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SAN DIEGO COMIC CON 2003 (Day
1)
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BONGO COMICS BOOTH
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San Diego Convention Center
- All Quiet Before the Storm
The first day of the Comic-Con is always a bit of a surreal one. The long
drive and anticipation of the next 4 days of festivities always puts me
in a good mood, however, this year for some reason the traffic was horrendous
and it took a good 2 hours each day to get to the Con. Still, the anticipation
more than makes up for it as you first descend the flight of stairs into
the show area. It is a very overwhelming experience.
It usually takes a day to get used to the layout but always a first stop
is the Bongo Comics booth. When I arrived there were a few artists working
the booth and Bongo is always a fun stop with plenty of posters, comics
and of course the accessibility to the artists themselves. Bongo staffs
their booth with Bongo employees and that includes everyone from Managing
Editor Terry Delegeane to Matt Groening's kids. It is always a fun environment.
This year the Bongo booth did something a little differently in that they
did not show any Simpsons or Futurama episodes and instead reserved that
space for the newly released Simpsons pinball machine. Patrons were asked
to limit their playtime to one game at a time and for the most part I think
everyone kept to that rule. Another new twist this year and one that I
am sure revolved around their 10th anniversary bash is that everyday at
3pm they held a raffle and gave out some really cool prizes. There were
signed comics, books, posters and other items with the grand prize being
a boxed set of the Simpsons episode guides. Raffle tickets were distributed
to anyone buying anything from Bongo - buy 1 item and recieve a raffle
ticket. Buy 10 items and recive 10 tickets and so on. Tickets were only
good for that days drawing and you had to be present to win so I am sure
I was not the only one who made many purchases and many trips to the Bongo
booth. Bongo did all they could to ensure people did not walk away empty
handed though as after the prizes were distributed they handed out Futurama
clickers. Oh, the noise they made after each raffle session.
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Bongo Managing Editor Terry
Delegeane Announces the Days Winners as Fans Wait in Anticipation
Something that was also of note on Thursday is that when I first arrived
and hit the Bongo booth I had asked about the new Futurama calendar as
I did not see it out in their sales area. I was told they should be there
any minute as they were coming from the printers. When I returned back
later in the day they were indeed there and for sale as well as Futurama
Comics 14. So both were hot off the press so to speak and I thank the
Bongo staff for working to get both items ready for the show even if it
was just by the hair of their chinny chin chin.
ACME ANIMATION BOOTH
Another booth I have enjoyed going to the past two years now is the ACME 
Animation Archive booth. These guys deal in animation art for a number
of shows but their most notable properties are The Simpsons and Futurama.
While not a retailer they do come to a couple of shows a year and sell
both production art and animation cels. Typically they only sell to animation
art dealers such as Wonderful
World of Animation or Vega
Galleries so it is always nice to see them at the show as they always
do their booth up in a fun way. Last year they had a themed booth of Moe's
Tavern and while they didn't do anything as elaborate as that this year
it was still full of great Simpsons graphics. I picked up three new pieces
over the weekend and all can be seen in the Production
Art section. The pieces are Zoidberg, L'rrr and a group shot of Leela,
Bender, Fry, Zoidberg and Nibbler skipping from The Wiz segment of Anthology
of Interest II. I won't go into how nice the people at ACME are as
I have more to say about them as part of the Day 3 report.
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2 / Day 3 / Day
4
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