and even as someone who is not a huge fan of the franchise, I thought that it was an absolutely fascinating experience.

  • There was even a gift shop, selling ‘Picard’ branded items.

SDCC 2019: ‘Snowpiercer’ Bug Bars Mark Some Of The Coolest Swag Of The Con!

by Derek Kraneveldt

Briefly: Whatever your priorities are at SDCC this year (mine, as always are catching my favourite WWE superstars at the Mattel / WWE panel, and picking up an assortment of amazing screenprints at the Mondo booth), you’re going to work up an appetite at inopportune times, and you’re going to want to have some small, prepackaged snacks on hand to satiate that hunger.

Granola bars are a great portable snack, but what if I told you that there’s an even cooler (and more daring) option on the show floor itself?

There’s a Snowpiercer television series in the works over at TBS which is set to premiere next spring (and has already been confirmed for a second season), and the company has set up a neat little booth over at #4215 (just a stone’s throw away from Geekscape #3919). Basically, you jump in line, type your email into one of three vending machines, watch a video that shows you bugs being essentially mushed up and turned into food (just like in the movie / graphic novel!), and then the vending machine spits out a beat little branded protein bar. A protein bar… made of crickets.

Also, apparently crickets are considered crustaceans, so if you have a shellfish allergy you should absolutely not eat it.

In any case, every year it seems like there’s a super neat, clever piece of simple swag that really stands out at me. This year, it’s the Snowpiercer cricket bars, which have absolutely piqued my interest in the upcoming series.

Fans present in San Diego should also note that Snowpiercer will also have a panel on Saturday, July 20 featuring stars Jennifer Connelly, Daveed Diggs, Alison Wright, Mickey Sumner, Lena Hall, Steven Ogg and executive producer and showrunner Graeme Manson from 3:00 p.m. – 3:50 p.m. in the Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront

Here’s a few photos of what you can see at the booth:

Side note: Our pal Eric Francisco Of Inverse is the biggest Snowpiercer fan I know, and I just wish he could be here to experience this.

Mikaela’s Journey to SDCC 2019: Part III

by Mikaela Maxwell

Thursday started once again with a danged early morning! This time I was prepared though, my alarm was set for 7 so being woken at 6:30 was no bigs!

As I got ready I listened to Stan Lee’s A Trick of Light, both in preparation for the activation I was about to attend, and because I started it Wednesday and am already so into it! While standing in line I was definitely wishing I had made room in my tiny little fanny pack for some air pods so I could be listening while I wait!

Walking into the experience is like walking into one of those mirror mazes you find at a carnival, where you just hope that you don’t accidentally smash your face into a mirror. Quickly the dark room lit up with a storm scene taking over all of the surfaces and surrounding you with incredible audiovisuals. While simultaneously listening to narration directly from the book that sets the scene for you.

From there I walked into a dark room full of bright red light strings that created barriers and walkways that you had to navigate. There were a few areas where you’d stand under a cone type thing and different portions of the book would play, accompanied by various lighting effects.

After this room you are ushered down a hallway, with Stan Lee’s voice accompanying you out as he describes the concept of the book and asks the question: ‘What is more real? The world we are born into, or one we create for ourselves?’.

All in all it was a pretty neat experience and I am stoked to get through the book so I can hear how the story progresses! And while in line waiting for it to open I chatted with one of the other people in line and was so proud of myself for basically networking!

When I had planned out Thursday it felt very full and had me rushing from place to place to place, with my next scheduled stop to be at the mondo booth so I could nab a spot in line for the It poster to drop at noon, with a signing by the artist Daniel Danger (who’s art is hanging on many of our walls at home). However as plans generally do, this one fell apart. As we were walking, towards the Audible experience for me and the convention centre for Derek, first thing in the morning Mondo dropped the bomb that they’ve decided to change their line process. Where as I thought I could line up around 11 for the 12 print drop, it turned out that you actually had to get there first thing in the am and line up to get a ticket which gives you a time slot to come pick up your print. Luckily Derek was on his way to the WWE/Mattel panel, so instead of heading straight to that room he detoured to Mondo and picked up the ticket right off the bat (and still managed to have sweet wwe seats!).

In addition to planning on hitting Mondo I had budgeted my time for coming out of the Stan Lee/Audible event at 11am. So when I didn’t have to go to Mondo and I got out of Audible at 930, I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I hadn’t planned on having free time until after my 2pm interview, so I felt a little floundery!

I ended up deciding to avoid the convention centre and instead just wander around the outside activations and see what was up now that they were all up and running. Everything has huge lines and lots of people (though as I learned later in the day it was still actually pretty chill, and I didn’t know what ‘lots of people’ really meant!).

I walked over to the Petco Interactive Zone, mostly because I knew there was a bad ass giant unicorn there!! As I walked over I was handed a few things and quickly regretted my plan to not bring a backpack, though I would have been such a sweaty Betty with a bag on my back cause it was hot AF… which left me feeling awkward because I knew I didn’t have enough danged sunscreen on!

Regardless the Petco Interactive Zone was pretty danged neat. Ripley Beleive It or Not had a crazy car show set up, featuring a vehicle shaped like a stiletto, a motorbike mad of bone, a wooden Ferrari, a fire truck shaped coffin and many more. There were a few other set ups in the area: Giant Unicorn by Pepsi, Giant shark by Shark week, Range Rovers people could sing in for Carpool Kareoke, amongst a few others.

I headed over to check out the HBO Watchmen activation, but decided to come back the next day for press preview. At this point I was hot and tired and didn’t have any appointments, but desperately needed to pee. So I headed over to the opening of the Panda Express Pop-Up, celebrating their new Sichuan Hot Chiken and Pep-Pep the Sichuan Wonderpepper. It was actually totally fun, everyone in there was so excited and yelling and dancing, great atmosphere! And the chicken was suuuuper yummy. Apparently this chicken is only around for a limited time so head out to your local Panda Express to grab some! (We don’t have Panda Express in Canada. So don’t listen to me if you’re up there in the great white north… well listen to me, but not about Panda Express!)

After that I met up with Derek at the Prime Video Experience again, see the thing is there was a secret way to get comic books, and we didn’t figure that out the first time around. So we went back in hopes of finding this. Through Twitter we knew there was something about a phone number, which we found. Upon calling the phone number we were instructed to find a comic in a box on the grounds, which we found. The comic told us to find a code on a license plate, which we found. And then when we gave that code to the right people we were given a card to come back for comics at 3:30pm. This filled me with regret cause had we found it the day before we probably woulda been able to go right in, but as it stood I had places to be around that time, so unfortunately we were unable to grab The Boys comic book… but I’m still super into it so if I really want more than the tv show I can just buy the book!

After amazon I dropped Derek at the hotel, had a snack, and ventured over to the convention centre to do an interview with the Impact Theory people about the Neon Future comic book. Which you will be able to read about more in the future.

After amazon and interviews Derek and I met up and wandered The floor a bit, then over to the Detective Pikachu Acrivation, where you walk into what looks like a train car and is a representation of Ryme City. It was pretty neat with many things built out of bright yellow fun fur, and lots of Detective Pikachu paraphernalia. My favourite room though was the last one, which had bright yellow fun fur lining all the walls and a giant Pikachu there for you to pose with! I am very grateful to the people who let us come in to take a look as it was a very last minute decision and a super neat experience.

After this we wandered around the Gaslamp district and I realized my early morning shenanigans had mislead me completely, as now it was actually busy, where as before although there was plenty of people around, it was not ‘busy’ at all.

After a little wandering we stopped and had another round of Pep-Pep chicken from Panda Express. Then paused for a little while to have a desperately needed beverage and catch up on writing a bit. Then it was time to head to the Pennyworth party.

This was my first specific press invite ‘party’ with drinks and hours d’oeuvres and famous people. Although to be fair I’m not really that great at knowing who famous people are, I did actually know who one of these actors is. Her name is Paloma Faith, she is a British singer, and I saw her ten years ago at a burlesque show in East London. It was the final performance of this particular burlesque troupe so they had a bunch of invited performance guests and there were a few hundred patrons spread out over a couple floors and I was so proud of myself for going out to something I was interested in by myself while living in a different city and not knowing anyone. And although I remember the whole show as fantastic, Paloma Faith was the one person from it whom I followed their career and listen to her music on the regular.

So imagine my excitement when I was actually invited to a party that she would be attending. Whoweee. I’m not usually a fan girl about much, but I was excited to be in the same place at the same time.

The party was held in the same place as the activation, and I imagine it was much of the same stuff, except we were served drink and food. There was a singer, and photo ops, and different rooms set up to resemble settings from the show. There was even a room set up as a torture room, where police sat you in an electrical chair and pretended to beat you while the photo booth took pictures. It was super neat. And after a couple drinks I steeled my nerves and approached Paloma. At the time she was petting a dog so naturally I got distracted by that and focused on the dog until she had actually walked away. But a few minutes later I found her again, and informed her of our ten year history, by which she was non too impressed. But oh well, she was polite and kind and I guess we will just have to become best friends some other way, some other day.

After the party I was thoroughly wiped. And so instead of heading to dinner with the rest of the boys, I sent Derek on his way to have fun with his friends and headed over to the hotel room to focus on writing and hopefully Crash suuuuper early. As I am finishing this up we are heading toward 9:00 pm and I am very hopefully that I will actually get a decent nights sleep!

Derek’s SDCC 2019 Recap: Thursday

by Derek Kraneveldt

If you missed recap of pre-convention or preview night, head here, and you can also check out my Prime Video Experience recap right here!

It’s the first full day of San Diego Comic-Con, and unfortunately it started with a bit of a frustration. I rolled out of bed to see a tweet from Mondo that their line policy (which based on my recap last night, they seem to have outgrown) was changing. Their previous system was essentially ‘we’re full, check back later,’ but as they announced this morning, but as of today, they’d instead be handing out timed tickets letting you know what time you could return to shop.

Mikaela had an event to cover first thing, so I ran over to the convention centre (which was not yet open) to try to get my hands on a ticket for the booth. At 12PM, Daniel Danger was set to be there to sign his new IT artwork, and as I currently have three Daniel Danger Mondo prints on my wall at home (and loved IT), I was hankering to get my hands on this too.

Convention staff guided us through the E doors, up the stairs, and essentially around half of the building to stand in a massive crowd. We were told that this would be the fastest way in, and that other doors wouldn’t open until this crowd was in. Once 9AM hit, (which is when the expo hall itself opened up) this crowd started being let in in chunks, and by about 9:15 I was headed down the escalator back towards the expo hall. As it turns out, they had also opened all of the other doors, much of the crowd was already inside, and door E turned out to be pretty much the slowest way into the building.

I went over to Mondo (on the other side of the expo hall) as fast as I could, and I was able to get a ticket… for 6:00 (the last block of the day). I assumed that IT would be long gone by then (only 225 available), and I was also set to be away from the convention centre for an event starting at 6. Thankfully Matt said that he’d take a look for me at that time. He’s basically my hero.

I then ran to room 6A, as my favourite panel at SDCC, the WWE/Mattel panel was set for 11:15. There was one panel before it, the Funko Funkast Live, which was actually a really fun time. I don’t collect Pop! figures because once I start I would never be able to stop, but the group had me laughing and showed off a ton of cool reveals. There’s even a cool looking mobile puzzle came called Funko Pop Blitz in the works, which I’ll definitely be checking out whenever it ends up releasing. Also, now I need to convince Mikaela that we can collect Pop! figures.

