I had originally planned to do one post for the entirety of my Comic Con Africa 2022 experience. However, after writing for the media day and starting on the first day of the convention, I quickly realised the post would be a monster for my readers to load when taking into account the number of images I plan to use and the word count itself. Plus this way I can get multiple posts from one event.

As of now I plan to do a post per day I was there, my overall experience and takeaway, my merchandise, stand highlights, and the pros and cons of the con. So I am looking at an average of 9 or 10 posts from this year’s Comic Con Africa (CCA). 

For a really good overall feel of the con from the perspective of the community, you should check out my friend, Jonathan, aka. Silver Back’s post, Comic Con Africa 2022 over on Fandom is Awesome. He wraps it up really well and I shall be expanding on a couple of his points in a future post.

For now, I shall walk you through my first day at the venue and the day before the convention officially began.

Media day and set up for Comic Con Africa 2022

This was the first time that I managed to make the media briefing and walk around for an event. I was really excited and nervous about it. It has been a really long time since we last had an event. I had always wanted to attend the day before and honestly it was amazing. 

The briefing gave us some information about the international stars, cosplayers and artists that would be attending, the sponsors and such, but I mainly wanted to do the walk around and get a lay of the land. During the tour, I almost immediately got distracted and lost track of the group. I was not alone and wound up wandering the main hall (hall 6) with a few fellow content creators and friends, like SilverBack968 and PandaMode13. I was also really happy to finally see my fellow creators and friends who I had not seen since before all of the lockdowns.

The day brought up the question of numbers. I still need to follow up with the person I was in contact with before the event to learn what kind of readership numbers are needed to be considered media. I will be honest, yes my social following does not reflect my readership here on the blog and I was and still am mildly disgruntled that I was never asked for my blog stats since readership now has a defining factor. I want to know the numbers needed to be considered media, to either up my access for the next con or to have an actual goal for my blog for the year ahead. Either way, I do think it will be insightful. 

Watching the venue come to life and completely change over a few hours was exciting. Walking around and spotting familiar store names to trying to guess what other stores would be putting on display. We also got the opportunity to chat with the exhibitors as they set up (and had a good first look to somewhat plan our budgets). Some of us even bought stuff then and there.

While walking around we were wondering why most of the stands (in the artist alley) and over the hall were not yet set up or setting up. When we spoke to an exhibitor we learnt the people without actual construction could only start setting up from 12pm. Personally, I wondered if that was enough time for those exhibitors to set up and on Thursday morning, stands were still setting up by the time the gates opened up at 9am for day one of the convention.

I was excited to learn that there would be over 60 food trucks this year and that we were having a full lineup of panels and entertainment. There had been an issue with food supply for both of the previous Comic Con Africa’s. During 2018 the food trucks had not been enough to handle the sheer volume of people with many running out of stock. In 2019 the variety and choice was not there, was crowded and the pricing was an issue. So learning that there would be the food truck area again made me happy and I was glad to know there should be enough trucks to cater for demand was a good sign for a successful convention.

It was really great to see KFC (the official wingman for CCA) geek it up with their custom menu. Their menu brought me such joy. It is hard to describe the pleasure and frustration at knowing I missed out by not ordering a ‘yum yum it is’ when I had the chance. ‘The cake is a lie’ was decadent and I wish I had gone back to try the other shake.

The day really made me anticipate the weekend ahead. Part way through the day we collected our pass and a parking sticker as our ‘media pack’. I do wish we had received a ‘media pack’ though that contained a visitor guide during our briefing. It really would have made planning out the weekend a much smoother process. I am eternally grateful for the parking sticker though. 

After collecting our passes we wondered the venue a little more with my friends pointing out things they knew I would like. We looked for specific stalls so we would know where to go on day one and we took a number of selfies, sneak peek videos and just had a good time overall. We probably walked a tad too much since the convention had not even technically started yet.

Overall, I had a blast, knew I would get lost and started making mental plans when we left the venue and started to make our way home. I just did not know my plans would not really mean much on the upcoming days.