Geek-tastic.com

As I was growing up, GI Joe was my absolute favorite cartoon show. Everything else was secondary to it. He-Man, Transformers, Thundercats, M.A.S.K., Silverhawks, whatever else . . . all of them paled in comparison to my love for GI Joe. To me, seeing a sign asking me to enlist in Cobra Industries was like a giant pulsating beacon. I couldn’t look away. Without even knowing what it was yet, I got in line and tried my absolute hardest not to start hopping up and down in excitement. Inside though, I was screaming like a little girl.

Thankfully, the line was short (a rarity at Con) and in a few minutes I was told to go up to one of the three stations they had set up where they were processing enlistees. I tried not to show my disappointment that the guy behind the counter wasn’t dressed in some sort of Cobra Uniform as he asked me for my name. I gave him my name as he asked, and then was told to step back for my picture to be taken. I suddenly realized that I wasn’t sure how I wanted to look in this picture. I was joining Cobra, so I should look evil and menacing, right? I gave the camera my best evil face, which came off looking more confused than anything I think, and was then told to go down to the end to pick up my badge.

“Badge? I’m getting a badge?” I thought. “Too Sweet!”

I walked down to the end of the line where a new guy was putting what looked like employee badges together. I utterly failed in my attempts to not look anxious as I waited for my badge. The minutes ticked by eternally slowly, until I heard my name finally called.

“Patrick” the guy said, in a bored sounding voice.

I jumped a little and was at the desk in a second. The badge was handed to me, and it was glorious. I had been given a Cobra Employee ID card, just like the kind I use every day to get into my office. It even came with the little retractable string thingy you use to attach it to your belt loop. I was in heaven.

“Hey”, my friend Lee said (who had been with me this whole time), “They spelled your name wrong.”

WHAT? Where? I looked again, I hadn’t even noticed it. My last name is spelled Roach (just like the bug or the drug paraphernalia), yet somehow the blonde stoner looking guy behind the counter had managed to spell it Roch.

To quote Darth Vader. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

I could not believe that they had misspelled my name. Not for this. This was too important. I had to get this right. My inner child was at the reins now. He was going to join Cobra, and he was going to have his fucking name spelled right as he did it.

The line wasn’t too long, so I hopped back in, tapping my foot now in impatience as I eagerly awaited a second chance to join Cobra’s ranks. I got up to the front of the line, and was this time directed to a different kiosk than the blonde stoner guy’s from before. “Thank god” I thought. “Maybe this new girl will actually know how to spell Roach.”

I go up to the counter. She asks my name. I very slowly tell her, “My name is Patrick Roach. R-O-A-C-H.” Yes, I actually spelled it out for her, just to be sure. She just smiled at me and said she got it. I stepped back and got ready for a second photo. Again I tried to look evil and Menacing. This time, I don’t think I look so much confused as I probably do mildly constipated or something. I really need to work on my evil glares apparently.

Another round of waiting at the badge desk. Again my name gets called out. Again I jump. I snatch the badge from the guy’s hand like a starving kid on Halloween grabbing trick-or-treat candy. My eyes shoot straight to the name.

Patrick Broach.

At this point I just start laughing at the absurdity of it all. The laughter helped me from breaking into tears. How hard is it to spell Roach anyways? It’s a common word. It’s not like my last name is Morgendorffer or something like that. I look back at the line, it’s gotten obnoxiously long now. I didn’t want to stand in it again, yet at the same time I didn’t want to walk away with a misspelled card.

I think for a couple of seconds, and then I see that the girl I had taken my second picture with is just finishing up with someone, and the person running the line hasn’t seen that they’re available yet. Without thinking, I run back up to her desk and say, “I’m really sorry, but you misspelled my name on this. Could I please do another one?” I tried really hard here not to sound like the whining 8 year old I really was in that moment. I don’t think I succeeded though.

