When I first attended SDCC, I was a fan, but I hadn’t joined cosplay fandom. This year, inspired by a sale at Her Universe, I bought two Star Trek dresses that I fitted down several sizes to wear on Wednesday and Friday. On Sunday morning, I was finishing up three costumes to celebrate a new film and smelling like a hero.
In 2013, I wrote about advice that Morgan Spurlock had given in his documentary “Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope.” Spurlock wasn’t the only one who advised attendees to use deodorant (and to move away from those who don’t). Also in 2013, four SDCC experts advised attendees to embrace deodorant and this year, that was easier to do because Old Spice was an SDCC sponsor and the company had a family-friendly activation in front of the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. You could have a fresh launch by entering a small pod and receiving a full-size deodorant bar and two photos. That was fun the first time, but chaotic the second time on Sunday when, after obtaining permission from the activation staff, I came with my versions of Superdog and an East Asian American Superwoman.
Wednesday night, I was dressed in Star Trek command yellow when I visited Paramount+’s The Lodge for what was truly a Mission Impossible, being too short to reach most of the computer keys, and a Star Trek bar experience. Star Trek fans over the age of 21, could attend a special trivia night to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Memory Alpha – Fandom’s iconic Star Trek wiki. The evening was hosted by Fandom and Roddenberry Entertainment in the Gaslamp Quarter (Knotty’s Barrel) and included readings of hate mail that were sent after the 1982 “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan” because of the death of Spock. Is there Star Trek without Spock was one of the questions in the 1980s. There’s a lot more Star Trek since then, but TOS fans didn’t have to worry. My TOS fan husband got correct answers (episode titles) to some of the haiku hints, but because we had an early morning on Saturday, we left before the trivia contest that matched Star Trek podcast experts against the crowd.
Yet that wasn’t the end of my connecting with Star Trek. Saturday evening, I followed a PR directive and waited in front of The Lodge (Happy Does Bar). A spirited crowd of fans dressed in their Star Trek best was there as well (I was dressed as the dragon Toothless with a Toothless puppet). A little after six, a square of empty space was delineated on the street which is always closed down for SDCC and a troupe of dancers dressed in store-bought “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” uniforms filled the space, taking us through a dance that alluded to Season 3 episodes including a wedding and a murder mystery. A lucky Star Trek dressed bystander was plucked from the audience to play the bride.
Much of the Star Trek crowd left after the first performance, but I stayed to watch the second performance. Those who stayed or filled in later were rewarded by the presence of the showrunner and some of the stars who formed a front row wall. My reward as a videographer was a clip of Rebecca Romijn and Christiana Chong joining in the dance toward the end of the performance only to get sternly advised to return to their assigned space by the Captain Pike dancer.
Besides celebrating Star Trek, we also celebrated the 70th anniversary of Japan’s most famous export: Godzilla. Super7 had a popup shop in the outer edges of the Gaslamp Quarter that portrayed the train car chomping scene from the Oscar-winning “Godzilla Minus One.” Inside were some T-shirts featuring cheerily optimistic warning signs and lots of cool Godzilla merchandise. Later in the convention (Saturday), the popup hosted an autograph signing by the director of “Shin Godzilla,” Shinji Higuchi. Den of the Geek also hosted a live-stream giveaway of Godzilla-themed products.
Higuchi (樋口 真嗣) won the Japanese Academy Film prize as director of the year (with Hideaki Anno 庵野 秀明) in 2017 for his contribution to the Godzilla lore with “Shin Godzilla.” More recently Higuchi directed this year’s Netflix film “Bullet Train Explosion” (新幹線大爆破), but the question everyone asked (it was banned halfway through the press roundtables) was: Will there be a “Shin Godzilla 2”? During interviews in the press room, Higuchi said through an interpreter that doing a Godzilla film is a lot of work and he’d rather relax, but he also noted that Godzilla isn’t just a mutation, he’s mutatatable. We get the Godzilla we need for every era. When I asked what his first Godzilla-related memory was, Higuchi said, “My first memory goes back to kindergarten when I saw the first Godzilla film in movie theaters. It was actually ‘Godzilla versus Mothra.’ More so than the movie it was the way the posters depicted Mothra. It was really, really scary.”
Higuchi was the last speaker on an over-packed panel, “Godzilla at 70: Seven Decades of the King of the Monsters,” that was two-thirds advertising for new Godzilla-related products (IDW Publishing, Super&, Bandai Namco and Mondo) and the sequel question was asked by the audience. The original Japanese film came out in 1954, but the re-edited Americanized version which added Raymond Burr as a reporter, came out in 1956 in the US.
“Shin Godzilla” has been remastered and will have a theatrical re-release on 14 August 2025 by GKIDS in North American cinemas, after which a 4K remaster will be available on Blu-ray.
The press room for “Futurama” included an intense conversation about coffee. In 2003, our pizza delivery boy who ends up in the future, Fry, found himself with $300 and spent it on 100 cups of $3 coffee (“Three Hundred Big Boys”). In 2024, the episode “Planet Espresso” we learned that coffee was brought to Earth by an alien race from the Planet Thermos. Executive producer and head writer David X. Cohen admitted that “my own life is coffee fueled, so it was deeply personal to make that up and then learn the history of coffee.”
Disney Entertainment had four activations: ABC’s “A Very Abbott Block Party” which included a Ferris wheel for fantastic views of the bay, Hulu’s “King of the Hill” Backyard Cookout with fun games, FX’s “Alien: Earth” let guests explore the wreckage of the USCSS Maginot, and “The Percy Jackson Experience” gave you a test to see what god will claim you. Ian got Athena. I got Poseidon. All were free, with no SDCC-pass required, but the waits were long. I thought the photo ops at the Abbott Block Party were the best. You got to become a cartoon character on a poster in one and in the other, if you played it right, you could become an action hero in a four-photo gif video. Kudos to the photographer who has the makings of a film director.
I did attend panels where besides learning that Godzilla has faced foes from different genres (e.g. Ghidorah versus Batman and Godzilla versus Superman), I learned that everyone with a cellphone can become a filmmaker and there’s an International Mobil Film Festival based in San Diego.
Inside the exhibition hall, the most exciting display was the San Diego LEGO-Con Diorama at LEGO where a massive build showed the facade of the San Diego Convention Center on one side and on the other the exhibition floor. I went by to look at it more than once and every time I noticed something different. It contains over 200,000 LEGO bricks and took over 1,500 hours to design and build. There are over 8,000 LEGO mini figures.
We ended our weekend at a local (Barrio Logan) pizza joint: Pizza Kaiju. This yoshoku (洋食), Japanese-style Western food, diner features NY-style pizza with an Asian twist.. What does that mean? Besides the usual pepperoni pizza, you can order the (Korean) Bulgogi Supreme, the (Japanese) Mentaiko Royale or the (Filipino) Sisig, whole or by the slice. We had hoped for a more kaiju-characterized place, but the pizza was good.
We probably took over 100 videos and photos which will be posted on my Instagram (@janamonji) and more detailed coverage on my blog (AgeOfTheGeek.org) later this week. Live long and prosper and look forward to next year’s SDCC AND don’t forget to smell like a hero.
