One new aspect to San Diego Comic-Con this year was the Exclusives Portal. Whereas in years past, if you wanted exclusive autographs, you had to line up each morning to draw a ticket in Sails Pavilion for your chance to win autograph signings for specific shows, that process was eliminated this year.
In its place was the Exclusives Portal, which was essentially a lottery. Attendees could log into the portal through their Member ID account, and could enter the lottery for as many exclusive signings that they wanted to — as long as they did so by July 12. Additionally, access to some booths, such as Funko, Hasbro, and UCC, now required that you win a timeslot through this lottery in order to make purchases, because competition to buy their exclusives is so fierce. This system was actually given a test run during Comic-Con International’s sister show, WonderCon, but only for the signings.
Getting a chance at these exclusive signings and merch was now as easy as clicking a few buttons, and now no longer required an overnight campout. Many attendees who typically spend the bulk of their SDCC doing these overnight campouts in an effort to obtain these autographs and merch did not like this new system, because whereas before, they were only up against a few hundred, or possibly thousand people, now they were up against 130,000 people because now all you had to do was click.
Some attendees likely took the approach of signing up for everything, whether or not they knew what they were signing up for. However, we didn’t want to sign up for anything we weren’t interested in. We never buy exclusives, so we didn’t bother signing up for any of the exclusive merch slots. But we do watch a lot of TV shows and movies, and we’ve never had the opportunity to try for autographs, so we ended up signing up for 18 various exclusive signings that we were interested in.
While Josh did not end up winning anything, I did win something: the Venom signing.
For those unfamiliar with exclusive signings at San Diego Comic-Con, they are a bit different than autographs at most other cons. At other cons, you pay a set amount of money for an autograph from a specific person, then you go and get your autograph at the designated time. However, at SDCC, these autographs are free, and often include several cast members from a show or movie. So to win the Venom signing was a big deal, because although the specific participants in the signing were not listed, it was bound to include at least one big name Hollywood actor. Without the Exclusives Portal, this is not something I would have ever had the chance to participate in, because obtaining autographs is just not something we choose to invest our time in at SDCC, as we usually invest our time in panels. Therefore, I realize I am extremely lucky to have benefitted from this new system.
Being that I had never sought after an autograph signing at SDCC before, I had to do some research into how this worked. It actually worked a little different this year because of the Exclusives Portal in that people were just picking up a wristband rather than lining up to draw a ticket from a bag that may or may not be a winning ticket for a particular autograph.
Exclusive Signing winners were to pick up their corresponding wristband on the day of the signing in the Sails Pavilion between 7:00am and 9:00am. The Exhibit Hall did not open until 9:30am each day. We’ve never attempted to line up early to get into the Exhibit Hall, as we’re usually either already in line for Hall H, or just arrive later. For those unaware, there are two lines to get into SDCC each morning: the Hall H line, and the Everything Else line. Basically what I had to do was go to the end of the Everything Else line and navigate from there.
When planning ahead, my dilemma was that we had planned to get in line at 5:00am for the Jack Ryan Experience, which opened at 9:00am. I wasn’t sure how long it would take for me to go pick up my wristband, having never gone through the Everything Else line.
Friday morning came, and we got in line for the Jack Ryan Experience as planned. At 6:30am, I headed over to the Everything Else line, which extended along the marina, next to the FX/Fox offsite. The line started moving around 7:00am, and once it started moving, it moved quickly. Upon entering the convention center and going up the escalators, there were volunteers holding up signs with arrows pointing which way to go for various things, such as the line for the Exhibit Hall, or for wristband pickup for the Exclusive Signings, where I was going.
The Exclusive Signings wristband pickup was located outside on the patio. There was a sign directing attendees where to go for each studio: Warner Bros, Sony, etc. Volunteers were also stationed out here to help attendees figure out where to go. Venom was Sony, which happened to be the last table. There was a very short line, only about 4 people in front of me. They made sure to announce loudly to have your ID and your exclusives confirmation ready.
When it was my turn, they checked my name against their list and put a wristband on me. The wristband had the time and location of the signing written on it – information which had not been previously announced. 6:45pm in Room 28C. That was unfortunate, as one of the panels I was most excited about at SDCC 2018 was The Passage – which was 6:00pm-7:00pm.
In any case, the process to pick up my wristband went pretty quickly, and I headed back to the Jack Ryan line around 7:30am.
Fast forward to that evening. I figured that I should probably arrive about 15 minutes early to be safe. The Passage panel was in Room 6A, so I left that panel around 6:20pm, in the middle of the screening of the pilot episode. Josh stayed in the room to see the rest of the episode and for the panel with the cast members and author afterward, so stay tuned for his recap and photos of the panel, as well as his take on the episode.
It was about 6:30pm when I found my way to the back of the line for the signing, which was already a bit long. I knew that the Sony panel was 6:15pm-7:15pm, and that it consisted of Into the Spider-Verse and Venom. So with a 6:45pm autograph time, I thought that meant Venom would take up the first 30 minutes, and they would come autograph directly after. But upon checking Twitter, it turned out that Into the Spider-Verse was first, which meant that the signing wouldn’t actually start until at least 7:15pm, after the panel ended.
So I stood in line in this hallway for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, we were apparently right above Hall H, because we could feel the vibrations from the clips they showed. Also while waiting, we were given Venom T-shirts and masks, that we were instructed to put on right then and there, and to wear while we entered the room for the autograph session. Thankfully, there were sizes to choose from, and I was able to get a Small! So that was nice, since usually free T-shirts are Large or XL. Then there was a camera crew that came through and filmed us cheering and being hyped up. They kept going down the line and coming up to every few people and asking them questions, and having them do things like pretend to be Venom. I made sure to avoid eye contact because I didn’t really want to be on camera!
Finally, it was time for the signing. There must be a secret elevator with direct access from Hall H to this hallway, because the talent got up there really quickly after the panel’s scheduled end time! They let a handful of people in at a time. As we entered, they cut off our wristband. We had been instructed that we could not have our phones or cameras out once we entered the room, and that we could not have them sign anything other than what was provided to us.
The line moved very quickly. The signing included Venom director Ruben Fleischer, and actors Riz Ahmed and Tom Hardy. Fleischer seemed the most interactive of all the talent there, thanking us for coming out, and of course I in turn thanked him for doing this. Riz Ahmed just looked down and signed the posters that were passed to him and passed them on to Tom Hardy, who did at least make eye contact. I thanked him (while looking ridiculous with the Venom mask hanging off the side of my face, as I and others had partially removed it so that it was no longer covering our mouths) and he smiled at me. And that was it. I was done by 7:30pm, now the proud owner of an autographed Venom poster.
I then met back up with Josh, then we dropped our stuff off at the room, met back up with Carlos, and went to the Amazon Fire party. Stay tuned for our recap and photos of that experience!