To her credit, the girl behind the counter took pity on me and said that she still had my picture saved in her computer. She could just retype the card if I wanted, or I could take an all new picture. I mulled this over in my head for a few seconds. I wanted to take a new picture, but I had by now realized that my attempts at an evil glare were going to continue to fail until I practiced on them more. Also, I was starting to feel really self conscious, having had to go through all of this for what most other people around me probably considered to be a random/easily forgotten Con trinket.

I decided to just have her re-type the card. I tell her my name again, even slower than before. R-O-A-C-H. No B. Just 5 letters. No B at the beginning. Yes, just like the bug. Yes, just like a spliff. Did I mention, no B? Ok, cool. Just making sure.

She promises me that she got it right, and tells me to head back to the desk again. I wait another minute. The guy at the badge counter now recognizes me. He gives me a “What the hell are you doing here again?” look as I wait for him to call my name. He finally does. He doesn’t even hand me the card this time. He just left it on the table once he was done putting it together. I can’t blame him really. To him, I’m just some creepy older guy who shouldn’t even be in this room unless I had brought kids with me, which I clearly hadn’t.

I don’t really dwell on that though. All of my concern is focused on the little plastic card on the table. Did they spell it right? Am I going to have to scream at someone if it’s not right? With slightly trembling hands, I pick up the card from the table and turn it over.

I’ll be honest here, I think I let out a small “Woohoo!” I take no shame in admitting that. It was a pain in the ass to get, but it was now in my possession. I had a Cobra Employee Card. Deep down inside, 8-year-old pat was dancing like a madman.

Yes, it’s just a stupid little gimmicky piece of plastic. Yes, it probably cost Hasbro about .005 cents to make this thing. Yes, I should probably grow up a bit (ok, maybe a lot). I don’t care. I have a Cobra Employee Card, and it’s every bit as fucking awesome as I ever hoped it could be.

As I walked out of there, I made sure to securely attach my ID card to my belt. I wanted to proudly wear this thing for the rest of con. Yes, I even wore it the next day on Saturday too.  When I got home, I made sure to put it somewhere proper.  It now sits on my bookshelf, right next to my Cobra Commander (in a suit at a podium) figure and my Sgt. Slaughter figure with a WWF World Heavyweight Title belt.

Best . . . Con . . . promotion . . . ever!

Even if you've never read any of HP Lovecraft's works; if you've ever been to any sort of convention or if you describe your self as a geek/nerd, chances are pretty good that you've seen the name Cthulhu somewhere.  You may even associate that name with a big, scary, squid looking head.

Who, or what is Cthulhu though?  Well, read the book The Call of Cthulhu and find out.

What's that you say? You're far too lazy to read a short story that is only about 40 pages long?  Ok, fine.  Be that way you lazy bastards.  In that case, watch the above video, which summarizes the plot of The Call Of Cthulhu in under two minutes.  Hopefully, that isn't too long a time for your ADD addled brain to deal with.

There, now you know Cthulhu.  May you spend the rest of your life in fear now, like the rest of us.

By Christina Castillo

Every year one of my biggest complaints at San Diego Comic Con besides the massive crowds , long lines and for the second year in a row I missed the Big Bang Theory panel is the lack of good fitting female t-shirts. Now don’t get me wrong, there are a ton more than there ever used to be and StylinOnline.com has a vast array of female styles with their four locations on the Comic Con floor. However, what I have come to find is that when I go to some of the other vendors, usually some of the smaller vendors, all of the t-shirts with the designs I want do not have female counterparts. Now they usually have a tiny selection, so they don’t completely leave us females out but I cannot tell you how many times a vendor lost out on my money because they didn’t include girl styles. I do admit that there were a few t-shirts that were just too awesome to pass up, so I ended up getting them anyway, but therein lies my frustration.