A lot of the front area of the panel room cleared out pretty quickly once Funko ended. I was able to move up pretty much in the center, just three rows back, and ended up with the best seat I’ve ever had for this panel, which I’ve been going to for years at this point.

The WWE/Mattel Panel always features a handful of WWE superstars, and some executives from Mattel. The presentation always starts with a bunch of new toy reveals, and then ends with a Q&A with the WWE superstars. I’m not really much of a toy guy, but it’s always fun to see the announcements, and it’s need to get to see the performers in an environment like this. This year, some of the most well received announcements included a new Chyna figure, which would mark her first in 19 years, and a brand new line of WWE / Masters of the Universe toys. These looked awesome (and super cheesy), and were introduced with a special video by Triple H. They showed off a few of the designs on screen, and then revealed a special, physical prototype figure for Kofi Kingston, who is apparently a huge MotU fan, and it seriously looked like he was going to cry for a long time after this announcement. The Q&A felt fairly standard to start, with cute kids talking about being inspired, and asking performers what inspired them. Then, a guy dressed as ‘Macho Manana’ grabbed the mic, and… well, it ended up being WWE Superstar Drake Maverick, who is in San Diego on a mission to track down R-Truth and the 24/7 Championship, and to win it back so he can finally consummate his marriage. It sounds silly, but it’s the absolute most entertaining thing in WWE right now.

Following the panel, I was lucky enough to snap a quick photo with Drake, who did not break character until he disappeared into another room (even yelling “I will consummate my marriage,” before disappearing entirely). It was a fantastic moment, and a great end to the very best WWE / Mattel panel that I’ve had to opportunity to attend.

He just never broke character and looked so sad the entire time.

Next up, I tracked down Mikaela, we grabbed a quick snack, and stopped at the hotel to drop some things off. She left almost right away to conduct an interview, and I stayed behind to catch up on some writing.

Shortly afterwards, I figured that it was probably a good time to peruse the show floor, as my next appointment wasn’t until 6 (and I needed to see how those IT prints were coming along), so I eventually wandered back to the convention centre to check out some of the show floor that I hadn’t visited yet. Mondo said that IT was probably still going to be in stock (phew), so I started making my way back to the Geekscape booth (#3919 if you’re in San Diego), and promote got distracted again trying to see what the Entertainment Earth and Mattel booths were like. As it turns out, they were capped. They’re always capped, and both the Slim Jim Macho Man doll and Mario Kart figures were sold out for the day anyways. Dang.

Things were (are always) pretty hectic on the show floor, so Mikaela and I decided to head out into the Gaslamp to see what we could see. As always, protesters were out in full force, and the conventiongoers were spilled out into the area by the hundreds, filling the streets still blocks away from the convention center. We caught the tail end of a Syfy drum line (I love that they do these things), and then wandered over behind the Omni hotel to take a look at the Detective Pikachu activation. The movie releases on digital in just a few days, so Warner Bros Home Entertainment is in San Diego showing off a few pieces of Ryme City. The activation starts in a Pikachu-ed our train car, before moving into other rooms, including Howard Clifford’s office, a small piece of the Ryme City market, and a room with a Pikachu photo-op. Take a look at some photos from the activation below!

Next up, we went over to the Panda Express pop-up, which I thought was absolutely hilarious. Now, I love me some Panda Express, but everyone here was just so energetic, the staff was freaking screaming out in excitement, there was a dancing Panda (and the playlist was all fire or heat related songs which I thought was so funny), and again, this store won’t exist in a week. It was all in celebration of a new limited time dish, the Sichuan Hot Chicken. They even created a character named Pep-Pep the Sichuan Wonderpepper, who is a a little fireball looking dude who is pretty cute. The place was fun, the line was less than 5 minutes long, and the place offered up free samples of this new and delicious chicken, as well as beverages. Thank you Panda Express!

We were both pretty exhausted at this point (long before this point, actually), but there was still more to do. Next up we were headed to the Oxford Social Club for an event revolving around upcoming EPIX series Pennyworth, which is set in “1960s London, where Bruce Wayne’s legendary butler, Alfred Pennyworth, forms a security company and goes to work with Thomas Wayne, Bruce’s billionaire father.”

The event was held at the Oxford Social Club over at 435 Fifth St. The offsite is open to the public for Friday and Saturday from 10AM-7PM, and potential attendees will need to give a secret password to “access to the Velvet Rope, a high-society London lounge filled with gambling, drag, and cabaret performances, plus live music from the era. You’ll also find yourself inside a library that leads to an eerie poetry reading in the posh hidden headquarters of the Raven Society, as well as a dank dungeon where the membership’s darker deeds become clear.”

We went down some interestingly lit stairs which were guarded by some creepy looking… well, guards. I was actually wearing a Finn Balor shirt, and one of them even gave me a too sweet on my way in. Once inside, everything was styled like the 1960’s, even the cocktails that the servers were offering us (an Old Fashioned, renamed ‘The Alfred’, and another drink, called ‘The Esme’). Inside we were treated to musical performances, secret poetry readings (a guy was even hand-writing these poems for the event, and according to him his wrist was very tired). There was a library where ‘Raven Society’ members were giving attendees postcards, which they could fill out and address to their friends, and drop in a box to actually be mailed out, and also a torture chamber which made for a pretty neat photo op. Overall, the event was a fun way to be introduced to some of the themes of the show (and get a couple of cool photo-ops), and it definitely made me hopeful that the show will be picked up in Canada, as EPIX simply doesn’t exist there.

Following the Pennyworth event, a sleepy Mikaela headed back to the hotel (and even saw a DeLorean on the way), and I headed over to Seaport Village to meet up with Jonathan, Matt, and Gui for some food. Everyone else had pretty much already eaten when I arrived, and so everyone just sat around telling old convention stories and we laughed our asses off for something like an hour.

At this point, I was beat, and decided to call it a pretty early night. For Friday we were set to be up early (and probably out late), so it was important that I get a decent sleep as I’ve been simply exhausted so far. Matt and I returned to the hotel room, while Gui and Jonathan went elsewhere, and after a bit of chatting we all turned in pretty damned early.

Until tomorrow, this has been Thursday at SDCC!

SDCC 2019: The Amazon Prime Video Experience Is This Year’s Must-Visit Offsite!

by Derek Kraneveldt

If you haven’t been able to tell from my coverage over the past seven years, I’m a huge fan of all of the insane offsite events that companies host during SDCC week. I was hooked from my very first offsite activation for 2014’s Godzilla, and just generally try to experience as many of these events during the week as I possibly can.

A couple of weeks back I posted about the Prime Video Experience, a massive 60,000 square-foot event that would host activations for upcoming series The Boys, Carnival Row, and the fourth season of The Expanse. Mikaela and I had an opportunity to check out the event during a media preview on Wednesday, and I wholeheartedly believe that it’s the most insane offsite that you’ll be able to experience this year.

The Prime Video Experience is located at MLK and 1st in San Diego (obviously), and is open from 9AM-5PM each day of the convention. As of this morning the line looked pretty long, but I assure you that the event is an absolute blast, and is well worth any wait.

From the press release, “Once inside, attendees will receive collectible gold and silver coins which they can use to further explore the activation. Fans can begin their day covering up the crime scene of a superhero kidnapping at the Audio Visual shop where Hughie works on The Boys. On the opposite end of the space, a Rocinante spaceship is positioned that will take adventure-seekers on a United Nations peacekeeping mission to a newly colonized planet seen in The Expanse. Guests can also discover the Carnival Row universe in which humans and exotic creatures coexist before entering The Forbidden Lounge, a neo-Victorian decorated hideaway venue, to enjoy a special performance. Amazon Prime Video collaborated with LG within the series activations to provide a premiere viewing experience for attendees.”

There’s also a Carl’s Jr. food truck inside, which was super cool because we don’t have a lot of those in Canada.

I took a video of each activation from start to finish (with a couple of odd cuts during The Boys activation because I had to do stuff and accidentally hit the stop button), so if you’re into spoilers or aren’t going to make the event, you can check them out below, and keep scrolling for some photos of the massive offsite (but not from inside the activations because I was taking video).

Again, spoilers ahead, and if you’re here in San Diego, don’t look at any of it and just go get in line!

I never actually figured out what the coins were for, but they apparently unlocked extra goodies within the offsite itself (and the gold ones are rare)!
There’s a nice covered ‘market’ area with snacks, and some nice seating so that you can eat your Carl’s Jr.
Some more nice covered seating, and a huge screen for screenings later this week
Outside of ‘The Boys’ activation
Some simple, but awesome swag after ‘The Boys’ activation.
Outside of ‘Carnival Row’
Attendees are assigned either a ‘Creature’ or ‘Human’ role, which determines how characters treat you

Will you be checking out the Amazon Prime Video experience? Be sure to let us know what you think!

Mikaela’s Journey to SDCC 2019: Part II

by Mikaela Maxwell

Wednesday morning was scheduled (for me) to be a sweet sweet day of sleeping in, and I guess if you compare me to everyone else in the room technically I did get to sleep in… until 6:15 AM!!?!

Grump-kaela was none too impressed about the early hour, but still happy to have a relaxed lounging morning, with time for hair and makeup and listening to the new Audible Original A Trick of Light created by Stan Lee.

I will be attending the A Trick of Light activation Thursday, and a round table press discussion on Saturday, so don’t worry you’ll be filled in on all the deets about that one in the near future! But I’ll tell you now from the wee bit I’ve listened to, it’s gonna be interesting A.F. !

Just as Matt, Derek, and I finally decided to leave the sweet sweet comfort of our cold hotel room, Jon and Gui showed back up! (Both were gone by the time I opened my eyes at the late hour of 6:15!) Gui discovered you could actually open our hotel room window way way up on the 28th floor, and figured he could probably catch a bird from there. However his fear of seagulls was quickly made apparent as one swooped by and he slammed the window shut. This seagull was relentless though. The bird literally perched directly on our window sill and stared us down. I wanted to open the window and feed it… everyone else wisely protested, and Gui guarded the window with his life. It was pretty entertaining though!

Shortly after Matt, Derek and I ventured out and I decided to put my brave pants on and face a newly discovered fear of breaking my face via electric scooter.

Last year Derek raved about getting to scoot around all over the place with his buddy Matt. Last night Derek tried to get me to ride one of them and I quickly realized I did not trust my coordination enough to not die, and opted instead to pathetically half jog beside him as he scooted to the grocery store.

With much support and encouragement I managed to hop on my first scooter ride! And it was equal parts terrifying and fun. Basically as soon as I got on I turned into a frozen terrified statue, but managed to not fall off, so… win 🤷‍♀️

We got to wander around and see a bunch of the activations in their final stages of set up, and I’m blown away by the amount of presence here. I’m not the best at references, but so many things that even I am aware of are here! From Seinfeld, The Good Place, Superstore, Brooklyn Nine Nine, South Park and on and on!

Around lunch time Derek and I parted ways with Matt to head over the the Amazon Prime Video Experience, featuring activations for The Expanse, The Boys, and Carnival Row. This was my first official SDCC activation experience, and I think it may have tricked me with its ease! We waited in line for about 15 minutes before it opened, and in the time we’re treated to big umbrellas for shade, and offered cold water bottles. In a very short amount of time we were allowed in and provided with a wicked experience.

