My Last Comic-Con?

One of hundreds of amazing costumes I saw today. This is a real person, not a mint-in-box action figure.

Looks like no Comic-Con for me next year. For several years I've pre-registered for the next one while I was still at the current one. It took a while to find out where Pre-Registration was and when it was open, but it never took more than an hour. This year, though, things have changed. Now you can only pre-register between 8am to 11am at a hotel away from the Convention, and available passes are limited and distributed over a four-day period. According to reports, even if you got in line before 6 am there was no guarantee that you would get a ticket.  I heard that the line for Pre-Registration on Thursday morning was over a mile long,  and that people have been camping out in line as early as 2 p.m the day before. Now, I have gotten used to the Comic-Con lines for registration and popular panels. I have even been known to camp out in line for important events like the Rose Parade and the Junior Womens' League Rummage Sale but I am older and have more responsibilities now and waiting in line for five hours for the possibility of getting a ticket is no longer an option.  More tickets are supposed to go on sale online "sometime in the fall" so we'll see. I'm not hopeful.

I'll miss Comic-Con. I started going back around 1988, spent many years as a volunteer before I could afford to pay my own way, and I've always enjoyed meeting authors and artists and seeing what was new.  In my ordinary life I do not know many people who are comic book buyers and readers, so it has always been reassuring to go to Comic-Con and find out I am not alone.

I understand why people complained that the four-day-with-preview passes sold out last year to people who were already at the Convention. Those who didn't get their tickets at the Convention had to try to get tickets online and that system did not work very well.

Don't know if this new system is any better.  At least it should guarantee that those who get their tickets this week should be used to waiting in lines.