So that is why I was so excited to stumble upon Her Universe by complete accident as I was walking the Comic Con floor. Started by Ashley Eckstein, voice of Ahsoka Tano in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and The Araca Group, it is a site geared towards creating merchandise for the female sci-fi/fantasy fan, because if SDCC has taught us anything through the years it is that we do exist! Now they are just starting out so the selection of merchandise is slim at the moment, but they were lucky enough to get a license to create Star Wars inspired designs and it sounds like they are planning to acquire other license agreements down the line and expand and believe me I will be checking the site frequently so I can spend more of my hard earned money on a worthy cause!

So, if you are a geek girl that appreciates apparel made just for us or if you want to get an awesome gift for the geek girl in your life or if you just like to support us geek girls in the pursuit of all things geek I urge you to check out Her Universe both online and on the convention floor. Because come on…who can resist a sexy looking geek girl?! Her Universe will be attending Star Wars Celebration V, Chicago Comic Con and Dragon Con in the coming months and I am sure we will probably see them at next year’s WonderCon and in San Diego. Can’t wait!

Saturday morning, I got up super early because I was a man on a mission. For the last three years now, I’ve participated in a scavenger hunt that is put on by the Peanuts booth (as in Charlie Brown and Snoopy). Every day during con, they give away free tote bags to the first 50 people that complete a scavenger hunt across the Comic Con floor. I’ve gotten bags every year since they started doing this, so I wasn’t about to miss out now.

I got to the floor at 9am and waited impatiently for the doors to open at 9:30. As soon as I was let in, I fast walked (there’s no running allowed at Con) as quickly as I could to the booth. I got my scavenger hunt sheet, which required me to acquire four signatures from different booths all around the floor. I once again busted ass (while still walking) to the different booths and got my four needed signatures. Along the way, for being such an early bird, the guy at the second booth was kind enough to award me with these sweet buttons for free.

Once all of the signatures were gotten, I bee-lined my way back to the Peanuts booth, where I found that I was the 5th person that day to complete the quest. I had attained my prize.

I couldn’t help but think though? 5th? Really? I checked my watch, it was only 9:35. How in the hell did four people finish this thing ahead of me? I was one of the first people on the floor. Who are these ninja scavenger hunters? I must be wary of them in the years ahead. Their skills are impressive indeed, but they will fall to the power of my Comic Con Kung Fu.

With the free bag safely in my possession, I looked around and noticed something strange. The hall was relatively empty. I had gotten there so early on Saturday that the giant crowds hadn’t arrived yet. I immediately realized the potential here. I could now, finally, head over to the huge movie studio booths and not suddenly find myself trapped in a vast sea of unwashed, smelly con attendees.

My first stop was the Warner Brothers booth. It was probably the biggest booth on the floor, and it was tucked in a back corner of the convention hall. For the last two days, even trying to get near this thing was damned near impossible. At the moment I got there though, it was dead. I had full access to the place, and I am so happy I did, because that was when I came across this.

This, my dear friends, is the wounded corpse of Abin Sur, as he will be appearing in the upcoming Green Lantern movie starring Ryan Reynolds. For those of you who aren’t up on your Green Lantern Lore, this is the alien that gives Hal Jordan the Green Lantern Ring. This corpse is a huge part of the Hal’s hero origin story. To stumble across it on the floor of con was pretty damned awesome.

But that’s not all. The Warner Brothers booth also had this weird display case filled with things from the new Harry Potter film. In the early morning hour we were in, it took my sleep deprived brain a few seconds to realize what I was looking at. Maybe you can figure it out faster than I did.

Yeah, those are the seven Horcruxes that need to be destroyed so that Lord Voldemort can be killed. I’m sure for you non Harry Potter fans out there, those are just a bunch of random crap, but to a Potter fan like I am, getting to see those all together in a nice little display case was pretty fucking epic.

As the hall finally started to fill up, I had to leave the WB booth as wave after wave of raging fanboys and fangirls began to fill the place up. I meandered back over to the Marvel booth. It was Saturday after all, and I was still dying to know what was going on behind those giant golden doors. When I got there though, the doors were still shut.

