A friend of mine has written up a nice account of his experiences at Comic-Con. He’s Jonathan Kuntz, who teaches in the University of California at Los Angeles School of Theater, Film and Television. Being a lot closer to San Diego than I am, he makes it to Comic-Con every year.

Jonathan and I go way back, to the point where I’m not even sure how we met (which no doubt says more about my aging mind than about how memorable that occasion was). But we were both part of a group of American film and television scholars who went to Beijing in 1988 to give lectures at a summer school for Chinese film critics. That was then an annual event, though less than a year later the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred, and the next year’s lecture series was canceled.

With Jonathan this year was his daughter Rebecca, a Comic-Con newbie. I definitely remember my first (and so far only) encounter with her. Rebecca was 10 or 11 at the time, making part of a small group having Chinese food in LA. Her eyes came close to popping out of her head upon hearing that I had not only met Peter Jackson but interviewed him for an hour. Clearly born to geekdom. She is already planning to return to Comic-Con next year. Perhaps I’ll get there, too, and Jonathan, Rebecca, and I can grab time for a meal. Chinese food, maybe.

Jonathan’s description of their Comic-Con adventures doesn’t add anything to our knowledge of what Peter Jackson is up to (though they did make it into Hall H to hear PJ’s talk, after a two-hour wait in line). Still, it’s a nice little vicarious look at the con for those of us who weren’t there.