San Diegans No Longer Have To Wait To Celebrate Their Favorite Fandoms
Now that the Comic-Con Museum is open, fans will no longer have to squeeze all their excitement and celebration into a four-day convention. The museums recent opening in the historic Federal Building in the Palisades area of Balboa Park is sure to become a new San Diego gem!
Museum-goers, expect to be spoiled with all thats in store for you! Like 25,000 square feet dedicated to rotating exhibits, a 6,000-square-foot education center, a 4K video theater, learning labs, as well as amazing classes and seminars! Oh, and of course, prepare to visit its heavenly gift shop packed with all the comics, graphic novels, souvenirs from your favorite characters you could ever need!
Comic-Con has a long and epic history. The iconic convention has been wowing our inner nerds worldwide since 1970, bringing people together to celebrate comics and all aspects of the popular arts. In recent years Comic-Con has attracted more than 130,000 people who marvel at the opportunity to interact with fellow fans and the creatives and technical geniuses behind their favorite fandoms!
Comic-Con is the place to be for the four incredible summer days when its in town! There are many events and activities, including games, awards ceremonies, costume competitions, and an insane programming schedule with some of the biggest celebrities in the world! And now thanks to their museum we can enjoy and learn more about our favorite characters, shows, and films whenever we like!
Exploring Roddenberrys Legacy At Comic
Roddenberry was born in 1921 and flew 89 combat missions in the Army Air Forces during World War II. He then worked as a commercial pilot after the war, before emulating his father and joining the Los Angeles Police Department. This is when he began to write scripts for television.
As a freelance, he wrote scripts for series such as Highway Patrol and Have Gun Will Travel, as well as producing his own television series, The Lieutenant. It was in 1964 that he created Star Trek:
The title of the exhibit is Sounds of Positivity. Thats what Roddenberry was really all about, the positive things, she explains. His other thing was diversity.
According to George Takei:
Roddenberry felt that the Enterprise was a metaphor for starship Earth and the strength of this starship lay in its diversity.
Well be refreshing the exhibit and adding some new items to it, which will be available beginning in March, and will be with us through June, she says.
A Few Of The Special Guest Speakers Include:
- Tanya DePass
- B Dave Walters
- Becca Scott
- Ivan Van Norman
- Gabe Hicks
- Eric Lang
- Tanya Thompson
- Damon Saddler
And more!
In 2020, the Comic-Con Museum was awarded a grant from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, to host a conference in recognition of the cultural and educational value of tabletop gaming while also providing insight into the development of games we all love d4: Tabletop Creative Conference was created. This grant will help defray some of the costs associated with the conference.
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Balboa Park Is Thrilled To Be The Future Home Of The Comic
Hold onto your fandom. Its happening. Plans are underway to capture the excitement and magic of Comic-Con in a year-round attraction located in San Diegos historic Balboa Park. The Comic-Con Museum will encourage an appreciation of comics and related popular arts through exhibits, programs and events drawn from across the Comic-Con universe.
Considered the cultural heart of San Diego, Balboa Park is already home to numerous museums, galleries and theaters along with the famous San Diego Zoo. Now, with the help of the City of San Diego, CCI is in the process of converting the 1935 Federal Building into what is planned to be a world-class museum by day, and a very unique fan community venue by night.
Want to find out more about this exciting new project, and contribute your ideas to the vision for the museum? Visit www.comic-con.org/optin to subscribe to Museum Insider a monthly e-newsletter that will keep you up-to-date with future progress on the museum project, or check back here for the latest updates.
Rita Vandergaw And Comic
According to Rita Vandergaw, executive director at Comic-Con Museum, this role is her third career.
I started out in radio when I was just a teenager, she told blooloop. I put myself through college by working for a radio station in Dallas and then went to put together proposals for an ad agency representing both TV and radio stations. Then I headed up the advertising department for Frontier Airlines. After this, I was VP of marketing for Frontier before they went out of business.
She went to Continental Airlines, where she ran the advertising program for their Continental Express, the jet service to ski and summer resorts.
Then I moved to San Diego to work as senior director of marketing and communications for the Port of San Diego, responsible for bringing in their cruise business.
In 2014 she retired and served in a volunteer capacity on the Comic-Con board.
