July 21, 2000 : San Diego, California, USA

The San Diego ComicCon is one of the largest comic book conventions in the world. The Southern California Garrison figured that it was high time for them to display the might of the Empire there. In order to aid them in their endeavour, three members of the European Garrison and one solitary Canadian Garrison member (TD741) made their way into San Diego.

Before starting the report I must admit that the troopers (and their associated better halves) at this convention were some of the best people I have ever had the opportunity to meet. And of course, Jimmy, the perfect Han Solo, was great as well. Thumbs up to the Southern California and European Garrison members who were present.

Anyway...

The 501st apparently was the hit of this year's ComicCon. We had trouble taking two steps without having someone stop us, asking for a picture. Wizards of the Coast asked us to help with escorting duty (we managed to escape the crowd long enough to do it once). The ComicCon organizers snapped a picture of us for their next booklet. Entertainment Earth, Hasbro, Fandom-Inc are among some of the other companies that just loved having us around. Some of our people were interviewed by CNN and assorted web-broadcast sites. A few others met Mark Hamill. Did I mention that starwars.com had pictures of the group up as well?

The costume contest on Saturday night, had about 4000 people in the audience. I can tell you one thing -- that audience was unforgiving and just plain nasty at times. The costume contest had a few really good costumes, some not-so-bad ones and some down-right-bad. After a series of three or four bad ones, one of the audience members yelled out: "WHEN WILL THE HURTING STOP?" (and that was one of the nicer comments).

There were some interesting entries:

• A "Ghost in the Shell" costume that was at DragonCon as well.
• A good recreation of a Final Fantasy 8 battle. The characters had good costumes and the moves down pat. The battle was recreated perfectly with turned based action. All that was missing was the character selector. They even did the "run away" as they do in the game (the characters turn around and run in place). What I don't understand is that for this 6+ person team, the prize was a single Playstation with a couple of games. (I would assume that they would all already own one).
• A skit based around "Resident Evil" with Zombies taken from Micheal Jackson's "Thriller" video.
• A Mighty Mouse doing an Andy Kauffman Skit (won the audience's favourite).
• A dancing Palpatine (it was great).
• There were some good "Space: Above and Beyond" suits and another group with a mishmash of costumes from the various "Star Wars" films and a few outsiders (Scorpion from "Mortal Kombat" and "Lara Croft"). They had a good Jabba as well. Unfortunately their punchline didn't work out. Why? Read on.

• Courtesy of http://www.fandom-inc.com/:
  • We'll need to frisk you
  • 501st: Membership has its privileges
• This is an actual receipt spewed out from the ATM at the Con. Hmm. What an exchange rate!
• Woah, déja vu (double Mauls)
• Is it live or memorex? (Maul and Maul again)
• This picture poses a lot of questions...
• Invading the Hasbro booth
• Escorting rebels to the interrogation chamber.
• Raiding the Wizards of the Coast special sneak preview of the "Star Wars RPG"
• Biker and Royal Guard
• Spawn?
• Okay Spidey. Spawn told us you were a rebel.
• In front of W.O.C. (1/2), In front of W.O.C. (2/2)
• Group shots: 1, 2
• Han Vs. Biker Scouts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
• Early Speeder-Bike prototypes
• On the steps:
  • Anybody know the rank of this guy?
  • Most of the Star Wars people at the Convention
  • Out of costume
• Hey, I don't remember this scene in ROTJ
• It's the Imperial Can-Can.
• This is how ewoks really looked like
• Seems like TK861 is practising for the Imperial football team
• Oooooooo
• Next trooper armour. :P
• Even rebel-scum wouldn't be caught dead in this
• Err... Guys... I don't think you've got that Darth Maul makeup on right
• MOOOOOUSE!
• On the bus
• Vader takes a breather. BTW, he's 6'7!
• Here's what Oliver looks like when he's not in Imperial Officer's uniform... and invisible..?
• Marc, Manuela, Lynn and Jim
• Oliver and Jeff show that you can still have fun out of uniform
• This is the spectator line-up for the masquerade contest
• Cass, Manuela, Jane, Marc, Vania, Pascal, Jeff and Jim
• In a restaurant:
  • Spot the intruder
  • I guess that's the main course
• Assorted pictures of San Diego: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6