I Was an SDCC Special Guest! Animated and Cinematic Fun at San Diego Comic-Con 2024

Yes, it’s true. I was an SDCC special guest for 2024, and for the geeky among you, it was indeed as cool as it sounds.

But let me back up and give you come context about my history with SDCC… The first time I went to San Diego Comic-Con was almost 30 years ago. It was COMPLETELY different then. For one thing, there were way fewer women. That’s not to say that we didn’t represent. After all, folks in the know (and certainly Star Trek fans) are aware that fandom and conventions were both started by women. Still, the ratio was far enough off that in the late 90s, when I corrected a Star Wars fanboy when he said art with Yoda levitating “wasn’t in the movie”, pinpointing exactly WHERE it was in the movie, he asked me, “are you seeing anyone?”. Another difference is that years ago the preview night was quite exclusive. One year I had an art booth with John Alvin and a bunch of famous actors and Frank Darabont stopped by to chat. No masks or disguises required.

In the course of these 30 years, I’ve done just about everything one can do at SDCC other than volunteer. I’ve represented art, I’ve covered it as press, I’ve conducted panels, and I’ve gone as a film professional. I even made a video about how to navigate the experience of going to the con: 

What I never expected and never thought was possible was being an official guest. I have spent my time building panels amplifying animators and filmmakers, which I’ve been doing for almost 20 years. A few times I have also been ON a panel, including one that was for Harry Potter and featured Darren Criss before he was famous:

As someone who has conducted many panels at SDCC, I am very good friends with some wonderful animators who HAVE been an SDCC special guest, and even two panels in which someone won the Ink Pot Award. I was there when Willie Ito won his Ink Pot Award, and it was a thing of beauty:

If you love Willie Ito or even if you don’t know his work or about his life, you should definitely watch the Spotlight panel I conducted with him at SDCC the year he won the award. There’s a point in the conversation where he’s talking about his experience in the Japanese internment camps during World War II where you could hear a pin drop.

About 10 years ago, after I had been writing as a film critic for about 5 years, I got it into my head to create a panel featuring female filmmakers, and Women Rocking Hollywood was born. Thank Goddess I got support from Women in Film: LA, because they have been on the panel every year, and even sometimes helped me when an agent or manager wouldn’t return my calls. The first year, I had Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke, Marvel Executive Producer Victoria Alonso, Wonder Woman producer Deborah Snyder, True Blood director Angela Robinson, and WIF director Kirsten Schaffer. Since then, I’ve had so many amazing female filmmakers talking about their projects and have learned so much from them. Here’s one of my favorite WRH panels:

Truth be told, I’ve always wanted to be a “special guest” of the con, but I thought, “what do I do that would make me worthy?”

In the latter part of 2023, I decided to move Women Rocking Hollywood to WonderCon.  SDCC had just gotten too expensive. Even with a sponsor for Women Rocking Hollywood, I had been finding myself paying more and more – though the WRH panelists only spent one night at the con, many of the best hotels required a three night stay, making each panelist’s attendance cost upwards of $1500-$1600! All the while, the folks running SDCC have been fantastic. They’ve done all they can to help the panel succeed, believing early on that it was important to represent diverse voices. Although there are quite a few panels featuring women above and below the line now, back 10 years ago, the Women Rocking Hollywood panel was the first focused on female filmmakers at the convention.  Anyway, it was getting too expensive, and WonderCon is in LA, where many filmmakers live, so that would be far easier to pull together. Decision made. I didn’t apply for a panel at SDCC for 2024 and figured 2023 was my last time at the con.

Three days after that decision, one of the heads of SDCC emailed me. He invited me to be a juror for the Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival.

It meant they’d pay for me to come to the convention, and I’d be an official guest! I’d be one of three jurors for the fest, which was entering its 19th year. As jurors, we were asked to watch about 100 movies spanning a number of specific genres, and rate them. The winners would be chosen based on the rankings from the three judges.

The entries were from 7 different pop culture genres, including action/adventure, animation, comics-related, pop culture oriented documentaries, horror/suspense, humor, and science fiction/fantasy. This year, there were participation filmmakers from all over the world, including Canada, France, Israel, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea, Sweden, the UK and the US.

As you can see by the picture to the left, I was in amazing company, with Juliet Landau and Phil Lamarr as my fellow judges.

I loved the movies we were given. I was frankly shocked at how good some of them were. I also loved that the three of us agreed on all the winners. All of us agreed particularly on our favorite overall, an animated short from France called Thaba Ye. It was not only beautifully animated, the story was moving and poignant. It was wonderful to see so many filmmakers actually in the room for the awards, and co-director of Thaba Ye Merel Hamers was there to accept the award for her film, which was absolutely beautiful. Here’s the short in its entirety for those who want to see it:

And here is Merel accepting the award as co-director and animator of Thaba Ye:

As a juror for the Film Fest, I found I had way more time than I usually do, because I had no panels to plan or run or organize. What a joy! Not only did we have a beautiful room overlooking the harbor, we had time to go to panels I never get to attend, like the Quick Draw, which featured Disney Legend Floyd Norman. What a hoot!

Floyd has been on a number of panels I’ve put together at SDCC, (like this one from last year!) and actually a few years ago, the filmmakers who created the documentary about his life won an award at the Independent Film Fest! Here’s a trailer from that film, which you can now find online and should definitely watch!

One of the highlights of being a panelist for the Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival (and there were a lot!) was that they gave the three jurors awards!! I was surprised and very excited to get it!

Now, it would be wonderful if I could do this every year, but unfortunately, they have different jurors every year. Still, I can say I did it! What a trip!

Who knows what the future will bring? I could never have guessed this would have happened in the first place! I do know I’ll be looking towards the future of panels and events at WonderCon and beyond. I still love amplifying filmmakers and animation artists!

In the meantime, I have my memories from San Diego Comic-Con 2024, where I was an official guest. HOW COOL IS THAT?