Was it just last year that I was whinging about lack of female geek content at Comic-Con?  I'll have to find something else to complain about, because THIS year we girls are rocking out with our X chromosomes out.

Thursday!

• Panel: Geek Girls Exist 5:30-6:30 PM, Room 8
• Geek girls' meetup/tweetup at Jolt'n'Joes, 8-11PM

Friday!

• Panel: Where are the action chicks?  2:00PM - 3:30PM, Room 26AB
• Panel: Girls Who Kick Ass 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM, Ballroom 20
• Panel: Girls Gone Genre 5:00PM - 6:00PM, Room 24ABC

Saturday!

• Panel: Her Universe: Shining the Spotlight on Female Fans 6:30 - 7:30 PM, Room 24ABC

Sunday!

• Panel: The Women of Marvel 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM, Room 7AB 

BE THERE!

For those of you late to this party, Comic-Con is an enormous convention that is theoretically devoted to American comics, but that over the past ten-ish years has become the de facto Big Genre Convention.  Geek idol Joss Whedon is a confirmed devotee.  Cool stuff gets announced there.  Cool stuff gets premiered there.  And you can be around to watch!  It is more fun than several barrels of monkeys.

Now.  All this may be academic to those of you who haven't already bought tickets, because the entire con is now sold out. But, for those of you who've taken the plunge and are all abrim with nervous excitement... read on!

First things first: with apologies to Douglas Adams, it is big.  Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way from one end of World Con to the other, but that's just peanuts to Comic-Con. It is a solid quarter mile from one end of the dealer's room to the opposite end. Something like 125,000 people attended last year, and that's with only some memberships being sold out in advance.  This year they're all gone already, so I think we can reasonably expect a full house.

Generic convention survival tips

• Water. Bring a water bottle.  Drink before you're thirsty.  Remember our motto: pee clear.
• Food. It is ancient con tradition that con food be both expensive and awful.  Comic-Con is a proud adherent to tradition.  My usual food strategy for cons is constant grazing.  I tuck into a good breakfast at the hotel, munch on trail mix throughout the day, and then dinner.  The idea with the snacking is to eat before you notice you're hungry: at the beginning or end of a panel, cram down a handful or two of trail mix and a nice big swig of water.  Keep this up, and you'll spend the day in a happy state of non-hunger, and the siren song of the $8 hot dog will become much less enticing.
• Shoes.  You live and die by your shoes at cons, especially at the cosmically huge Comic-Con.  Now is not the time for new shoes.  Nor is it the time for stiletto heels, no matter how sexy they make you look.  Save them for parties or the masquerade.  Your comfy, beat-up tennies that fit you like a second skin: those are the ones to wear.  Also, once you've put them on in the morning, don't take them off until you get back to the hotel at night: your feet will swell and you won't be able to put them back on again.
• Other body care.  A day's supply of your prescription meds.  A couple tablets of your favorite painkiller.  A wet-wipe-in-a-pouch.  A band-aid. A safety pin.  A tampon. A couple of cough drops or hard candies, either for your own use or to press on the person hacking up a lung in the row behind you. One of those little packets of Kleenex.
• Costumes.  Costumes are for fun.  Cosplay is for fun.  Don't worry about it being "good enough" or about people making snide comments about your costume; cosplayers are a supportive bunch and consider bashing other people's costumes (to their faces, anyway) unacceptable behavior.  Even very simple costumes can be awesome: one of my favorites ever was a teenaged girl who wore a fitted red Superman tee, a blue miniskirt, and red tights.  Instant Supergirl!
• Do NOT plan on seeing the whole thing.  Let go of this idea RIGHT NOW.  If you were capable of duplicating yourself, like Multiple Santa in The Tick, you still could not see all of Comic-Con.  It is not necessary to schedule an activity for each block of time in the interests of "getting your money's worth" or some such; in fact, it's a bad idea.  If you've identified three-four panels a day that you want to make, you've already got yourself a busy day.
• Bring your own Sharpies.  What sucks more than running into (say) Alison Bechdel, and asking for an autograph, only to find that neither of you has a writing implement?  Nothing, that's what.  I suggest a silver Sharpie for maximum contrasting ability.
• Bathe. Truth be told, there are not remotely as many gross con-goers as lazy media stereotypes would have you believe. But there's always a few who seem to think that their own personal body has no odor, and one or two who practically emit cartoon-style wavy smell rays.  I suppose it bears repeating, though, so: Daily bathing of your person is required.  Complete change of clothing into clean clothing at least once every 24 hours is required.  If someone tells you you smell, believe them.
  