“Bummer!” I thought, and I began to head off. Not even 15 seconds later though, as I’ve left sight of the doors themselves, I hear a collective gasp from the crowd. I turn around and see everyone looking at the Marvel booth. Hands are flying to cameras, flashes are going off like crazy, and people from all around are joining a quickly growing mob to see what all the fuss was about.

In my eternally amazingly bad timing, I had missed the big reveal by just seconds. I ran back into the mob, got within sight of the doors, and this is what I saw.

If you’ve never read a Thor comic before, let me explain. That is The Destroyer. He’s a giant suit of enchanted armor. Forged by Odin himself. He’s super powerful and can pretty much kill gods if he wants to. In the Thor movie, he will be unleashed by Loki against Thor at some point. To use a Buffy-ism, he’s one of the Big Bad’s of the film. Marvel had just announced to the world who one of the main villains of the Thor movie would be, and there was much rejoicing. Yay!

After that, my Comic Con experience started winding down. I was exhausted. I’d been walking for pretty much three days straight. I had spent a ton of money on comics and shirts and whatnot. I had a giant stash of free stuff I’d gotten along the way. To put it simply, I was spent. I did manage to walk the floor a little bit more, and take some more pics, but shortly after the big Destroyer reveal, I decided I had enjoyed myself enough. I headed out of the convention center one last time and was about to board the Trolley when I noticed these signs at the Gaslamp station.

Those are the San Diego trolley signs . . . . written in Klingon.

Have I mentioned before how much I love the fact that Comic Con has spread out into all of Downtown SD yet? I have? Well, let me say it again. It’s little things like this that make Comic Con the best damned nerd convention in the world. Where else but Comic Con would the city hosting the event allow their own public transportation signs to be covered in Klingon script?

You rock San Diego. I take back everything I said about hoping that the convention moves somewhere else. I don’t care about the giant crowds anymore. If the Con leaves SD, it’ll probably lose awesome little bits like this that make it what it is.

I can’t wait for next year. I’m already starting to save up for a hotel.

Panels are a huge part of the Con experience, I won’t deny that. Unfortunately, the only panels I wanted to go to this year that weren’t being put on by me or my friends were all big panels in the big rooms. They were the kind you had to camp out for hours in advance in order to see. I just don’t have that kind of patience, especially during Con when there are a million cool and nerdy things happening every second for four days straight.

With that said though, it’s not like I didn’t hit any panels at all. As I said in part one of my adventures, I did attend the Fan’s Guide To Comic Con. Thursday night was panel #2. The GeekRoundTable/Geek-tastic Live panel Panel.

Check out the bottom of that room program. That’s me! And if you’re wondering, yes we are nighttime programming because we are just too sexy to be able to have a panel during the day. Honestly though, all of this is due to the good graces of Mr. Ned Cato Jr. from the GeekRoundTable. He didn’t have to add me to the program guide name. It’s his panel really. I’m just the lucky sap that he was kind enough to include. Thank you Ned. It was really awesome seeing my site’s name pop up in the program guide.

As for the Panel itself, we actually had something solid to present this year. We brought along a copy of Matt & Wes vs. The Zombie Apocalypse to screen for the live audience, and thanks to the awesomeness of Jeromy and Zach Ball (aka The Bloodshed Brothers), we even recorded the panel this year. Well, the first part of it at least. Enjoy!

If you’d like to see part two, go HERE.

After the panel ended, I was exhausted, so I hopped on the trolley and headed back to my friend’s house for the night. The next day though, I was up bright and early and was back on the floor for another full day of wandering the hall. Friday was a little busier than Thursday had been, but that didn’t stop me from finding some really cool things on the floor. Here’s some of my favorite stuff.