I volunteered to help them get started. Tourism is my background and my love. The Comic-Con Museum is located in the incredible Balboa Park. This has eighteen museums and many cultural houses in over 1400 acres of Parkland.
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- Priority invites to exclusive social and educational events throughout the year.
- Permanent name recognition on the Museum Donor Wall.
- Ten single-use guest passes for regular admission to the Museum.
- Invites to first-look exhibition openings, receptions, ribbon cuttings, and more.
- Priority reservations for events, programs and room rentals.
Other opening day exhibits are:
- Gene Roddenberry: Sci-Fi Visionary as creator of âStar Trek.â
- Chas Addamsâ¦Family and Friends as cartoonist of darkly humorous and macabre characters.
- Cardboard Superheroes: the art of teenage brothers Connor and Bauer Lee, this exhibit features life-size cardboard models of superheroes such as Hulkbuster, Groot C-3PO, and Baby Yoda.
- Out of the Darkness: Comics in the Times of COVID featuring artwork by San Diego young people.
- The PAC-MAN Arcade on the 2020 Museum Character Hall of Fame Inductee.
Tier 3-5 Charter members were the first inside at 10:30 a.m.
The museumâs long-range plan predicted 13,000 charter members, 135,000 annual attendance and a $140 million economic impact, thanks also to special events and camps.
Special themed offerings for family groups were promised for:
- Earth Day
- Black History Month
- And Womenâs History Month
The museumâs home is in the 1935 Federal Building in the Palisades area near the San Diego Air & Space Museum and Municipal Gym.
Comic-Con Museumâs official grand opening is expected in the summer of 2022.
Eight Decades Of Archie
The Museum, which recently soft-opened this past November, is offering $5 off the admission price if guests bring a canned food item or make a monetary donation to Feeding San Diego at the door. Guests can enjoy the discount day-of or for a future visit.
The benefit campaign ties into the museums latest exhibition, Eight Decades of Archie, created in collaboration with Archie Comics to explore the storied history of Americas typical teenagers through immersive set pieces, visual displays, and hundreds of artifacts including vintage comic books, animation production materials, priceless pieces of original art, and other memorabilia.
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Cultural Fabric Of San Diego
Over its nearly 50-year history, Comic-Con International has become part of the cultural fabric of San Diego, turning large parts of the city into a hub of creative participation. Since its modest beginning in 1970, Comic-Con has grown into a global phenomenon attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. Over the years, many have felt that there was an opportunity for Comic-Con to transcend its brief five-day run each summer and become a more permanent part of the San Diego cultural and tourism landscape. The availability of the former home of the Hall of Champions sports museum in Balboa Park was the catalyst for the Comic-Con Museum project to come into existence.
In true Comic-Con fashion, its Museum will be unique, expanding beyond traditional models and offering three museums in one.
Celebrate San Diego Museum Month At Comic
Visit the new Comic-Con Museum for half-price admission in San Diego Museum Month! From February 1 through February 28, residents and visitors are invited to enjoy San Diego County museums, historic sites, gardens, zoo/aquariums and more.
For the past 50 years, San Diego Comic-Con has created one of the biggest, most popular conventions of its kind in the world. But the organizers of Comic-Con wanted to do even more to recognize fans and spread the magic of Comic-Con.
They created the Comic-Con Museum, a place where fans can come together to celebrate the things they love, not just for a few days each summer, but all year long. A place where the public can learn about areas of art and pop culture of which they may not even be aware. A space where everyone is included, where old fans and new can enjoy the passion, creativity, and imagination of Comic-Con, while learning about science, technology, art, storytelling and much more!
Get your Museum Month Pass today!The Museum Month pass is available for free at all Macys store locations in San Diego County. Guests can use their Museum Month pass to visit as many museums as they would like.
Regular admission rates:
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Bringing Tabletop Game Creators Together
The conference will bring creators from across the tabletop gaming community together for this two-day event that will feature recorded panel topics as well as special guest speakers covering a range of topics including:
Design: The creation of play patterns, artwork and graphics that elevate the gaming experience.Development: Encompassing testing and improvement of games towards publication.Discuss: Marketing and media in the Tabletop game space, from podcasts to promotion and everything in between.Discovery: An emphasis on helping players and publishers identify emerging trends and hot new games that define the future of the hobby.
