Notes from London Comic Con 2024.

• This was my first time, and it was better than expected. The venue was so big I’m not actually sure how much of it I actually saw.¹ 50% of I think?
• I thought it would mostly be selling stalls and that I’d quickly get bored. But there was also music, food, meet ‘n’ greets, gaming machines, talks, promotional stalls, and gaming tournaments. Lots on.
• Pay extra for the ticket which lets you in early. You can get your bearings and then see what you want to see before the crowds. The areas around the selling stalls in particular pile up with people as the day goes on, making it unpleasant if you don’t like crowds.
• It was nice seeing nerdy people get to have their day, where they could dress up and express their interests with unrestrained glee.
• I knew people dressed up, but I didn’t realise quite how many. I would guess 35% were in costume.
• I’m clearly not as steeped in nerd culture as I once was, as plenty of the costumes were alien to me. My favourite was Pedro Pascal’s Joel from “The Last of Us” TV show. I liked it not just because I like the show, but because it’s the sort out outfit that you won’t be embarrassed to wear on the train journey home.
• Those meet ‘n’ greet queues – where you can get an autograph or photo – moved slow. It was nice seeing people get the chance to have a few minutes to chat. But man the staff should have sped things up a bit. My girlfriend wanted an autograph from Tim Downie just before we were going to queue he had to go elsewhere. So later on we queued a 10 minutes before he returned. 45 minutes later we were turned away right near the end of the line as he again had to go elsewhere. There was not that many people in front of us when we started queueing, they were just slow buggers.

1. By 14:00 I was satisfied with the day and left. ↩︎