That last one I saw on my way out to lunch on Friday, and it suddenly gave me pause. “The Umbrella Corporation is sponsoring Comic Con?” I thought. “Uh oh. That’s not good. That means a T-Virus outbreak can’t be too far off.” I promptly left the building at this point and didn’t return until I had inoculated myself with tasty food and booze.

On my way back from lunch, I decided to make a small side trek to one of the hotels next to the convention center. They had these huge signs up advertising something called The Hub, and I was curious as to what it was. I followed the signs and suddenly found myself in a large hotel ballroom filled with a ton of children show stuff.

It was cool children show stuff though. They had a big display for Fraggle Rock as well as a giant head & hand of Optimus prime where you could take sweet pictures like this.

Hands down though, the single coolest thing at The Hub (and possibly my biggest geek out moment at Con) was getting to join an evil terrorist organization, determined to rule the world. I am speaking, of course, of Cobra.

This was actually so awesome, I’m writing a separate post about it. More on this later.

After leaving the Hub, I headed back to the floor where I wandered some more. I bought some comics (Walking Dead and Scott Pilgrim mainly), and some other stuff. Along the way I found this really awesome shirt on the sales floor.

Ha!  That’s right. Suck it Browncoats. Starfleet always gets the flyest of the bitches. Everyone knows that.

Speaking of Starfleet. As Friday came to a close, I did finally hit up one last panel. The Klingon Lifestyles panel. I’d been hearing from friends for years that this was a “Must See” panel, but somehow I had never managed to actually get to see it before, which is really strange considering what a huge Star Trek fan I am. This year though, I made damn sure I was there for it.

If you’ve never seen the Klingon Lifestyles panel before, let me explain a little. Basically, a bunch of really, really big Star Trek fans get dressed up and put on a 30 to 40 minute live stage play for the audience. It’s fully scripted, and you can tell they’ve been practicing this for weeks if not months ahead of time. Each year, the show is different, but the stories generally follow the same group of Klingons as they wander about the galaxy and get into all sorts of mischief.

This year’s show was a murder mystery. An ambassador had been killed right before trade negotiations were set to begin on a remote station between the Klingons and the Federation. One of the Klingons had been framed for the murder, and Starfleet begins an investigation.

What ensued was pure hilariousness. A scheming con man and his Ferengi mate show up, a red shirt is killed (and briefly turned into a zombie), a Bat’leh battle occurs, and a Vulcan is found to actually be a Romulan spy (damned Romulan spies). The mystery is eventually solved, thanks to the use of giant Clue board game cards detailing who committed themurder, where, and with what weapon. It’s a good thing someone found that giant packet sitting around, otherwise this mystery may never have been solved.

The Klingon Lifestyles panel brought my Friday to a close, so once again I headed back to my friend’s house for some much needed sleep.

By Gabriel Madrigal

How many times have we heard that Geeky Girls are the real life unicorns of the geek kingdom? The fact is, if your girl can quote Kevin Smith, knows that Han is cooler than Luke, that the comic is always better than the movie, and that everything is always better when it goes to 11, then you’ve got yourself a winner.

This year, my goal at Comic Con was simple; capture beautiful Geeky Girls at Con. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

To see even more awesome Geek Girls, go HERE:

By Gabriel Madrigal

I’ve been attending Comic-Con for many years now and each year brings new surprises. For me, the best part about Con is not the panels, celebrities or costumes. No sir, for me, it’s the nightlife. Making new friends and sharing a drink while discussing the day’s events are where memories are created. So when my wife told us about the Geek Girls Network Tweet-Up, it didn’t take much to convince my group - we knew this was the place to be.

Sponsored by the Science Channel, ThinkGeek & Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, the Geek Girls Network Tweet-Up flashed an impressive list of notable geeky patrons. But just who is the GGN? Besides being one of the nicest group of people I met at Con, they are, according to their site:

Geek Girls Network™, founded by Kristin Rielly (Publisher), is a resource hub for women who possess a passion, knowledge, and interest for all things “geeky”. Our mission is to provide timely and accurate news, reviews and training, across a broad spectrum of interests in order to promote and encourage women of all ages to embrace their “geekiness”.