• Check out the art show.  It costs nothing to look, is very rarely crowded, and you'd be surprised how affordable some of it is.  Especially considering how much of it is awesomesauce.
• Twitter.  Twitter, IMHO, may well be the killer app for conventions.  Keep an eye on the relevant twitterstream to find out what's going on.  Or follow some of your favorite celebs--some (Neil Gaiman, @neilhimself, springs to mind) are very good about tweeting their forthcoming appearances and/or retweeting cool things they hear about.

Comic-Con specific tips

• Plan ahead.  They post the programming schedule a couple of weeks before the con opens. Decide ahead of time whose autographs you MUST have, which panels you MUST attend, etc., etc.  They employ a ticket system for the most popular guests: you show up in the Sails Pavilion at a given time to get a ticket, and only ticketed people are allowed into the autograph queue.
• Don't automatically rule out things just because there's a long line.  Give it a shot, especially if it's in one of the big halls--they're bigger than you may think; and, even if a panel's at capacity, the Door Guardians will let new people in if enough people leave the panel.
• Make peace with disappointment.  What with all the waiting around and not being everywhere at once, you will miss cool stuff.  Also, sometimes you won't make it into a panel that you were dying to get into, even after waiting three hours in line.  Try to take this in stride.  Life at Comic-Con is like that sometimes.  Last year I was within the first five people after the cutoff for the Russell T. Davies autograph session, and I felt like throwing things.  Take a deep breath.  Put it in perspective.  I find that the universe usually makes it up to me somehow, with some kind of awesome unexpected treat.
• Scout out the dealer's room early in the weekend. Companies often host their own special events, right there at their booth.  Also, the coolest stuff goes fast.
• Consider parking the kids somewhere. I don't have kids, so perhaps I'm biased, but it's hard to visualize Comic-Con as the sort of thing small or medium-sized kids would like.  It's big and crowded and noisy and full of grownups, and you spend a lot of time waiting in line.  For those of you who insist on bringing the next generation along that they may be trained up wisely in the ways of geekdom, though, there's child care on-site.  They're open only when the con is (i.e. not when you show up at 6 AM to get a spot in the line for the Panel That Everyone Wants To Attend, and not when you decide to stay 'til 10 PM to attend the Buffy singalong.) and they take kids through age 12.
• Come early.  No, earlier than that.  No, even earlier.  There's a line for Registration, lines for autographs, and lines for the panels.  Your best bet is to befriend someone like my friend Pete, who has the uncanny--nay, supernatural--ability to be at the head of any given line.  (It's his personal superpower.  I have another friend who can always find a parking spot. Alas, neither of them is coming.)  Failing that, plan on showing up an hour or two before the con opens if there's a line you really really want to join.
• No roller bags and/or briefcases-on-wheels.  Yeah, I know--I wanted to bring one, too.  They're banned from the dealer's room floor; and for good reason, as I realized after a moment's sober reflection: imagine if everyone brought one.  You'd be tripping over them all the time, and THAT doesn't sound fun, does it?  Bring a backpack instead.
• Donate blood, if at all possible.  Not only will you do your Good Deed For The Day, the freebies are insane.  I'm a long-time blood donor--nearly three gallons--and usually the most you can hope for is free cookies.  Last time I donated at Comic-Con, I got a stack o' comics, a T-shirt, AND a super-rare, limited-edition Buffy the Vampire Slayer figure, plus they enter you in a raffle for MORE treats.  If you've been rejected for low iron, or if you're surfing the Crimson Tide, take a supplement for a couple of weeks beforehand.   There's a sign-up sheet in the Sails Pavilion.  Sign up for a time, and present yourself at the appointed time. I allow an hour for the whole donation process, from walking in to walking out.  Repeat blood donors: San Diego Blood Bank is a separate outfit from the Red Cross, so you'll have to sign up all over again. Sorry.
• Bring a book.  Comic-Con is tremendous fun, but the fun tends to arrive as punctuation to long stretches of tedium.  Rooms are not cleared between panels, which means that the best way of getting a seat in a panel you're dying to attend is often to attend the panel before it.  Or the two panels before it.  (Answer to obvious question: Once you have a seat, you can get a bathroom pass from the Door Guardians.)  For the really popular panels, expect a stupidly long line starting ridiculously early.  So: book.  But don't bother bringing an iPod.  It's too damn loud.
• Shop wisely.  Remember that you're carrying all your cool finds around on your back, and that lockers are scarce and expensive.  Try to do your major shopping in one go.  Bargain hunters, try waiting until Sunday afternoon--vendors want to move stuff, and may be inclined to cut you a "we don't want to ship it home" deal.
  • Christmas shop wisely.  I'm a big believer in doing my Christmas shopping throughout the year, and cons are prime shopping grounds for your geeky friends.  Is there someone in your life who'd squee over a personally dedicated copy of the latest Girl Genius trade paperback?  Of course there is.
  • Bring cash.  Lots of the smaller publishers will only take cash.  Women wearing busty costumes without room for pockets sometimes keep their cash tucked into their cleavage, where it's easily accessible and reasonably secure.  Come to think of it, superhero costumes seem to be light on pockets, so I bet this is how real superheroines keep their cab fare handy if they can't teleport or fly.  Me, I keep the main wad o' greenbacks in a little pouch around my neck (under my shirt), and a bit of walking-around money in my wallet, replenished as necessary from the pouch.
  • Bring one of those rigid cardboard tubes people use to ship posters. Beats buying one at the con.
• Dress wisely.  San Diego * summer * 100K people = a bad time to wear a foam-padded bodysuit.  But don't dress for the surface of Mercury, either--they keep the rooms fairly cool.  Dress for a summer day, but bring a light jacket.