Upon entering the site you are given special coins and mini churros! There is a giant, beautiful, reflective, colourful structure in the middle surrounded by AstroTurf, covered tables, a large screen with shaded couches which I’m assuming will be for when they show the premieres later this week. As well there are three separate and very different areas that allow you to enter and have an incredibly immersive experience based on each of the featured shows.

We started off by heading into the experience for The Expanse. After again waiting in line for what I assume is a very short amount of time in SDCC reality, sliding doors opened to let us into some sort of Space transportation. We were quickly informed that we‘re on a UN mission to figure out what this attack had been about (I’ve never seen the show, so I’m a little fuzzy on the details), before the doors open at the opposite end and we walk out into a space-tastic wasteland. Quickly our group was split up and we are guided by space people to interrogate/help (?) other space people who have been captured by other space people. It’s a real moral conundrum cause you don’t know whose in the right and suddenly a dispute explodes between different factions and you’re quickly whisked back out into reality. So. Freaking. Cool!

After that we headed over to The Boys activation area. Again we were quickly ushered… well yelled at to quickly get in here! Our group quickly filed into an electronics store that had its front window smashed in by a car, that was currently sat with smoke billowing out of the hood, half in/half out of the storefront. We were quickly informed that we were joining a group of people fighting against the destruction and pain caused in the wake of super heroes doing hero work. We quickly discovered that one of the group members worked at this store and is now missing, so we had to find clues to where he went and what had happened here. Our group had to rummage around this destroyed store and I managed to find two of the clues we were looking for! The whole scene ended with someone who had been planted in our group being murdered by one of the characters and us running out of the store.

I love immersive theatre, and this was so much fun! What a neat way to get people jazzed on a new show. Initially when hearing about this show I was intrigued simply because Seth Rogen is an executive producer (and I’m a big fan of that guy!), but now I’m extra invested and can’t wait for it to air!

After that we went and grabbed a branded and delish (and free!) Carl’s Jr. burger and watched a super neat performance based on The Boys play out on the central shiny structure. Check out our instagram for sneak peeks into these experiences!

After that we waited in an actual line that took actual time, like maybe 30-45min, which is still short by SDCC standards for the Carnival Row experience. After this sooo long of wait (teehee) we sadly were not let into the experience because the cards we were given showed that we were creatures and they didn’t have any more room for creatures, only humans. So I popped a squat and got comfy to wait another 15 minutes.

In the time we waited in line we actually got to see another performance on the central structure, this time a scene from the universe of Carnival Row where fairies were being hunted down by some sort of police and were sadly beaten down.

Once we did actually get let into the Carnivval Row we were immediately treated to some race/class discrimination. Because we had drawn ‘creature’ cards we were allowed in, but were treated poorly, being yelled at to hurry, to not take pictures of the characters, to stand in single file and not move etc., where as when the ‘humans’ were let in they were encouraged to take pictures, told to spread out and get comfy, generally treated respectfully etc.!

After a few moments we were guided into a market where fairies or creatures (I’m not totally sure) were selling their wares. One of them came up to Derek and I and asked if we wanted some love potion, and then proceeded to spray us with this ‘love potion’, so we just love each other now! Then the police people who had let us in game in and were getting mad about stuff so we were ushered into the next area, which was set up as a little cabaret type club room. It was super effing neat.

The cabaret room had a stage rotating through performers, with a fairy type person singing beautifully, and another doing a strip tease type thing, and then the singer again. At this point one of the characters came up and started talking to me, asking where I was from and telling me about where they’d come from and how this space was meant to be a safe space for every species etc.. literally during this conversation a character ran in terrified and asking to be hidden, followed quickly by the police people searching for her and trying to get her. During this we were quickly ushered through the next door and submerged back into muggy reality!

After finishing up at the Amazon Prime Video Experience Derek and I rushed over to the abandoned Horton Plaza to check out the FYE shop, and buy a couple more Stranger Things shirts (because I can’t stop won’t stop loving my fave show Stranger Things). And then popped over to grab a bite to eat and a couple cold beverages before the show floor opened for the evening.

Going into the preview night I knew my first stop would be the Mondo booth… what a didn’t know was that it would be my only stop!

I struggled to figure out exactly how to get into the convention centre, which I had kind of expected after hearing Derek’s stories every year about every employee giving a different answer to the same questions. However as it ended up I entered the centre around row 3000, and needed to rapidly get to the Mondo booth located in row 400. I speed walked as hard as I could without jogging, and still ended up arriving at a line that went all the way from the booth in row 400, and ended near row 900. And this booth only ‘ended’ because it had been capped and there was a courageous Mondo-man, in a bad ass pink jacket, fending people away from the end of the line.

Everyone was being instructed to go away and check back in an 30 minutes, then in an hour, then eventually told that there was no way the Mondo line up would be opening again this night. You’d think that would mean the end of the line and everyone walks away. Turns out that is not how this business works. Right off the bat I decided to hover around the end of the line, figuring that was easier than coming back in 30 Minutes with no clue what was happening. I noticed a few other people milling about so I approached a couple dudes to find out if they were also waiting for the Mondo line. Turned out they were, and we quickly became best line buddies! Well I guess technically we weren’t in the line, but you know what I mean! Turns out Stephen does this on the regular in order to grab those sweet SDCC exclusives, so I was reassured that I was taking the right approach. So were apparently a billion other people.

Flash forward a couple hours later to a hover-hoard of probably a hundred people, and a multitude of bewildered security guards trying (unsuccessfully) to get everyone to scatter away from the Mondo line instead of clogging the congested aisle. The line had dwindled to almost nothing and our glorious Pink Jacket Prophet gathered us around him to share the secret that we would in fact have a shot at getting into the Mondo line! Our hovering paid off when PJP was searching through the crowd for the hardcore hoverers and picked Stephen (and by extension me, due to our newly forged best bud status). So long story short by 8:30 I was standing in front of the Mondo booth, sharing my nervous excitement with the excited for me Mondo employee, as I tried desperately to make sure I didn’t forget which very important things I had just waited almost 3 hours for! I ended up being to get the limited edition (just 125) Batman poster that I had my heart set on, and I felt like I friggin earned it!

After Mondo I awkwardly waddled over to our booth, trying desperately to dodge the sea of people, and managed to get that sweet sweet poster tucked away in the safety of a poster tube! I also found a Derek there, and we took the opportunity to use the last few minutes of opening night to go grab some cricket bars, in celebration of the new Snowpiercer show! Also fun fact, somehow crickets are related to shellfish so if you are allergic to shellfish don’t be trying to get in on that! (Isn’t evolution freaking crazy!?)

When the show floor closed we scooped Matt and Jon and hurried, as fast as our sore tired feet could take us, over to Lolita’s for some tacos!

Everyone had basically collapsed by the time dinner was done and it was all we could do to drag our sorry asses outta there and back to the hotel room. The amount of tired and sore happening in my body definitely made the thought of scootering waaay less scary, and we managed to scoot about 2/3 of the way home!

Now it’s midnight, I’m exhausted, and I’m gonna stop talking. Thursday is gonna be my busiest day and I am tired just thinking about it… but I’m also so stoked about all the neat stuff I’m gonna see and do! Talk to you soon!

Derek’s SDCC 2019 Recap: Pre-Con / Preview Night!

by Derek Kraneveldt

Tuesday

I can’t believe it’s already SDCC week.

At times, it feels like it was just yesterday that I was Lime-ing around San Diego with Matt Kelly, eating Rockin’ Baha with the Geekscape crew (that sweet, sweet mango salsa), being insanely impressed with offsides like Purge City or Mr. Mercedes, or running into the likes of Xavier Woods and Becky Lynch during Rocket League’s fantastic third birthday party.

Other times, it’s crazy to think just how long it’s been, and how much Geekscape has changed over the past year. The Geekscape Games podcast was a huge part of my life, and it ended very suddenly last Fall, leaving me in a spot where I just didn’t know what to do next. After a bit of a break and some time to recuperate (and figure out how to both live without my longtime co-hosts apply what I’d learned over Geekscape Games’ four year run to something else), in May I finally launched a brand new show called Xbox Game Passengers, which has myself and a guest discussing a single randomly-selected game on Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service. As of this writing we’re six episodes in (with a couple of E3 specials for good measure), and we’ve played some absolute gems like What Remains Of Edith Finch (which certified non-gamer Matt Kelly actually joined me for), along with a few titles that left something to be desired, like MotoGP17. Xbox Game Passengers has been a challenging and incredibly rewarding experience so far, and I can’t wait to see where it brings me a year from now.

Today, Geekscape also launched a brand new, redesigned website. Our last redesign was about four years ago, and we (and the web itself) has changed a lot since then. We’ve shifted our focus from things like news, to original content like podcasts, and this new design puts a much bigger emphasis on the shows that we’re doing, and its far simpler layout helps browsers see what’s new on the site much, much more easily. It brings with it some changes that I’d been hoping for for some time (higher resolution featured images, yes!), and I think that there’s absolutely no better time for a Geekscape reboot, than when some of the team is together in San Diego. Please, take a look around the site (and forgive some of the odd looking featured images for now, I’ll fix them when I can), and let us know what you think!

When the alarm rang this morning at 1:45AM, I was incredibly sleepy, rather grumpy, but also so excited. Mikaela, who you may have heard on Geekscape Games or Xbox Game Passengers, who handles our @GeekscapeForever Instagram page (where you’ll find all sorts of sick cosplay photos from the different events and conventions that we’ve visited), who has a casual column where she, as a semi-novice gamer, tackles game reviews from her own perspective, and who is my long time fiancé, headed to San Diego with me for the very first time. She’s super excited, nervous, and overwhelmed all at the same time, and I can’t wait for her to see and understand just what keeps me coming back to relive this insanely exhausting experience each and every year. I’m really excited to see what kind of experiences she has while here with me.

So we made our way to the airport parking (some weird valet style thing that didn’t seem to have any employees around so I really hope we still have a car when we get back), took a shuttle to the terminal itself, and prepared ourselves for the long 25 minute flight to Seattle where we would have a couple of hours of layover before our final flight to San Diego. Thankfully, our bags were checked so we didn’t have to worry about them at all, and so during our layover time we grabbed some snacks and took some time to check out the new Geekscape.

Some beautiful views even before we left the ground.
I think that Desmond forgot to push the button.

While waiting for our connecting flight, Jonathan published a yearly pre-SDCC podcast, this year a one-on-one with Matt Kelly. These episodes are always a favourite of mine to listen to, as everyone on them is typically super comfortable with each other, and it ends up just being an hour or so of ridiculous jokes. This year is no exception — the episode is hilarious, and… it feels like the pair barely talked about the actual convention. Mikaela and I listened to the show on the plane, and absolutely got a few looks as we burst out laughing multiple times over the course of the episode.

We landed, barely waited for luggage, and grabbed a Lyft from Oscar, whose car was filled with candy and bubble gum. Like every cup holder, every nook and cranny of every door was filled with candy. We didn’t eat any, but I appreciated it.

Insane wraps everywhere.

Finally, it was time to reunite. Somehow, Mikaela, John, Matt, and I all arrived at the Grand Hyatt within about 10 minutes of each other. We exchanged some quick hellos, and before long it was time to head to the convention centre to grab our badges for the week, and to get ready to build the booth.