The party was great! The room brimmed with wonderful people, great music and fantastic visuals. A DJ played everything from “Weird Al” Yankovic to the Big Bang Theory theme song. The room’s television screens showed montages of geeky movies and TV shows, from Star Wars to Ultraviolet to Venture Brothers and everything in between.

The Tweet-Up sponsors were as welcoming as the hosts and provided bits of geeky goodness to the lucky guests. A trivial contest/giveaway was the perfect end to the evening. We look forward to more events with the Geek Girls Network in the future!

Check out more pics from this great event by going HERE.

Getting to Comic Con was a little bit more of a trip for me than it ever has been before. Since the move up to San Francisco only happened about a month ago, and wasn’t really expected before then, I had made absolutely no plans in advance for things like flights down to San Diego, or hotel reservations so that I would have a place to stay once I was down there. Being from Southern California up until very recently, these weren’t things that I had to think about before.

Getting flight reservations were easy enough, but finding an available hotel room within about a 20 mile radius of the Convention Center was nigh impossible with only 4 weeks or left until the Con started. Hell, all of the hotels in San Diego have pretty much all been reserved since about a day after last year’s Comic Con. That left me to begging for couches from my friends who still lived in the area. Luckily, my friend Matt Schier was kind enough to put me up for a few nights.

Thank you Matt. The fact that you live a 2.5 mile walk from the closest trolley stop (and up a big ass hill), were prices I gladly paid in exchange for being able to attend the Con.

With travel and accommodations squared away, it was simply a matter of waiting for the day to come when I could fly down and attend the greatest geek event of the year. The weeks went by thankfully quickly, and before I knew it I was boarding a plane bound for SD. Having never had to fly down to SD for Con before, I was completely amused to find that one could fairly easily pick out who else on your plane was also going to SD for the Convention. At least half of the people on my flight were Con bound, if all of the comic book or sci-fi t-shirts, hats and bags were to be believed. The guy in the “Flynn Lives” t-shirt? Totally a Con Attendee. The girl in the Pikachu beanie? Totally a Con Attendee.

I got into SD late Wednesday night, so I missed preview night. Damned new jobs and not having accrued enough vacation time yet to take three days off instead of two is to blame. Therefore, I didn’t get to the Convention Center until Thursday morning. Things were already in full swing by the time I got there. One of the things I love about Comic Con having gotten so big is that it has spilled out of the Convention center and can be seen all throughout the streets of SD. The moment I got off of the trolley, before I even got my badge, I’m already being greeted by the sight of giant robots.

Suck it Michael Bay, this is how Optimus Prime is supposed to look (sort of). This was a giant promo piece for a new animated Transformers animated series called Transformers: Prime or something like that. I don’t know if the show will be any good or not, but the new Design for Optimus is pretty sweet, so I can’t complain so far.

Once my badge was obtained, I made a mad dash upstairs so that I wouldn’t miss what has quickly become a new Con tradition of mine . . . attending the Fans Guide to Comic Con. Yeah, admittedly I’m biased because my friends Matt, Wes and Jesse run the panel, but it seriously is a great time. If you’ve never gotten to see their panel, you should check it out. Aside from dishing out helpful advice to Con newbies, they also entertain with great jokes and visual aids. The jokes change every year too. One of the things I loved about this year’s panel (aside from the constant Rob Liefeld jokes) were the inclusion of fake quotes from past Con attendees. This was one of my personal favorites:

After laughing my ass off at the Fan’s Guide panel, I headed downstairs to check out what is for me, the end-all-be-all of Comic Con. The exhibit hall floor. Sure, a lot of people come to Con to spend hours waiting in line for Hall H or Ballroom 20 so that they can drool over Johnny Depp or Angelina Jolie or whatever. Those people are fools. The bread and butter of Comic Con has always been the exhibit hall. Nowhere else in the known universe will you ever find a more eclectic mix of awesomeness under a single roof.