Autographs

• Prepare your materials.   Peruse the schedule to get an idea of who's attending.  Now, identify what you'd like your target autographers to sign: Books? Comics? Liner notes from DVD sets?  (You can be optimistic here.  Failure to secure an autograph costs you only a sticky note.)  A couple days before the con, assemble them all in a pile on your table.  Now get yourself some sticky notes.  Write down the name of the target autographer on the note, and stick it to whatever you want him or her to sign: for an author, the title page of the book; for an actor, a page of the liner notes; etc.  Repeat until you've got everything flagged with a sticky note.  Put the stuff that's susceptible to creasing in a rigid folder.  When your target autograph is acquired, remove the sticky note and throw it away.
• It is not necessary to reassure someone that you're not one of those fans.  Famous people already know that they have 99 perfectly lovely fans for every psycho, and they will assume that you're one of the good fans unless you give them reason to believe otherwise.  If you're stuck for something to say, repeat after me: "Hello. I love your work."
• If you think you're going to have to spell something out for them, write it down instead.  If your name is Aeryqah, write it out on an index card beforehand and hand it to them.  Same thing goes if you're getting something signed for your friend Alyssenne: write it out for them.
• Be very very sparing with requests for custom inscriptions.  There are 85 billion people in line behind you.  Most autographers will write something like "To so-and-so, signature".  A request that they write "To so-and-so, Happy birthday! signature" is probably OK; anything much longer or more complex is pushing the boundaries of being a dick.  You have a little more leeway here if you're paying for the autograph, or if you're the only person in line, but do be considerate of the artist's time and energy.  How would you feel if you had 85 billion autographs to sign and someone wanted you to write out what amounted to a postcard's worth of text?
• Make it as easy for them as possible.  Do not get to the front of the line and then make everyone wait while you fumble around for your pen, as if you couldn't have done that in the hour and a half you were waiting.  This goes double if you're planning on discreetly ambushing someone right after a panel (usually this only works at small or medium panels, but you never know): approach your target with your book already flipped open to the right page and your Sharpie already uncapped.