The first step in getting ready… was to get some delicious food in us. My favourite restaurant (of the few that I’ve actually been to) in San Diego is called Rockin’ Baha. It’s a seafood / Mexican joint that has a phenomenal salsa bar with a ton of different varieties, but their mango salsa is simply amazing. I could eat the stuff forever. Today, I also had queso for apparently the first time in my life, and it might be a new favourite.

Once we ate, we finally made it inside the expo hall in order to assemble our booth. This is my seventh time to SDCC, and it never gets old walking around the floor early and seeing all of the intricate booths being set up. It’s amazing to see that work that is put in both inside of the convention centre, and the whole Gaslamp District around it, just for this five day period. It’s essentially unfathomable to imagine just how much money these studios and production companies are spending to put on these insane events just for a few days. It’s amazing, and I appreciate it so much, but I definitely don’t understand it.

Building the booth constitutes of bringing a ton of items for actually building the booth, and crap that Jonathan doesn’t want anymore (giveaways woo!) to our designated are (booth #3919), building our backdrop and table, organizing t-shirts, and then walking around and looking at all of the cool stuff that nobody else will see until late the next day. It’s warm as hell in there, as it doesn’t seem like the air conditioning is actually turned on until the next day, but it’s definitely worth it. Also, I typically get first pick of the crap that Jonathan doesn’t want, and I’ve definitely scored some sweet merch over the years by sorting through these boxes and boxes or refuse.

It was getting slightly late, and I was getting pretty tired (as I was up at 1AM the night before), but I still wanted to hit up the FYE Pop-Up shop over at Horton Plaza. Matt, myself, and the hosts of the Fright School podcast (who we met up with slightly before) walked over to check out the store. You can check out some photos of what the store has on offer right here, but in short, the place is just chock-full of mostly inexpensive collectibles that are just so freaking cool. The shop is open through X, but a lot of the stuff goes really quickly, so if you’re in the area, I’d recommend heading their ASAP. I asked about sizes on a couple of shirts, and was basically told that whatever was out was what they had, so there were a couple of things that I could didn’t get, but I definitely bought an amazing Stranger Things shirt, as well as the soundtrack to season three… on cassette. I will never be able to play this, but it’s going to look super cool next to my New Coke.

Before heading back to the hotel, we stopped at a neat barcade called Coin-Op GameRoom that I’d somehow missed for the past seven years. They had a good soundtrack, neat games, decent food, and were playing Willow, old WCW wrestling, Bob Ross, and The Karate Kid, all at the same time. It was a nice, chill way to end the night.

We stopped at Ralph’s on the way back to the hotel to grab some water and snacks for the week ahead (mostly coconut water, which I discovered last year, and which saved me from feeling terrible and dehydrated most days), and then stumbled our way back to the hotel to turn in for the night.

Next up is Preview Night (and day, as Mikaela and I will be checking out Amazon Prime’s incredible sounding offsite activation in the early afternoon), and while as I’m prepared as I can be, it’s hard to ever feel ready for an event like this!

Wednesday

I was really happy to have had a good night’s sleep.

Much to Mikaela’s dismay, people in the hotel room began to stir as early as 5AM. I was up and showered shortly after 7, and as nothing has really started yet, had a bit of a chill morning. Mikaela slept in a bit, and I worked on some articles in the chill, air conditioned room.

After relaxing in the hotel room for awhile, Matt, Mikaela, and I decided to walk around the Gaslamp to check out some of the in-progress activations. NBC has a fantastic presence with Superstore (a show that I’d not actually heard of before) taking over the lobby of the Hard Rock Hotel, The Good Place taking over Mary Jane’s restaurant (and turning it into the Interdimensional Hole Of Pancakes), among with a neat little Seinfeld activation that has you doing trivia in exchange for a coin that you can use in a themed vending machine filled with Seinfeld merch (including Junior Mints), along with a fresh build of the precinct from Brooklyn 99.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment also had some neat in-progress activations, including a piece of Rhyme City (and a huge Pikachu) for Detective Pikachu, and a miniature version of Chilladelphia for Shazam.

We also took out some Bird scooters briefly so that we could get around more quickly. It’s definitely for the best, but the scooters are much more limited this year in just where they can go, and if you head into an area that you shouldn’t be in, the scooter loses all power and is manual only. I also accidentally added $20USD to my Bird account… so it ended up being a pretty expensive ride. Mikaela did ride as well, however, and was totally terrified, so maybe it’s still worth it.

At noon, Mikaela and I checked out the Amazon Prime Experience, which hosts activations for upcoming Amazon Prime series The Boys, Carnival Row, and season four of The Expanse. I’ve posted some photos taken at the offsite below, and look for a full article with video of the three activations on Geekscape shortly!

The tower was cool, and the performances on it were even cooler.

The Amazon Prime Experience is located at MLK and 1st, and is one of the coolest offsite activations that I’ve been to. There are always a number of incredible offsite events, but these three activations feel like neat, mature, interactive theatre, and it’d be impossible not to have a huge smile on your face the entire time you’re taking part. The area itself is huge (60,000 square feet, actually), and the ‘Tower’ area in the centre shows some cool clips from the upcoming series, and also features a number of different performances throughout the day. While we were eating some lunch (some Carl’s Jr. provided by Amazon, which we were very thankful for), someone came by and asked if we’d ever been wronged by a Supe. A few minutes later, essentially an anti-supe support group started, with a number of group members describing how they’d been wronged, from things as simple as refusing an autograph to a child, to giving their mother herpes. It was super interesting. In any case, the offsite is open from 9-5 Thursday through Sunday, and the content inside is well worth the wait.

We were very thankful for the Carl’s Jr.

Following the Prime Video experience, we took some time to head back to FYE (as Mikaela hadn’t seen it yet), and, naturally, ended up grabbing two additional Stranger Things shirts, and shortly afterwards it was actually time to split up. Mikaela was headed inside of the convention centre (she had some Mondos to score, and was also going to try to hit up Entertainment Earth for that sweet Macho Man / Slim Jim exclusive figure), while I was set to preview the Nintendo lounge at the Marriot.

Mikaela’s covered (and super limited) Mondo Batman screenprint

Oddly enough, this was actually my first time at the Nintendo lounge. It’s almost always present in the Marriot, but I’ve always figured that it’s not really worth standing in line for, as I was already going to buy all of the games that they were showing off. This year, with the first full Pokémon game for Switch, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 on offer, it would have been tough to skip out on this.

Once I went inside, I immediately regretted not taking the time in year’s past. Within minutes I was playing a demo for freaking Pokémon Sword and Shield, and though it’s been years since I’ve really played Pokémon, I immediately felt at home with the game, and I immediately fell in love with it. This Switch reimagining felt absolutely fresh, and I simply cannot wait to get my hands on more of this game. As far as I know, this was the same demo shown off at E3, and had your character working their way through a water gym, and showed off both the new Dynamax functionality, as well as a myriad of new Pokémon.

I also played a (again, E3) demo of Luigi’s Mansion 3, and it mostly made me wonder how the hell I missed out on Luigi’s Mansion 2. The puzzle-y levels were a ton of fun, the vacuum mechanics felt far better than I remember them being, and the game just felt completely different from anything else that I’ve played as of late. This is another game that wasn’t really on my radar at all, but will now be a purchase on day one. It’s just so much freaking fun.

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening demo really showed off the game’s unique new art style, which often has a sort of tilt-shift look. Around the demo stations, there were also some super-cute miniatures that it was just impossible not to take pictures of. Link’s Awakening looks like an impressive remake, and as I was just three years old when Link’s Awakening came out (though I did play it later), I really don’t remember it that well.

The lounge also featured a few cool photo-ops (including Luigi’s Mansion and Pokemon), and was also showing off some sick looking Target Exclusive Mario Kart Hot Wheels, and also a sweet (literally) Nintendo X Sugarfina booth, which featured a bunch of different Nintendo themed, high end and totally freaking delicious candies. I had seen Sugarfina stores in some local malls before, but hadn’t tasted the stuff… and I’m pretty much hooked already and I can’t wait to have more and it’s Nintendo themed so it’s even better.

Once I’d played everything that the Nintendo booth had to offer, I sauntered over to the convention centre. Preview night runs from 6-9 PM, and it was sometime after 7 at this point, so I knew that I didn’t have all that much time to walk around. I walked over to Mondo at 435, where she had been hovering around the ‘capped’ line that seemingly capped before the show even opened (damn exhibitors). She was told over and over that the line wouldn’t re-open, but after standing around the line (because she wasn’t allowed in it) for well over two hours, the line opened back up, and somehow the Batman screenprint that Mikaela was stoked for, and the Jaws tiki mug that Matt wanted were still in stock.

She had made a not-line friend, and there were a couple of other things that I wanted to check out on the floor, so I left her with intentions of returning soon (I didn’t).

I wandered over to Entertainment Earth, as I thought that they were set to carry both the WWE Macho Man Randy Savage / Slim Jim exclusive, along with the Silver/Gold Mario Kart 8 statues. It turns out they had neither (and the line was capped anyways), so I then went over to Mattel which actually had both, not that it did me any good, as their line was capped as well and Macho Man was already sold out for the day.

You will be mine.

I made a quick stop at the TNT Snowpiercer booth to receive one of the coolest pieces of swag announced so far this year, which is a protein bar made with cricket protein which totally makes sense based on the source material. I ended up with a couple of the bars, and absolutely plan to eat one, and plan to keep one forever.

Matt then sent me a message that WWE superstar Drake Maverick just walked by the booth, and so instead of going back to Mikaela, I just kind of searched around for WWE superstar Drake Maverick. He and superstar R-Truth have the absolute most entertaining storylines in WWE right now, and I just wanted to find him to thank him for the laughs. I never did, but you bet I looked.

The show floor closed, and Matt, Mikaela, Jon, and I made our annual trip to Lolita’s Mexican Restaurant. The line was long, the restaurant was too warm, and Matt’s entire order was wrong, but it was still a good time.

Naturally, we took Bird scooters back to the hotel. This was partially because we didn’t want to walk anymore, but also because they’re super fun!

That’s it for Preview Night! Tomorrow will mark the first full day of the convention. I’m most excited to see the WWE / Mattel panel in the morning (and fully believe that the 24/7 championship will change hands during this event), and also the offsite event for upcoming series Pennyworth.

Thanks for reading this far, and I hope you’ll check out all our other coverage, follow us on Instagram, and come back tomorrow to read my Thursday recap!

SDCC 2019: Horton Plaza Is All But Dead, But The FYE Pop Up Is Well Worth The Walk!

by Derek Kraneveldt

FYE is so freaking cool.

As a Canadian, the only real experience that I’ve ever really had with the brand is when visiting their pop-up shops at SDCC over the past few years. FYE does ship internationally, but doesn’t seem to have much of a presence in Canada itself — we also obviously have collectibles in the Great White North, but they’re typically relegated to toy stores or chunks of comic book and board game stores.

Over the past couple of years, FYE has hosted a couple of wonderful pop-up shops just steps from the convention, over at Horton Plaza. With Horton Plaza (and my favourite and probably only Panda Express location) all but shut down, I was absolutely worried that the FYE store simply wouldn’t exist this year.

Thankfully, I was wrong. The store actually opened up a few days before I even got here, and is open from 9:00-8:00 each day (aside from Sunday, when it will close forever at 6:00PM).

