Day two of San Diego Comic Con has come and gone! Today was much the same as yesterday for me and my companions (minus the nearly-disasterous travel and hotel excursions), with the exhibition hall still offering so much in the way of explorables that a single day is never enough time for traversing the crammed hallways. Today was apparently the slowest day of the predicted weekend as well, a slightly scary note that leaves me in good mental preperation for some slow in-con travel in the days to come, but hopefully travel no less worth working through.
Today I revisited the CMX portion of DC’s set-up and was pleased to see them unpacking several boxes of the CMX sampler. It’s a nice sized book with a number of titles inside, a great free pick-up to check out some of their new series. For those who go to the table and don’t find the sampler, it’s beneficial to ask the staff on duty for one and they’ll either be able to provide you with one or let you know when more will be put out.
Viz Media also replenished their sampler supplies, offering up multiple different samplers spanning their imprints. They’re a great selection of titles, and a hefty one at that, so the satisfaction of reading them and discovering something new is just as satisfying as getting to waltz away with a handful of free books. The energey of their set-up was ramped up today with more giveaways (including their SDCC-special bags) and quiz contests. On their large multimedia screen they had advertisements for Naoki Urusawa’s Pluto and 20th Century Boys manga series, both of which were fantastically rendered with good music selection and excellant pacing. Regrettably Viz Media does not have the right to play the advertisements online, very sad considering how cool they are and I would very much like to view them again after Comic Con’s end.
My splunking around the exhibition centered garnered a bunch of new purchases for the dwindling remains of my budget and the random finds never cease to be entertaining. From doujinshi to figurines, I’ve no doubt that I’ll still find plenty more tomorrow. The power of near-constant browsing! There are several booths with extensive manga selections which today I steered clear from to save my wallet a quickly finished fate so soon in the weekend. Negative surprises of the day were several booths that specialized in bootlegs, bootlegs as far as the eye can see, many of which for licensed series. Itwas disappointing at a convention that has otherwise proven very on top of all situations.
My return to the Tokyopop booth saw some friendly conversation and watching an eager line of readers taking turns at spinning the Tokyopop wheel in hopes of winning some free stuff. They continue to have a nice selection of advanced copies of new titles, including Kyo Karo Maoh (Vol. 04) and Gravitation Collection (Vol. 02). They’re also selling older volumes of Fruits Basket at a discounted price and still have copies of their free Fruits Basket fanbook.
The DelRey booth did a slight shift in their book presentation today, offering few titles for sale, but several ‘coming soon’ books that you can flip through that aren’t set for release until late summer. This includes the first volume of the upcoming shoujo-fied X-men series, which upon first impressions, is incrediably overdone in its shoujo-overlaying to the point of being unrecognizable as X-men, but still with some quirky visual charm and potentially engaging romances (contrived as they’ll likely be) that make me look forward to reading it.
Alas there were some disappointments of the day when I couldn’t get into either of the event’s manga related panels: Best/Worst Manga of 2008-2009 and Manga: Lost in Translation. Both were high on my list of must-attends but unfortunately even joining the line an hour early wasn’t enough to get me through the doors. In a somewhat stroke of luck from that, my friends and I eagerly entered the line for DC’s world premiere of the Green Lantern animated movie which was an amazing communion of enthusiastic geekery that will likely stand as the highlight of my convention experience.
Tomorrow sees the beginning of the manga industry panels including Viz Media and Yen Press so stay tuned for updates on those tomorrow. If for any soul-shattering reasons I’m unable to attend the panels due to space restrictions, I’ll still be sure to link to posts by those also present at the convention so that the information is still present. Until tomorrow, another pleasant evening to fellow SDCC goers and all my readers. Sleep well :)
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[…] a lot of the manga booths but noted CMX’s near-total absence from the DC area. Lissa Pattillo checked out the offerings at several publishers’ booths but didn’t get into the manga panels. Gia moderated the […]