This past weekend I attended the San Diego Comic-Con. I’ve been wanting to attend this ever-growing geek mega-event since I was 11 or 12 years old. Back then I was a hardcore comic book fan, not only looking up to Batman, the X-Men and Iron Man, but also to their creators. Especially the artists. Back then guys like Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, J. Scott Campbell, and Rob Liefeld were both my inspiration and my heroes. Of course, I’d also read Wizard, a magazine that covers the ins and outs of the comic industry. Every year they’d have great photos and reports from Comic-Con. I’d read about the artists interacting with the fans, the super impressive booths, the thought provoking panels, the merchandise, and more. Every year I’d think “Man, I need to get to this.” For one reason or another, timing just never panned out. The fact that I lived on the east coast, 3,000 miles away from the convention probably didn’t help.

Fast-forward 15+ years to 2010. The moons, stars and planets have aligned and I find myself living a little over an hour from the San Diego Convention Center. There was no way I was going to miss it again this year!

I’ve always heard stories about just how huge this event is, plus I’ve been to other (what I thought were) large conventions and events. So I thought I knew what i’d be in for. Wrong. The convention floor itself was massive. Towering video walls, gigantic over-the-top booth displays, 25 foot giant robots, and ultra-creative costumes for as far as you can see. As I write this, it’s the Monday morning after and my head is still spinning.

If you consider yourself a comic fan/pop-culture geek/video game addict or any other kind of nerd, I strongly recommend you make this something to check out at least once in your life.

If you’d like to check them out, I added some of my photos to my Flickr set.