I always have a ton of fun perusing the store and falling in love with all of the custom cereal boxes, the expansive collection of (sometimes exclusive) Pop! figures, the custom candy, and more, and once Mikaela and I touched down in San Diego yesterday, the FYE Pop-Up was absolutely one of our first stops. Today I walked away with a super-cool Stranger Things 3 soundtrack on cassette, as well as a neat ‘Welcome To Hawkins’ t-shirt. I also definitely saw more things that I wanted, so it certainly won’t be long until I end up back at the store — some of that IT stuff was definitely speaking to me, and I absolutely love the emphasis on Garbage Pail Kids that the store has this year. Also, I somehow still do not have a box of Booty-O’s at home.

Take a look below at some photos of the cool offerings that I took at the store, and keep scrolling for some info on some of the signings and events that you’ll see at the shop this week!

How do I get these GIANT cereal boxes for my own house?
I’m so happy that GPK is back.
I’m not a big Spongebob guy, but this jacket was unreal.
This ‘Build Your Own Forky’ was perhaps my favourite product in the entire store.
Huge selection of amazing backpacks.
The best backpack.
Lots of cool Game of Thrones merch
Some great looking GoT tiki mugs.
Super creepy, and I need it.
The most important corner of the store, and yes that is a Camp Know Where shirt.
Naturally, a huge Marvel presence.
Including the cutest shirt in the whole joint.
Some super interesting pieces.
Somehow Agretsuko has eluded me thus far.

Also, it was hard to get a good picture of, but this Sonic the Hedgehog skate deck made me want to start skateboarding again.

Naturally, SDCC hasn’t event started yet, and you could easily go broke just at the FYE Pop-Up. I’d probably head there sooner than later, however, as some of the shirts are getting pretty low on sizes, and from what I was told, what is there is what they have.

FYE also has some signings at the store over the next few days. Here’s what’s taking place at the store:

Tyler Bates signing – Friday 4PM
David Kirschner and Don Mancini – Child’s Play signing – Friday 6PM
Ron English – Cereal Killers – Saturday 5PM
Joe Simko – Garbage Pail Kids – Saturday 6PM

Again, you can catch FYE over at the Horton Plaza from now through Sunday!

Mikaela’s Journey To SDCC 2019: Part I

by Mikaela Maxwell

It’s been a few years now of watching Derek prep for SDCC, helping to pack up his belongings, and hiding secret love notes for him to find throughout his week away.

Derek and Matt getting some scoots in at SDCC 2018

The past couple of years, I’ve begun to dip my toe in the Geekscape waters… well, more like wade in all the way to my lady bits! I’ve been playing some games, doing some writing, jumping on podcasts, and most importantly turning our @GeekscapeForever insta into a cosplay dream scene. Last year I was able to funnel the on-site Geekscapist’s experiences at SDCC onto our Instagram page from afar.

Sweet cosplay spotted at SDCC 2018

But this year is a game changer. This year I’m diving in head first!

This year Mikaela is on scene at SDCC, taking it all in for the first time ever, and documenting every step of the way for the world to watch on @GeekscapeForever.

I am so incredibly excited… and nervous… and stoked about all the incredible things that are about to happen!

My journey started with a 2 AM wake up call from Derek, after sleeping a grand total of 3.5 hours, and a trek out to the airport with a Grumpasaurus Rex at my side! (Apparently Derek got even less sleep than I did, zero hours, and was not up to his usual perky standards!)

So excited to be taking off on our adventure, who needs a full night’s sleep!?

Despite our lack of sleep and moderate ability to function, we arrived at the airport and got off the ground without a hitch! I was once again reminded of how lucky we are to live on the west coast, watching a ferry float by as we began our flight toward Seattle. And on the next flight we got to fly right next to a mountain top poking through the clouds, so freaking beautiful! I have to remember how freaking fortunate we are to be on this amazing adventure when we are standing in yet another line a couple days from now!

Maybe Mt. Rainier?

On our flight from Seattle we listened to the pre-SDCC 2019 edition of the Geekscape podcast, and oh man was it ever funny, and not SDCC related at all! I don’t think I’ve ever laughed out loud so much while jammed into a giant flying air sausage with a bunch of other humans. It was also super cute to watch Derek get increasingly excited as we simultaneously got closer to San Diego and got closer to him seeing his friends after so long. I’m excited to see Jonathan again, to meet the rest of this posse that Derek loves so much, and to experience this amazing event that has such a huge impact on his life!

It’s funny – I’ve been so focused on prepping for doing the work we’ve come here to do, and figuring out what I want to check out, who I want meet, visiting people etc., that it never really hit me that we were actually just going on a sweet adventure to another part of the world as well! That is until we walked out of the airport and up to a sidewalk lined with freaking palm trees! Oh Hiiii California, we are in you!! So now I’m just getting extra excited. What a freaking adventure this week is gonna be!

San Diego is pretty amazing as soon as you step off the plane

We arrived at our hotel, which is basically 2 doors down from the convention centre and I felt like a small town poor girl showing up at a super fancy place where I didn’t belong, but was so thrilled to be there! Our hotel has amazing views of all the activities that are being put assembled around the convention centre and it’s pretty freaking great! And to top off the hotel experience somehow Jonathan, Matt, and Derek and I somehow all managed to arrive, from all over the place, there within minutes of each other!?

As quickly as we assembled, we peaced outta the hotel room and headed over to the convention centre to put together the booth. First though we had to stop off at ROCKIN BAJA For the infamous mango salsa! Honestly, it totally lived up to its hype and I would eat it any day! While there we also met up with Gui, another Geekscapist! This is my first time meeting Gui and Matt and I can see why Derek loves these people. These are truly his people, and all three of them are lovely!

The boys in their happy place… now where’s that mango salsa!?

After eating we truly went to set up the booth. Walking into the convention centre was pretty insane. I’ve been to a few different conventions now, though none of them at this scale, and I’ve never been behind the scenes on it before. It was super neat to walk into the chaos of hundreds of giant booths being madly assembled in a rush to be ready for Wednesday. It’s so crazy to have the curtain pulled back and see that all of this comes together just like anything else, with hard work and man power.

Setting up our booth was fun, I got to figure out how to put up the back drop, and meet a couple friends of Matt’s who came to help out. At one point we realized that the table cloth had been forgotten in LA. But then Gui and I came up with the great idea of covering the entire table in Geekscape post cards and the table top ended up looking soooo badass. So if you’re around come on by and check it out at booth 3919, just don’t set anything down on it cause you’ll never be able to find it again 😂

Oh… what booth is this again!?

After getting the booth half set up, sweating sooo much, and deciding the rest could be done tomorrow, we split up and Derek went to track down a sweet Stranger Things Soundtrack cassette tape At the FYE shop. Meanwhile Jon, Gui, and I finished the sweet table top and headed out to meet up with everyone else for dinner. We ended up at the Coin-Op Game Room for dins and drinks and loud conversation. Then split off again to do a couple errands before rendezvousing back at the hotel. What a freaking day.

It’s been a pretty crazy, unbelievable, overwhelming day. My heart feels full and my body feels tired and we haven’t even started yet!? And I am so ready to see what tomorrow brings!

Geekscape 515: The SDCC 2019 Preview With Matt Kelly!

by Jonathan

San Diego Comic Con 2019 is upon us once again! What is in store for all of us as we venture into “Nerd Spring Break”!?! Geekscape’s Matt Kelly joins us on the show to break down everything that’s happening at the Geekscape booth and what we’re looking forward to! Along the way we share our love for ‘Stranger Things’ Season 3, Matt dives into the gator horror film ‘Crawl’, I do my best to fix pro wrestling and we sing all the way to San Diego (well… kinda). This is a PACKED episode so enjoy! And see you at SDCC 2019!

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SDCC 2019: Amazon Prime Video Plans Massive 60,000 Square-Foot Activation!

by Derek Kraneveldt

It’s still crazy to me that San Diego Comic-Con 2019 is just three weeks away.

For the seventh year in a row, I’ll descend into San Diego with 130,000+ others, including my longtime family at Geekscape, and for the first time, my fiancé Mikaela.

As cool as the show floor, the exclusives (I can’t wait to see what Mondo reveals this year), the panels (the WWE/Mattel panel is a highlight every year), and the general experience are, one of my favourite parts of each convention is the incredible offsite activations that studios, video game publishers, and production companies put together.

Amazon’s Fire TV to the Future offsite last year had a number of cool photo ops and demonstrations (Mikaela, we still need that Alexa-enabled Dolby Atmos soundbar), and The Tick Takeover from the year before was an absolute blast as well.

This year, the company is focussing exclusively on three properties, and it sounds like it’s set to be their best offering yet.

It’s all about The Boys (which premieres on July 26th), Carnival Row (coming on August 30th), and season four of The Expanse (which doesn’t yet have a release date, but is set to drop later this year.

The Amazon Prime Video Experience will be open Thursday, July 18th, to Sunday, July 21st, and here’s what attendees can expect:

Located on the corner of MLK and 1st, fanboys and fangirls will be drawn in to the Amazon Prime Video Experience by the sight of a 40-foot tower adorned with giant LED screens that will be playing scenes from The Boys, Carnival Row and The Expanse. Comic-Con attendees will also be treated to live, show-specific performances taking place atop the multi-level tower.

Once inside, attendees will receive collectible gold and silver coins which they can use to further explore the activation. Fans can begin their day covering up the crime scene of a superhero kidnapping at the Audio Visual shop where Hughie works on The Boys. On the opposite end of the space, a Rocinante spaceship is positioned that will take adventure-seekers on a United Nations peacekeeping mission to a newly colonized planet seen in The Expanse. Guests can also discover the Carnival Row universe in which humans and exotic creatures coexist before entering The Forbidden Lounge, a neo-Victorian decorated hideaway venue, to enjoy a special performance. Amazon Prime Video collaborated with LG within the series activations to provide a premiere viewing experience for attendees.

After exploring the shows, guests can escape the summer heat and relax under a tented awning with refreshing beverages and a selection of mouthwatering bites, including Carl’s Jr., which will provide burgers on-site for press and fans as part of The Boys campaign. Cosplayers can even find a Cosplay Photography Corner within the walls of the Amazon Prime Video Experience, where a lifestyle photographer will be onsite to take professional portraits as digital takeaways.

Amazon Prime Video will also host numerous panels for series like Undone, The Boys, Carnival Row, The Expanse, and The Man in the High Castle. There are also a couple of incredible-sounding parties and premieres planned, including The Boys on Friday, and Carnival Row on Saturday.

Colour us excited. Take a look at a few renderings of the upcoming activation below. Look for our coverage of the Amazon Prime Video Experience the week of July 16th, and if you’ll be in San Diego for SDCC, you better be planning to go yourself!

The Expanse render.
The Expanse render.
The Boys render.
The Boys render.
Carnival Row render.
Carnival Row render.

SDCC 2018: I Lost My Mind At The Amazing ‘Mr. Mercedes’ Offsite!

by Derek Kraneveldt

Before last year’s SDCC, I had never heard of Mr. Mercedes.

The property is a trilogy of novels written by Stephen King, and last year a ten-episode TV series premiered on the America-only Audience Network. The series had a big presence at last year’s Wired Cafe, and the premise intrigued me immediately, but I somehow forgot all about the series once I returned to Canada.