Handy tips for men (or, How To Not Be One Of THOSE Guys)

• Do not assume she's being dragged along under duress.  See Goddess of All's post last year on what this feels like.
• Do not assume that she's new to geekdom.  Maybe she is, but then again maybe she's been at it longer than you.
• Female geeks are under no obligation to date you.  They're there for their own reasons, and they are emphatically not there so that the straight male geeks can fish from a stocked pond.
• Refrain from classifying other attendees as trufen or posers.  Here I am thinking specifically of Twilight fans, the pariahs of last year's Comic-Con. Twifans aren't interlopers in your convention; it's their convention too. Besides--remember when you were an awkward teenager who'd discovered something you thought was wonderful but that everyone else viewed with contempt?
• Do not assume that she's only interested in paranormal romance / Twilight / manga / kawaii / other stereotypically girly things.  She's a geek, just like you.

See you at the con!

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If you don't get the reference in the title of this article, I confess, I pity you just a little. But never fear! It is never too late to get your geek on with the fabulousness that  is Futurama, an animated geekgasm of a show from the creator of The Simpsons. 

Not only are Futurama fans geeky, but also devout enough to support the show after its cancellation by FOX, buy the DVD sets, and later, the movie DVDs.

Some of us even kept the flame of fannishness burning by constructing elaborate and freakishly detailed Bender costumes. (The photo to the left is an almost complete costume my own dear clan constructed -- we did eventually complete the tri-fingered hand cups, and provide better attachment  of the bend-y limbs. In fact, this costume was a crowd favorite at Halloween costume contests. And although we never bothered to haul it out to Cons (It is unwieldy to transport and somewhat uncomfortable to wear. Yes, I've done it), Bender, being the party bot that he is, was recognized everywhere we took him. And frequently offered free beers.

After all that, the show is about to be resurrected on Comedy Central in an hour-long event tonight. Here's a sneak peek at the first minute and a half :

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Regular readers of this space may recall me waxing rhapsodic about Gallifrey One last summer, and now another Gally has come and gone.

G1, for those who don't know, is Los Angeles' annual Doctor Who convention, usually held on President's Day weekend*, and it is more fun than several barrels of monkeys.  Though it's grown dramatically (doubling in size in the past 3 years), it's still a fairly small con, with around 1500 attendees, and has (so far) managed to hang onto its "family" feel.

Details below cut.

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I first encountered Doctor Who as a wee slip of a girl, but as I was not 100% sure that I hadn't hallucinated it*, it probably doesn't count.  I encountered it again much later--after college, even--and recognized in it a union of my lifelong love for SF and the love of camp I'd developed as a teen.  After years of watching MST3K and feeling faintly guilty when I liked one of the movies, I discovered in Doctor Who a show where not only was it OK to laugh at the bad parts while still being inspired by the good parts, it was encouraged.

And lo! after years in the wilderness, Doctor Who is cool again.  Chances are good that you, O reader, know a fan, and are perhaps wondering what sort of gift would elicit the Squee of Joy and not the Oh How Very Nice of Meh.  We don't know that, but you could do worse than to surprise her with one of our specially-selected treats--read on for details!

(Images mostly from the Doctor Who Image Archive)

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What did fans do before the Internet?  Actually, don't answer that--I'm old enough (juuuust barely) to have been getting into fandom during the age of paper, and I remember joining the MST3K fanclub by mail.

But hot damn, does the Internet ever beat the shit out of fanzines.  Oh, sure, I bet you could find a classified ad in the back of a Doctor Who zine from someone offering to knit you a Fourth Doctor scarf... but today, a little Googling and you can buy one, basically, off the rack.  A couple clicks and presto!  It's in stock and on its way. They have them in sizes. They even have the season 18 burgundy scarf.

