Preview Nights at Comic-Con in the past were the calm before the storm. With only those who purchased a four-day pass given admittance to the exhibition hall, it was a good opportunity to casually survey the landscape and make purchases and talk to artists before the mobs arrived. Two years ago, on Preview Night it was possible to walk the exhibition hall without colliding into another person. Last year, Preview Night felt more like a regular no-Saturday convention day. This year, Preview Night felt like a Saturday afternoon, with a giant swarm of people all around the exhibition hall.
There are two reasons for this: For the first time ever in convention history, 4-day passes were sold out before the opening of Comic-Con, and people with 3-day passes were allowed into Preview night.
My intention on Preview Night was to make a beeline for Hasbro to snag the exclusive Comic-Con Transformer from Hasbro's booth. While I certainly got to the Hasbro booth very quickly, so did a couple of hundred people. While the line didn't look that bad, it turned out that Hasbro was freezing the line, telling everyone to go away and that they would be reopening the line at a random time later that evening. I stopped by at the end of the evening, only to learn that they had at another random time that evening, opted to give out tickets that let you stand in line, and that each ticket had an appointment time that you could go to stand in line. It was quite hilarious, and if I had been of more sound mind after a stressful preview night, I would have remembered to take a picture of the hilariousness of the sign.
I did however manage to snag preview screening tickets for Stardust from Paramount, as well as the incredibly gigantic "Smallville" bag from Warner Bros. I also managed to pick up all the free volumes of manga from the different booths, along with various other tchotchkes. As far as purchases went, I picked up the fourth volume of Flight, before the end of Preview Night.
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