Last month I finally decided to give the series a shot (the only place that you can see it in Canada is through iTunes), and I quickly became obsessed. I binged all ten episodes in just a few days, and have been talking about it constantly to pretty much anyone that will listen to me every since. The series is an incredibly dark and horrifically disturbing look into the mind of the insane (yet very human) villain that is Brady Hartsfelt, and a depressed, retired detective named Bill Hodges who simply seems to be trying to find his place in a world that doesn’t need him anymore. Every episode of the series impressed the hell out of me, and many featured scenes so disturbing that they stuck with me for days. My fiancé even began watching the show while I was away in San Diego this week, and this was her initial response when I ask her how it was going:

I was beyond excited to see that Mr. Mercedes would be returning to San Diego for this year’s Comic-Con. Not only was the series again a sponsor of the always-appreciated Wired Cafe (and was plastered in giant form across the face and elevators of the Omni hotel), but there was also an amazing offsite even being hosted just a few blocks away.

I was lucky enough to attend the offsite on Friday morning, and now that the convention is over I can absolutely say that it was a highlight of this year’s trip. Everything present was an absolute dream for fans of the show, whether it was the augmented reality game played on your own (or supplied) phone, the scavenger hunt that would net you swag ranging from Mr. Mercedes pins to unique San Diego themed t-shirts, the lithograph photo booth that morphs your face into the show’s logo, the multiple sets built up with screen-used props from the show, the screening room, or the VR escape room – every piece of this event felt fully realized, and as soon as it came to an end, all that I wanted to do was go through it all again.

I started with the VR escape room. Essentially, you’re locked in Brady’s lair with a bomb and a countdown timer, and have a few moments (I’m not sure exactly how long, but it all went pretty quickly) to explore the area in order to find clues to disarm it. The entire time, Brady is mocking you (using that creepy, computery voice used in the show), telling you that you’re going to fail, and the like. You’ll move around the lair looking for things that stand out (happy face tennis ball, Brady’s brother’s fire truck, etc) and slowly figure out the eight character password). I ran out of time just as I figured out what the word was (and kind of felt a dummy for not realizing it sooner), the bomb went off, and I lost. If you managed to beat escape the room, you’d earn a t-shirt that states “I Escaped Brady’s Lair” before moving on to the next section.

There were several sets from the series that were rebuilt for the convention, including Finder’s Keepers Investigative Services, Brady’s hospital room, Supreme Electronics, and fittingly in the basement of the offsite’s location, Brady’s lair. The coolest part of all of these sets were that they were dressed using actual props from the show – the gravestones in Brady’s lair are his family’s actual gravestones, the rock memorializing the victim’s of the Mercedes attack is the actual rock from the show, the desk in Finder’s Keepers is Holly’s actual desk, and the journal in Brady’s lair is the actual on-camera journal from the show as well. I was simply enthralled with all of this, and spent so much time in every room just exploring everything that I could.

























Speaking of exploring, the Mr. Mercedes offsite also offered a pretty cool augmented reality game (as mentioned above). Outside of the building a QR code was posted that linked you to the app, and once inside there are 10 ‘tags’ hidden throughout the location. Point your phone’s camera at these tags, and augmented reality images of other significant items or props will pop up on your display, and you’ll even see bits of dialogue between Brady and Hodges. Pretty neat, and pretty different from anything I’d seen at one of these events before.



Inside of Finder’s Keepers, there was also a cool photo booth that ‘morphed’ your face with that of the Mr. Mercedes logo. You could email this to yourself, but it was also printed off on a neat 3D lenticular that changes the image depending on the angle you’re looking at it from. This quickly became one of my favourite pieces of swag from the entire convention.

After flowing through the basement and gawking at Brady’s lair for what felt like forever, we were taken into a connected screening room. Here we were shown a lengthy featurette showing us where the characters are as we come into season two, and it also discussed how the stakes will be set now that Brady is apparently brain-dead in a hospital bed. We were then treated to a striking scene that takes place in episode three of the upcoming season. Luckily I’d watched episodes one and two just a few days prior, because I’d have been left scratching my head otherwise, but with the context of the previous episodes I cannot freaking wait to see more.

Following the screening room, we were treated to some swag on our way to the exit (including an awesome SDCC-focussed t-shirt that says “I Lost My Mind In San Diego”). I had taken so long looking at all of the set pieces that there were only a few of us left at this point, and as we approached the exit doors our PR host kindly let us know that some of the cast was coming through the experience, and that we could come back around and check things out. Much of the cast had already made their way to the next section at this point, and I didn’t want to intrude (especially as this was likely one of their few times of mostly peace this entire week), but Justine Lupe (Holly) and director Jack Bender were hanging out in Finder’s Keepers, and when the super-nice PR guide asked if I wanted a photo with them I absolutely had to say yes. Jack’s episodes of Lost are pretty much my favourite episodes of TV ever, and to speak with him for a couple of minutes, and to get to tell him that (that same thing that he’s probably heard over, and over, and over again) felt important to me.


In any case, 1200 words later, you better believe that I had an amazing time at this offsite. The design and care that the team put into building this event was truly spectacular, and for a show that’s only available on one network they are pushing this thing hard. I think that Mr. Mercedes is one of the most criminally underrated shows currently on television, and I believed that this offsite must have put some eyes on the series.

Mr. Mercedes returns on August. 22 on the Audience Network.

https://youtu.be/79Px8KWEdMM

SDCC 2018: Visiting ‘Purge City’ Made Me Want To Hunt For A Green Card!

by Derek Kraneveldt

Briefly: 2018 was far and away the year of standout offsites events.

I spent some time detailing Purge City in my Friday recap, but this offsite was so impressive that it deserved some space on its own.

The event was put together to advertise and celebrate USA Network’s upcoming The Purge 10-episode TV series, which “follows several seemingly unrelated characters living in a small city. Tying them all together is a mysterious savior who’s impeccably equipped for everything the night throws at them. As the clock winds down with their fates hanging in the balance, each character is forced to reckon with their pasts as they discover how far they will go to survive the night.”

While the film series has been fairly hit or miss for me (an amazing concept that isn’t always that well executed), I was already invested in the idea of a TV series, even before I visited Purge City.

Purge City was a parody of the Party City brand of party preparation stores (couldn’t figure that out from the title, could you?), and the event has to be the most immersive offsite that I’ve been to in years, as every single actor in the venue was in full character 100% of the time. They often had creepy smiles, and were constantly asking patrons what they were doing for the Purge. When asked, I noted that I was from Canada so I wasn’t used to purging, and the employees were happy to offer suggestions. Suggestions ranged from hiding or staying in, to taking me through some of their most popular weapon choices for first-time Purgers – one of the employees even said they were sorry that those in Canada didn’t have the opportunity to Purge, noting just how prosperous things have been since the 28th amendment came to pass.

The store (which I impressively saw being built just a couple of days before) was filled with amazing merchandise, some available for fans, while other (larger or more violent-looking items) were set for display only.

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Upon entry, patrons received 20 ‘Purge Bucks’ to spend on whatever they wanted. You could grab a basket, and choose from t-shirts for 15 Purge Bucks, hats for 12, temporary tattoos, candles, energy drinks, greeting cards, stain ‘depurgent’, and even more. Alongside the phenomenal greeting cards, there was also a tablet that Purgers could use to send equally hilarious e-cards to friends, some of which even allowed you to upload your own photos. I picked up a t-shirt, a wonderful replica of the 28th amendment to the constitution (which is when the Purge was added), and a greeting card that said ‘Live, Laugh, Purge’ on it. This totalled 20 Purge Bucks, and I also received a helium balloon and a reusable ‘Purge City’ bag upon checkout (the latter I cannot wait to use back home, regardless of all of the weird looks I’ll receive).

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The merchendise was fantastic, and I absolutely loved the ability to tailor your swag to your own preferences – that said, the very best part of the event had to be the actors/employees. The week must have been incredibly busy and inexplicably stressful, but they just seemed so thrilled and excited to help patrons ensure that their Purge would be a good one. In the ‘demo’ are, the actors really had an opportunity to shine, as every half hour or so they would show off some of the fun new products that Purge City had available for this year’s Purge, including a ‘Purge Night Cake Cutter’, which was a cake baking kit and knife that would cut your Purge night celebration cake into 6 or 12 identical pieces. One of the pieces had a special, limited edition ‘New Founding Father’ figure inside, and whomever’s piece contained the figure would have to do a dare at the discretion of the host. I captured this demonstration on video, and it was so hilarious that I had a huge grin on my face the entire time.

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The other demo that I was present for had the employees showing off a new stain ‘depurgent’ (see what they did there?), which had volunteers from the crowd splattering liquid (blue liquid like the classic paper towel or sanitary pad commercials, but they definitely hinted that it would also work on blood) on some white shirts, and showing just how much better their formula was than ‘the other guys’ at removing said stains.

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The setup really felt just like a real store, and I spent the better part of an hour absorbing absolutely everything that I could. Every aspect of this setup was impressive, from the swag you could take home, to the security system demonstration (catch a quick video below of the system being demoed to The Purge cast member Fiona Dourif), to the weapon setups or the silly signage that was all around the store – it really made preparing for the Purge feel like preparing for a party… instead of the absolute most terrifying thing in that could ever possibly exist.

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I was obsessed with this offsite, and as such, I took a myriad of photos to remember it by. Be sure to take a close look at all of the hilarious greeting cards, shirts, and other items,and be sure to let us know what you think!

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The Purge commences (the TV series, not the real thing, obviously) on September 4th, and you better believe I’ll be watching!

SDCC 2018: Derek’s Long- Winded SDCC Recap – Saturday

by Derek Kraneveldt

Well, today was far, far more relaxed than any other day of this year’s convention. We all turned in fairly early last night after laughing our asses off at Shane’s lack of ABBA knowledge and a myriad of other things (though by ‘early’, I mean that I finally stopped writing after midnight long after everyone else was asleep).

I woke up today just after 7 (to an empty hotel room, aside from Shane who was still fast asleep on the floor) feeling well rested and energetic. I wanted to be on the floor at show-open as a must-have Mondo print (Boris Pelcer’s Drive poster) was set to drop right away.

After the rough entry that I experienced on Thursday, things seemed to go far more smoothly this morning. When I arrived at the convention centre, there was already a door letting people in (to the centre, not to the exhibit hall floor) so I jumped in so that I could feel that sweet, sweet air conditioning. It didn’t really seem like anyone knew where to send me (as a press member, rather than an attendee or professional), so they just sent me through to the professional entrance… which worked out really well as I ended up on the show floor 15 minutes early.

Mondo somehow already had a huge line, and it was pretty clear that a lot of these people were working in groups to simply buy these super-limited edition screen prints in order to resell them.

I bought the Drive print, but there was something else that I wasn’t expecting. Mondo released another, surprise Jurassic Park print by an artist that Mikaela really loves (and so do I) named Daniel Danger. Daniel did the Crimson Peak piece that I picked up a couple of years ago, as well as The Shape of Water print that I’d be trying to pick up later in the day. This Jurassic Park print was just as gorgeous, was super limited to 125 pieces, and was signed as well. I wasn’t going to buy it, until the employee at Mondo confirmed that it was in fact Daniel Danger, and was so freaking limited. Mikaela was at work, so she was unable to talk me out of it, so I picked that one up as well.

Every time I buy something, I freak out about spending money irresponsibly and Mikaela has to talk me off a ledge, and this time was no different. She’s really a saint for putting up with my bullshit for this long.