Yes, it's a fine time to be a fan, assuming you don't mind poverty.  And it's a fine time to be buying gifts for fans, because they are really easy to shop for.  Take the list we've compiled below.  What Whedonite wouldn't weep tears of joy on finding one of these under the tree?  (Answer: none.)

1. The cunning hat. Of course you need one.  You walk down the street in a hat like this, people know you're not afraid of anything.

 

2. Kaylee parasol. Among Firefly's many virtues was its sheer beauty: it was gorgeously shot.  One lovely image is from the pilot: Kaylee with her parasol, a riot of color against the neutral background of the shipyard.  It's proved to be so iconic of the character that she's often depicted with it--even though the series never showed it again.

   Naturally, you can paint your own Kaylee parasol; parasols can be found in Asian neighborhoods, and paint is cheap.  Or you could buy one here  or here.

3. Buffy complete collection; Angel complete collection.

   The universe has richly rewarded me for being a lazy cheapskate. I delay buying this DVD, or that DVD, only for them to serendipitously release a Special Edition.  So it was with Buffy. No sooner had I resolved to maybe buy me some of the seasons of BtVS than this beauty was released, with everything that was in the season box sets PLUS an extra DVD of treats.

 

4. Firefly DVD set / Serenity DVD

   Try to hold out for a bargain.  Add whedonesque.com to your RSS feed; they're uncannily good at sniffing out sales.  You probably want the Special Edition Serenity: more features.
   Both TV series and movie are available on Blu-Ray; as neither was shot in HD, though, opinions vary on whether or not Blu-Ray is worth it.

 

5. Officially licensed Browncoat

   AbbyShot have been around for a while, with a pretty good reputation as a made-by-fans-for-fans company. (Not cheap, but the good stuff never is.)  But I was researching their new Browncoat (which I'd vaguely heard they were doing) when I came across this, on their site: they've apparently gone legit, with an official license and everything!  Fandom triumphant!
   
   Accuracy: they boast about it, and honestly it looks darn good to me.  But, for whatever it's worth, another officially licensed coat they make--the Tenth Doctor longcoat--has been nitpicked by the cosplayers over at Gallifrey Base and found to be a few details off.
   
   On the downside, AbbyShot appear to have stopped making the Zoe vest.  Poo.

    Breaking!  They ARE still making the Zoe vest!  It's just not linked to off the main page, for some reason.

 

6. Customized ladies' Browncoat

   The Browncoat: It is rugged. It is weathered. It is not at all tailored.  For guys, it works; we chicas are built differently, and on some of us the Browncoat hangs like a sack.  An especially shapeless sack.  So, for ladies more interested in the spirit of the Browncoat  than in strict screen accuracy, we have this lovely Etsy offering.  It is a variation on the regular Browncoat design, in that it comes in at the waist and then flares back out; it also fastens over your belly, instead of over your boobular region.

    

 

7. Dr. Horrible lab coat

   Okay, so they're not quite right.  They're cheap.
   

   American Science and Surplus (where the link goes) is also wonderful for buying all kinds of weird science-y crap to outfit your Mad Scientist's Lab the way a Mad Scientist's Lab should be outfitted. I myself have the 1L laboratory flask in my kitchen. I keep vinegar in it.

 

8. Serenity blueprints

   Did you know that Serenity has a shower aboard? Explore your favorite Firefly-class transport in more detail than you ever thought possible.  Good to drool over, handy to have if you're running an RPG set in the 'Verse, as I plan to one of these millenia.

 

9. Firefly jewelry

   I feel funny about listing this one, since it's not really online yet, and it's been dormant since August, so who knows if it'll ever be.  But if you can find her at cons, she sells awesome fannish jewelry, including three Firefly pendants in sterling silver: the ubiquitous "Serenity" kanji, the Independent Army triangle emblem, and an outline of the ship.

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