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Summer Events Are Already Moving
The longer stay-at-home order last, the more events shift. As orders extended through the month of April, the Cannes Film Festival realized they could not hold their annual film festival in May. They are still hoping to postpone, rather than cancel, the festival.
Movies on the schedule keep shifting to dates when studios hope movie theaters will reopen and host wide attendance. April and May releases A Quiet Place Part II, The Lovebirds, Mulan, Black Widow and F9 postponed. Eventually, Warner Bros. decided Wonder Woman 1984 could not open in June and moved to August. On March 30, Sony moved all of their summer releases from June through August. Most wont open until 2021.
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Arts & Culture Draw Audiences
Interestingly, she adds:
The arts and culture part of tourism is its fastest-growing segment. People tend to stay longer and spend more money when visiting a city when they are looking at arts and culture. New York and London are perfect examples of that.
The arts and culture part of tourism is its fastest-growing segment. People tend to stay longer and spend more money when visiting a city when they are looking at arts and culture.
San Diego may not have the reputation of being a cultural centre, but in fact, she says, it is:
Weve got La Jolla Playhouse, where many Broadway plays are get started.
Then there are the Balboa, Spreckles, Lyceum and Mandell Weiss theatres:
Now well have the iconic Comic-Con Museum, which will not exist anywhere else. It is completely unique, and we are positioning it as such. There will be one-of-a-kind exhibits that will not be found anywhere else.
Create A Superhero And Win 4 Comic
Do you know any kids whod like to win 4 valuable passes to San Diego Comic-Con this year? Listen up!
I just learned theres a contest underway that ends tomorrow, put on by the Comic-Con Museum and Feeding San Diego. Its called the Hunger Action Hero Art Contest.
Students from K to 12 are invited to create a hunger fighting superhero! Artwork and a brief superhero origin story are required to enter the contest, but kids must do so by April 22, 2022thats tomorrow! Fortunately, submissions can be made easily online.
Various prizes will be awarded for the top ten entries, in addition to 4 Comic-Con passes for the contest winner. To learn more, click here!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via or !
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The Game Pitch Review
In addition to the wide range of topical discussions with well-known figures in the gaming industry, d4 will also include a unique opportunity for established and aspiring game creators to pitch their concepts, designs and ideas to a panel of experts who will provide feedback on the game itself as well as the quality of the pitch. Feedback will focus on helping designers develop and better discuss their ideas.
The Game Pitch Review will be broadcast live for those who register to participate.
Sharing The Magic Of Comic Books
Comic-Con is, she comments, an entrepreneurial organisation:
They are very much dedicated to education, and to informing people about the magic of comic books. Illustrative art has been with us for centuries, and the things that it has done have been amazing. So they decided to look at it. They did a feasibility analysis, they did a lot of work, and they hired a professional museum operator, who came on board to get everything ready in 2017.
Work continued through 2018 and 2019, and into 2020:
And then, of course, we had the pandemic. It had a devastating effect on not only the museum but also Comic-Con because their events are in-person. They have had almost two and a half years without any income.
The organisation relied on its reserves to stay afloat:
What I really admire about them is, made this commitment they were going to open the museum in 2020, which couldnt happen, they went ahead and invested in a million-and-a-half-dollar construction project to open it in November 2021, the earliest possible opportunity.
This was, she points out, a risk:
Were still in pandemic mode. We are getting people to come, but its not what it would be under normal conditions.
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What Comic
If Sony is already anticipating they cannot release movies in July, how much hope is there that public events would be safe by July 23? Comic-Con isnt ready to throw in the towel yet.
No one is as hopeful as we are that we will be able to celebrate #SDCC2020 together come July, Comic-Con posted on their official Twitter account. As we continue to monitor the situation with local authorities, we will post updates on our social channels!
So, Comic-Con has not made a decision, and they state their intentions to monitor the situation in the hopes that the world will be open again in July. They knew Comic-Con was an event for which people have been waiting for information, so they had to say something.
To our amazing Comic-Con and WonderCon fans: We understand how difficult the current climate has been for all of us and appreciate your continued support through these trying times, Comic-Con wrote. Remember: A hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles Christopher Reeve