Following my purchase, I carefully returned the prints to the Geekscape booth, which was terrifying as the show floor opened, was flooded, and the prints were loose and would have been so easy to damage. Matt put them aside, and I went on a hunt to find some appropriate poster tubes and after what seemed like forever I managed to find some. I returned to the Geekscape booth, rolled the prints, and set off again. During my travels, I found the creepy as fuck tooth kid from the criminally underrated Channel Zero, Deadpool’s hilarious animatronic band, some classic protesters (and hilarious parody protesters), and more!

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While I was on the floor, Shane attended an Aquabats concert (and band that I’d never heard of until I met him, and a band that I’m pretty sure nobody in Canada knows about), and he looked so incredibly happy it the photos that he shared. Seeing a smile that big, and the genuine on his face absolutely warmed my heart. After missing last year’s event, I’m glad he looks like he’s having such a great time.

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Courtney and I grabbed a quick bite (and a couple of beverages) at the Wired Cafe before I returned to the convention centre for the Expanding Sea of Thieves panel. There was a huge line for this, far longer than I would have anticipated, and I was pretty worried that I wasn’t going to get in. I actually think the line was cut off just a few people after me, so I really lucked out, as the panel was interesting as hell for fans of the game. The panel opened with an epic new video of the upcoming skeleton crews, which showed them preparing for battle, and showed the ship diving under the ocean before the Cursed Sails splash appears. The crew then celebrated the myriad of Pirate Legends that were present in the room (a lot of them somehow had t-shirts with their GamerTags on their backs), before diving into the comic book and novel that are in the works. The novel is called Athena’s Fortune, and will be about some of the first pirates’ journey to the Sea of Thieves. The team noted that there are also references to some real players in the book, and that this is really the start of an expanded universe that will soon be referenced in the game.

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I’ll hopefully have a dedicated article up about this panel in the next few days, but watching this team so passionately talk about the game and their plans for its future made me so excited to be a player. I’ve loved this world since the very first time that I played the beta, and I cannot wait to see what it evolves into. The crew even gave out some time-limited Perfect Dark inspired DLC, which I was not expecting, but which I cannot wait to see in game. Amazing.

Following this panel, I essentially ran back to Mondo to join the giant line for Daniel Danger’s The Shape of Water print that was set to drop at 3PM. The line was pretty long (and was capped immediately after I got in it), but after about an hour it was my turn to pick up the print. Mikaela talked me off the ledge again, and I simply cannot wait to put this beautiful art up on our walls.

I brought the prints back to the hotel, and then it was time for another amazing event. I’d been invited to a wine-tasting event in celebration of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Emmy-nominated series StarTalk. Shane and Courtney were coming with me, and Shane decided that as it was a ‘wine tasting’, people would be dressed up, and that we should do the same. Shane put on the second bold suit that I’d seen him wear this week, and I brought nothing like that, but put on jeans and a button-up. We very warmly walked the numerous blocks to the event’s location, took the elevator up to the rooftop bar, and very quickly realized that everyone else was wearing shorts and t-shirts. Damnit, Shane.

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The event itself was awesome. There was delicious food, bourbon, wine, and beer available. Once the sun dropped below some nearby buildings things cooled off immensely, and it was also one of the only parties that I’d been to this week that was not PACKED (the invitation said intimate, and I really appreciate how chill it was), and the only event where the music was at a volume appropriate enough to still have a conversation. It was great to be at an event with these friends that I don’t see very often and actually be able to speak, instead of just look at each other (or nod like you heard what they said). Neal seemed like a super nice guy, and was happy to chat with attendees and to take photos. There was an adorable lady there that looked as though she was going to cry the entire time that she was in Neal’s presence, and I’m super glad they were able to spend some time together. I also saw WWE’s Cathy Kelly there, which was pretty rad as I’m a big fan of her onscreen presence. We watched Neal play a giant game of Jenga with a Nat Geo (which airs StarTalk) exec, which was pretty impressive as the game went on as long as it possibly could, with Neal finally losing in the end. A huge thanks to National Geographic for hosting this super memorable event!

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Following the wine tasting, Courtney, Shane, Matt, and I went to Panda Express at the Horton Plaza. We made it just in time to order before they closed, and while it was slim pickins’ in terms of food choices, they still had their to die for orange chicken. I was so wonderful that Matt had two orders of it.

There was a memorial toast planned for Jon Schnepp at the Grand Hyatt, so we all made a stop there to check things out. Shortly after, video came from Hall H showing Kevin Smith’s moment of silence / tribute to Jon, which was super touching. Schnepp was always a huge part of Comic-Con (I feel like especially for Geekscape, as Jon’s booth has been right beside ours for years), and its awesome for someone like Smith to use their limited panel time to remember that he’s been lost.

Gui has been trying to get me to go to some country music bar for what seems like hours at this point, so I’m not sure if I’ll end up there, or end up just falling asleep, but it’s absolutely crazy to think that when I wake up tomorrow, this will essentially be over for another year.

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Tomorrow is likely to be a very relaxed day of walking the floor before packing up after the show closes, so I’m not completely sure if another recap will be necessary. In any case, if you’ve come this far, I truly thank you for reading along. I began writing these pieces as a means to remember what I’d seen, heard, attended, and accomplished at these events, and it turns out that some people like reading what I’ve been up to as well!

So, if tomorrow is interesting, I’ll see you then, and if not… we’ll see you at PAX West next month!

SDCC 2018: Derek’s Long-Winded SDCC Recap – Friday

by Derek Kraneveldt

Read pre-convention and preview night here.
Read my Thursday recap here.

What a freaking day.

Just when I thought I that things could not possibly be as cool today as they were yesterday (I’m still reeling about the WWE stuff at PetCo Park), this morning began with three awesome back to back offsite events.

The day began fairly early, as I had to be at the Amazon Fire TV to the Future offsite event for an 8AM start time. The event showed off all of the neat things that you could do with the FireTV product line (including the new FireTV Cube, which also acts as a smart-home hub). A lot of people seemed super impressed with the smart-home stuff, but as someone who has been using Philips Hue lights and an Alexa-enabled TV for some time, the Cube seemed a little slow to respond at times (I think it’s likely due to networking issues more than anything, seeings as this was as temporary building.

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Employees demonstrated Dolby Atmos via a Vizio sound bar (Mikaela, I’m sorry but we need a new soundbar), showing off the newest trailer for Jack Ryan which premieres on Amazon Prime on August 31st and looks freaking awesome. I also feel like this thing has been in the works for freaking ever, as I’m pretty sure that there were buildings covered in Jack Ryan shit last year.

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There were a number of photo ops throughout the exhibit as well, including Game of Thrones (the iron throne, of course), The Good Place, Westworld, Jack Ryan, and more, as well as a few neat installations like a ‘Backyard Cinema Club’, a giant overgrown remote that looked like something out of The Last of Us, and an area with themed cocktails.

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It was fun, and it was air conditioned (which is pretty rare for some of these offsite events, and it was much. It’s also a little off the beaten path, so from what I’ve seen the line hasn’t even been that crazy. It’s open through Sunday, so you should probably check it out.

Next up was one of the events that I was most excited for coming into this week. Last year’s Mr. Mercedes sponsored Wired Cafe was the first I’d heard of the title (in book or television form), and I absolutely loved the series when I eventually watched it (and by watched I mean binged super quickly). I was lucky enough to see the fantastic first two episodes of the second season before I left for California last week, and I was beyond ready to see what AT&T and the Audience Network had in store for attendees.

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The entire offsite was fantastic. There were rebuilds of some of the sets (including Brady’s coma room, Brady’s lair, Supreme Electronics, and more), a VR escape room that had you locked in Brady’s lair searching for clues before a bomb goes off (with Brady’s creepy, computerize voice talking in your ear the whole time and creeping the shit out of you). There was also a neat augmented reality application that you could download in order to partake in a scavenger hunt around the exhibit. You could find clues that would unlock dialog between Bill and Brady, and it was a super fun way to make the offsite more interactive. There was even a cool photo op that morphed you into the show’s poster – they even print it into one of those cool 3D lenticular things that were popular in the 90’s.

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Attendees could also find physical clues throughout the exhibit that would earn them stamps, and at the end of the event you’d get some swag based on how many stamps you earned, ranging from pins to bags to some sweet San Diego exclusive t-shirts.

I was also there at the perfect time. As I was coming back up from Brady’s lair, the PR organizer let me know that some of the cast and crew was coming through if I wanted to check things out. I ended up grabbing a photo with Justine Lupe and director Jack Bender, and even had a (very brief) change to chat with Bender about Lost (which was mostly me telling him that his episodes are my very favourite episodes of TV).

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Look for my dedicated article about the in the next couple of days, but you should definitely be getting in line for this one (and yes, I realize that I’m just telling you to get in line for everything – it turns out that shit is cool at Comic-Con, okay?)

Following Mr. Mercedes, I walked just down the block again to the Purge City offsite (super convenient placement). I was inexpressibly excited to see this activation, simply because it looked fucking hilarious, and the premise is amazing. There’s a ten-episode The Purge TV series set to hit USA Network in September, and this was a fantastic way to advertise. Purge City has to be the most immersive offsite that I’ve been to in years, as every single actor in the venue was in full character 100% of the time. They often had creepy smiles, and were constantly asking patrons what they were doing for the Purge. When asked, I noted that I was from Canada so I wasn’t used to purging, and the employees were happy to offer suggestions.

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Upon entry, you’re given 20 ‘Purge Bucks’ to spend on whatever you want. There are shirts available for 15 Purge Bucks, hats for 12, temporary tattoos, candles, energy drinks, and even more. You can grab a basket and fill up! I picked up a t-shirt, a replica of the 28th amendment to the constitution (which is when the purge was added), and a greeting card that said ‘Live, Laugh, Purge’ on it. This totalled 20 Purge Bucks, and I also received a helium balloon and a reusable ‘Purge City’ bag upon checkout.

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I spent a long time in Purge City absorbing as much as I possibly could. Every single piece of merchendise (whether actually for sale or for display only) was totally believable, and so freaking well done. I also had a chance to spend some time in the Purge City ‘demo’ area, which had employees demoing some new products coming out for this year’s Purge.

Be sure to watch this demo of the ‘Purge Day Precision Cake Cutter’:

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Take a look at some photos from Purge City below, and be on the lookout for even more in the next day or two. For SDCC attendees, Purge City is open tomorrow from 11AM to 7PM, and on Sunday from 11AM-4PM.

I packed a lot into my morning, and decided to keep things mostly relaxed for the rest of the day. I met up with Courtney and Shane at the Wired Cafe for a quick drink (thanks again, Wired) and to watch the rest of the vultures scramble for the donuts, sandwiches, and sliders that were coming out regularly.

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We also saw our first protesters today, and Courtney got really mad at the one that said “Vaccines Cause Autism”. There are always some parody protesters as well though, which is always pretty hilarious.

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Finally, I hit the show floor. Naturally, I b-lined it directly to the Mondo booth. Matt asked me to grab the Die Hard print for a friend of his (and then somehow did not know how big or expensive prints can be), and the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom prints were also still in stock. I wandered around for a bit and tried to call Mikaela multiple times so that she could talk me out of buying things, but she didn’t pick up… so I bought the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Mondo print. I also scoped out a sweet Sea of Thieves shirt and replica coin that I haven’t bit the bullet on quite yet (but there are still two more days to do so). Next up, I went to the ABC booth to look for some Golden Girls items for Mikaela, and then I doubled back to Factory Entertainment to pick up the exclusive die-cast S.S. Georgie replica and an exclusive Goonies bottle opener (which was my second choice after seeing that the Jurassic Park raptor claw bottle opener was sold out). At checkout, when asked if I needed anything else, I joked “Not unless you have any more of those Jurassic Park bottle openers left,” to which they said “Actually we just found one.”

