Things that sometimes happen at Comic-Con:

– On a whim, you decide to spend the night sleeping on the street outside the convention center with 5,000 friends you didn’t even know you had. (Hey, who needs to pay for a hotel when you can do that?)

– After a few hours of finding just the right way to use a backpack as a pillow, Joss Whedon shows up and you can’t get back to sleep. 44 hours without sleep? No problem. Food? I can eat at the end of the panels!

– After eating meal after meal at upscale restaurants you find what you really want, a sub shop, two blocks away from the convention center.

– Oh, and you see probably one of the most anticipated and ultimately the best panels at any comic convention–the panel celebrating the tenth anniversary of the last of Firefly–in the UK Firefly is time after time voted by fans as the best sci-fi series ever, and the fan following over here in the states is second to none.

– Great fun with new friends you spend the day with from Iowa and Kansas and Missouri and the West Coast.

– Hours on concrete results in great panels for the TV series Community and Bones, and the new animated Korra series from the Last Airbender universe.

– You get to see the pilot for the November premiering TV series Arrow, featuring your favorite DC Comics characters Green Arrow and Black Canary, you get to see his costume in person and see the stars of the show. And pick up a Con exclusive comic book for the series!

Pretty hard to beat.

All this after a fun first day of Comic-Con chatting with Neal Adams, Brent Spiner, Frank Cho, David Peterson… lots of great costumes… great toy displays.  We’ll provide coverage from the convention over the coming week.