Comic-Con day three or two or four

This is certainly an education. I get up out of bed and queue for a while and get into a room where Stephen Spielberg and Peter Jackson are discussing the new Tin Tin movie with the fans, and showing a couple of clips.  Then, time with Kate Beckinsale and others to discuss the new Underworld movie (it's in 3D!), and then a half hour with the folks behind Attack the Block.

Comic-Con doesn't actually give an individual fan access to a meteoric director (except for the fan this morning who wore a t shirt begging for a chance to shake Spielberg's hand, which was picked up by the cameras, so he did get the chance) but it does bring us all into actual contact with the people who make the creative decisions.  A director who normally gets his (it's always 'his') only clues from box office receipts now gets to hear a roar or a laugh or baffled silence from a live audience of 6,000. (No baffled silences today.) That's got to be a good thing.

As well as a thousand Steampunks, Stormtroopers and Alice in Wonderlands, today a guy is wandering around in a mouse mask, like Deadmau5. The mask is covered in LCDs, so when someone stops him to talk, his habitual blue grin reacts to their presence - commonly by swirling clockwise and then rocking until it goes back to a grin with a mouth at the bottom, but often by blazing into red and yellow sweeps of information like those a squid will spill over its body in its instances of communication.. At a SIGGRAPH the fellow would have his own installation. Here at Comic-Con, where about 5% of the 120,000 attendees like to dress up, he's just one person. He certainly caught my eye.