Safe to say, I bought it. I actually meant to grab it instead of the Goonies one, but there was a bit of a misunderstanding and somehow I ended up with both. Then Mikaela had to talk me off the ledge because I was freaking out about how much money I’d spent. She’s lovely and I don’t know what I would do without her.

I took a quick walk over to the Castle Rock exhibit, which had about a 120 minute line that I didn’t feel like standing in. I’m still super impressed with that house they built, and the car (and creepy kid) in the water make more some great photo ops. There were some Hulu representatives in the area giving out neat lightning/micro-USB powered fans (it’s hot out) in exchange for doing a survey about how you used Hulu. I said “I’m from Canada,” and they just said “Sorry,” and handed me the fan.

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Shane, Courtney, and I grabbed some food – this was at like 5:30, and I’d intended to grab something small so I could eat with Matt at 8:30, but by the time we’d found something that didn’t have a super long wait it was after 7:00. I had delicious nachos.

At this point in the day, I’d been out and about for its entirety and I needed to get to work. We made a quick stop at the PetCo Interactive Zone to see Greg Grunberg, Adrian Pasdar, and friends ‘Band From TV’ play a few songs, and then we returned the hotel in order to get writing.

Writing was tough, but for good reasons. The room was full of dudes – Jonathan, Gui, Shane, and Matt were all in the room, and over the course of the night I learned that there were like 15 Puppet Master movies, that Shane didn’t know that Mamma Mia was based on the music of Abba, and a bunch of other shit.

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But here we are. Today was a fun as hell, and then very odd day – of course I knew that things with Jon Schnepp were bad, but I hadn’t been online in hours and I only learned of his death from Geekscape Alumni Eric Diaz. I’d only met Jon a few times, but I truly enjoyed the conversations that we’d had over the years, and watching him and Jonathan talk about things at a way deeper level than I could ever hope to understand was always fascinating. Schnepp had the SDCC booth next to ours for the past few years, and it’s super weird and very sad to look at that booth and not see him. I cannot imagine the heartbreak that his partner Holly and his family are feeling right now. A ‘Get Better Jon Schnepp’ fund was set up last week, and is still ongoing at this time to help cover his medical expenses.

That’s Friday. Thanks so much for reading this far, and look for more tomorrow.

SDCC 2018: Derek’s Long-Winded SDCC Recap – Thursday

by Derek Kraneveldt

Read pre-convention and preview night here.

Today started off a bit rough.

Naturally, it’s the first full day of the convention, there are new volunteers all over the place, and it’s one of the busiest events in North America, let alone San Diego.

This morning I was in a bit of a rush, as the panel that I’d wanted to see more than any other (the WWE/Mattel fan panel, naturally) was set to begin at 11:15am. Last year there were several panels prior to this one, so after each panel a myriad of people would leave, and I would creep up to get a better seat. This year there was just one panel before, so I needed to get there quickly.

But that didn’t exactly work out.

The San Diego Convention Centre is huge There are doorways (8 doors wide) marked A-G, and then a separate entrance for the ~6000+ seat Hall H (which holds the biggest announcements, and which people began lining up for on Tuesday). The auditorium was set to open at 9am (though was always advertised for 9:30), and in trying to find where to line up at 8:45, I started at G, was told to go to A, who told me to go to C, who told me to go to F, who told me to go back to G where I (and eventually thousands upon thousands of other people) gathered (likely after going through the same runaround that I did.

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Then 9AM came and went. Then 9:30 came and went and it was hot as hell and there was absolutely no shade and everyone was shoulder to shoulder so it felt like forever. At 9:40 an employee came out and told us that the doors next to the ones we were gathered at would be the ones to open first and people started freaking out. Screaming, yelling, swearing around little kids, probably some crying, wailing out “You’re killing us,” the works, really. Sure, it was annoying (and warm… so warm), but turning into a freaking baby was not at all appropriate.

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Eventually I made it into the convention centre, and still made it into the room where the WWE panel would be held with time to spare. I grabbed a single seat in the front row, albeit at a super extreme angle, hoping that after the first panel finished I’d be able to move in a bit more central.

The first panel was about kids who do voiceover work, and included talent such as Zach Gallison, Kristen Li, Layla Hayes, Justin Felbinger, and Sean-Ryan Petersen reading scripts in character, chatting about who they’d like to work with, and a bunch more.

The panel ended, almost nobody left (I managed to move two seats closer to the centre) and after a short time the panel began. Cathy Kelly came out first, followed by two dudes from Mattel (sorry, I don’t remember their names), Curt Hawkins, Zack Ryder, Becky Lynch (who was a surprise), AJ Styles (who was a huge surprise), and Matt Hardy (who was announced for the panel, but who I’d forgotten would be there. The crowd went freaking crazy for nearly everyone.

The panel started with some Mattel announcements, including some amazing new additions to the Elite series of figures and a technology called True FX which is a new inkjet printing process that will launch in 2019, and will add even more detail to the already impressive figures.

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they showed off a bunch of new figures (including a Vanguard 1 and Mower of Lawns figure in the Elite series) before taking audience questions. Many of the questions felt similar to those asked at last year’s panel, and the guy who yelled at the Mattel lady last year about missing figures was back again to yell about the lack of B-Team figures even though the B-Team has only been a thing for like five seconds.

One fan asked the superstars to choose someone who no longer wrestles for WWE that they would fight if they could. One crowd member yelled out “BROCK LESNAR” and all of the superstars laughed really hard. It was a freaking hilarious moment.

After the panel ended, I made a quick pit stop at the Wired Cafe for a bite to eat and something to drink (a huge thanks to Wired for hosting us again this year, and be sure to look for some expanded thoughts on this year’s cafe from Shane in the next day or two) before meeting up with Shane and Courtney for the Shadow of the Tomb Raider offsite event at the Moonshine Flats (344 7th Ave).

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This place was bonkers. The bar had been completely transformed into a jungle-like setting, complete with real snakes, tons of foliage, pieces of ancient (I assume) temples, and way way more – there was even a pit of skulls that made for a cool photo op. The most unique part of this offsite however, was the eating challenge. Three volunteers would go to a table that had three covered plates on it, and at the count of three they’d reveal the “exotic” food underneath. On the plate could be a Black Forest Scorpion, a Manchuria Scorpion, a Superworm, a Giant Water Bug (which was regarded as the short straw in this challenge), a Grasshopper, or some Silkworms. If you could eat the entire insect(s) you were able to spin a prize wheel, which could net you a shirt, a year of Xbox Game Pass, a copy of the game when it releases, or raffle tickets that could win you an Xbox One X.

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I did the challenge.

I didn’t want to do the challenge, but Shane and Courtney were being little babies, and if we were going to cover this offsite someone had to do it.

Naturally, I drew the short straw, and had to eat a giant water bug. It was freaking disgusting. Super salty. Super dry (though I think I felt a couple of weirdly moist bits in there too). The other two people finished eating their bugs (I’m not even sure what they had) and then they watched me continue chewing for what felt like forever.

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Naturally, we got this on video, so look for that in the coming days. For now, these photos will have to do.

I also had an opportunity to play a new demo for Shadow of the Tomb Raider which felt fantastic, and would have had me pre-ordering the game if I hadn’t already done that months ago. Naturally, the mechanics in Tomb Raider are already rock solid, so it’s the plot and atmosphere that are really going to make or break this one – we didn’t see too much story in the demo, but of course the game has an incredible team behind it, so I’m not worried at all.

Once we finished up at the Shadow of the Tomb Raider offsite, it was time to get back to work. We went back to the hotel (I wanted to scoot there but nobody else did), and Shane, Courtney, and I all published some articles before heading out again. You can read about my experience at the DC Universe offsite that I mentioned yesterday right here, and additional thoughts on the LAIKA Live experience right here, and you should probably check out this amazing transit station themed after Stranger Things.

Once we split up, Shane and Courtney went back to the floor to check out the Star Wars: Heroes and Villains clothing line, while I went over to PetCo park to check out the Rocket League third birthday party. Somehow the line was tiny (it didn’t stay like this for long), and I was pretty much able to walk right in. I received a cool (and understated) t-shirt, along with a coupon for a free Salty Shores popcorn and drink. The party was actually right on the field, which was pretty cool and made for a few neat photos. The field had some fantastic real-life licensed cars that have in-game counterparts like Batmobiles, the Jurassic Park Jeep, and the DeLorean. There was a gaming area where you could play Rocket League on Switch or PC against other attendees, and a stage with live DJ (and sometimes Greg Miller). There was an awesome looking weird inflatable soccer game that had quite a lineup, and a ton of people were just chilling on the field absorbing everything that was going on around them.

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I knew that WWE Superstar and UpUpDownDown creator Xavier Woods was set to be present at the party, but the event had already been on for an 90 minutes or so when I arrived. It turns out that he and Becky Lynch (who is my favourite female WWE Superstar) were filming an episode of UpUpDownDown on the field. Xavier saw my shirt and called me over (I was wearing my UpUpDownDown shirt) and I made some sort of awkward fool out of myself while he tried to talk to me on camera (sorry Xavier). I was even almost on Xavier and Becky’s team for the inflatable ball soccer thing, but just before this would have happened the WWE decided that they just wanted Becky vs. Xavier. I hung around for a bit longer (which included seeing Xavier face off agains a little kid in Rocket League, and seeing Xavier and Becky dance away at what would be the end of the episode) before heading out to meet up with Shane and Courtney. It was freaking amazing, and it made my convention.

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The rest of the night was pretty relaxed. Shane, Courtney, and I decided to hit up a party sponsored by Lions Gate Games for the Power Rangers Legacy Wars. We didn’t end up making it inside however, as the building was at capacity when we arrived and as we didn’t really feel like waiting (though we were pretty close to the front), so we just grabbed some shitty sandwiches at the first place that didn’t have a line, and returned to the hotel to finish up our articles for the day.

Today was great. It’s now been a full day of San Diego Comic-Con… and I still haven’t even hit the show floor yet. Tomorrow I’ll be busy checking out activations for Amazon Fire TV, Mr. Mercedes, The Purge, and more… plus I need to get my hands on some Mondo prints (which I’ve missed out on so far).

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Thanks for reading this far, and I hope that you come back for more!

Note – sorry about the weird images. Geekscape is having major issues uploading images currently, so I’m making it work any way that I can!

SDCC 2018: Head To The Upside Down At The Coolest Transit Station Ever

by Derek Kraneveldt

Briefly: I love Stranger Things.

Every year at San Diego Comic-Con there’s a ton of cool art, merchandise, cosplay, and more, but I definitely didn’t expect to see this while walking by San Diego’s Convention Centre train/trolley stop.

The entire stop has been converted into a small Stranger Things activation, including the typeface on the signs in the area, and complete with Mind Flayer, missing kid signs, Christmas light alphabet, Dragon’s Lair signage, and more.

Take a look at a few photos from the stop below, and if you want to see things for yourself, just head over to the San Diego Convention Centre train stop!

Sorry again for the imgur links, Geekscape is having some issues uploading images!

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