I’m not joking here. You can find just about everything on the floor. Are you looking for bootleg episodes of some forgotten cult sci-fi show? The floor has those. Need some new Steampunk gear to add to your costume? Jesus, you had about 20 different booths to choose from this year. Looking for out of print trade paperbacks? Got those too.

The hall has become so massively large over the years, that it now takes me two full days to cover all of it. I’ve learned too that if you don’t approach the floor with a specific plan of attack, you’re bound to miss something. My plan? Start in the 100 isle, and then make a back and forth grid pattern moving slowly down every aisle, making sure to stop at every booth to see what cool stuff they have. You really don’t want to miss any of the cool stuff that you can find on the floor. Missing a single aisle could mean you miss something totally awesome, like this . . . .

That’s right, that’s Ecto 1, just chilling out on the exhibit hall floor. Would you seriously want to miss that just because you were too lazy to walk down all of the aisles? Have I made my point yet?

I’m not exaggerating when I say it takes me two days to fully cover the floor now either. By the end of Thursday, I had only managed to make it to about the 2300 aisle, and the aisle markers go above 5000 now. As I said earlier too, the floor isn’t even all there is to see. The Con has spilled out into the heart of Downtown SD. When I walked outside to lunch, these are a few of the sights that greeted me:

After Lunch, it was back to the exhibit hall for more walking around and finding cool stuff. Marvel had some big Thor thing going on over at their booth. They had even built a giant replica of Odin’s throne in Asgard, which situated in front of giant golden doors that were rumored to hold some big secret from the film. Annoyingly though, the doors wouldn’t be opened until Saturday, so all I could do for now was stare impatiently at them and wonder what wonders they contained.

The day was quickly coming to a close though. Nighttime programming was about to begin. I had a panel I had to get to. Geek-tastic and GeekRoundTable were working together to present the first episode of Matt & Wes vs. The Zombie Apocalypse to a live audience.

How did the panel go? Was the film well received? Sadly, that will have to wait for another post as this one has gotten far too long as it is.

Never fear though true believer. That next post will be up soon. Check back tomorrow.

The same Pat time . . . 

The same Pat channel . . . 

By Gabriel Madrigal

Last year’s big Comic-Con surprise was Flynn’s Arcade – a secret warehouse turned classic arcade which was located a few blocks north of the convention center. And in 2010, to every TRON fan’s delight, Flynn’s was back!

But this time the secret was more heavily guarded. Whereas last year offered tantalizing hints via handwritten photocopies, this year Twitter was the method used to disseminate information to the masses (@operationtron). Attendees in the know could follow the clues and find the secret location. (But between you and me, it was the exact same place as last year at 335 6th Street.)

Every hour, on the hour, 100 tickets where handed out until they were gone. Once inside, the scene was familiar to any fan of the movie. A roomful of coin-operated video game machines from yester-year lined the walls with such titles as Donkey Kong, TRON, and Galaga. Even Kevin Flynn’s infamous Space Paranoids was available for play.

After having your fill of Pac-Man fever, a trap door behind the TRON machine would lead guests down a hallway dotted with movie props. This was all new to Flynn’s Arcade. One special prop, the laser that transported Flynn to the world of TRON, was of special interest to the visiting geeks.

But that was just the beginning. We followed further along the rabbit hole…

Until we got to the TRON: Legacy Lounge.

Behold! A TRON-inspired room, complete with repeat showings of the newest movie trailer, listening stations featuring the new TRON soundtrack by Daft Punk and scattered movie props. All this, and all the Coke Zero you could drink.

For another year, Flynn’s Arcade was my favorite part of Comic-Con. Here’s to hoping the movie lives up to the hype.

Click HERE to view the whole set of photos from Flynn's Arcade