Part 1: San Diego Comic Convention 2006

A few months ago I entered an online contest at Dark Horse Comics. The grand prize was a trip to the San Diego Comic Con.

The last week of June I got an email, "Congratulations you are our grand prize winner..." My first reaction was "yeah, right." I was sure that this was another piece of junk mail that got past my spam filter. Then I read the message completely. My next thought was "this could be for real." The prize announcement ended with a name and phone number. I called the number and sure enough. A receptionist at Dark Horse Comics answered the phone. I was transferred through to Matt Parkinson, Online Marketing Coordinator. He assured me that this was for real. I had won a trip for two to San Diego to attend Comic Con. The prize included airfare and lodging for 2, $500, passes to the convention and VIP passes to Dark Horse events.

I needed to figure out who my guest would be. Dark Horse wanted to post the winners of the contest as soon as possible. My first call was to my wife, Aneka. We decided that though she has wanted to visit San Diego that I should take someone that would enjoy the Con. That person would be my friend Greg. He and I have a regular date for lunch and then comic shopping at our local comic book shop, Big Brain Comics.

The convention takes over the San Diego Convention Center. This huge building has over half a million square feet of exhibition space and almost 100,000 square feet of meeting rooms. The convention is much like any other professional convention or conference. It consists of an exhibition hall and a program of panel discussions and scholarly presentations. The program also includes a lot of marketing presentations for movies, TV, and comic books.