San Diego Comic-Con can be one of the greatest and worst experiences you can have. There’s insanely long lines, terrible food, and overcrowding, but if you can brave through it, you’ll be rewarded with some amazing footage of upcoming movies and TV, breaking comics, movie, and TV news, and exclusive convention collectibles and swag, as well as being surrounded by over 100,000 fellow geeks as you all converge upon the welcoming streets of San Diego. It’s not for the faint of heart, but if you embrace the experience, chances are, you can have the time of your life.

There was a lot of fun things happening this year in and around the convention center, including fantastic panels for the X-Men and Marvel movies, as well as a secret Metallica concert.

Here’s our 10 Favorite Moments From Comic-Con 2013.

10- Sleepy Hollow’s Headless Horseman

A new series is coming to Fox this Fall called Sleepy Hollow, based on the classic story by Washington Irving, which is one of my favorites. To promote the show, Fox had a team of Headless Horsemen roaming the streets of San Diego. I wrote about it, I told everyone else how to find a Headless Horseman, yet couldn’t find one myself except for one time when I was mere feet away from one before nearly getting trampled to death by Con sidewalk traffic. But on the very last day of the convention when I was about to leave for good, I spotted one right outside the doors and was able to snap my own photo. Yes, this excited me.

[Photo by Empress Eve for Geeks of Doom.]

9- The Predator Holds Your Severed Head

To promote the upcoming Predator 3D Blu-ray, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment had a booth on the Con floor in which a Predator resided in a jungle habitat. People were able to get a special 3D printout of the Predator holding their severed head in its hand. That’s pretty sick… and cool.

[Photo by Empress Eve for Geeks of Doom.]

8- The Walking Dead Woodbury Prison Walkers

Each year, AMC has a great booth on the convention floor for The Walking Dead. One year, attendees got to go into the farmhouse house from the pilot; another year, they could handcuff themselves to the roof like Merle; and last year, you got to be one of Michonne’s pet walkers. This year, they got to walk through the Walker-infested prison yard of Woodbury, while a figure of Rick stood guard at the watchtower. Inside was the Governor’s man cave complete with the walker-head aquarium and his caged up little walker daughter. Check out more photos from the convention floor in our Preview Night Photo Gallery. Also see our panel coverage.

[Photos by Dave3 for Geeks of Doom.]

7- The Godzilla Encounter

In probably the best promotion happening in conjunction with the Con but located outside the actual convention center, Legendary Pictures converted a nearby building into The Godzilla Encounter, a special exhibit on Godzilla in anticipation for their upcoming Godzilla movie (the studio also had a panel in the convention center, where they showed off new footage). Read all about the experience and check out 72 photos from the event here.

[Photo by Dave3 for Geeks of Doom.]

6- Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Panel

A 50th anniversary episode is scheduled to air on November 23, 2013, so there’s a lot of excitement for Doctor Who this year. The current Doctor, Matt Smith, who’s leaving the series, was on the panel on Sunday. A trailer for the episode was shown featuring a team-up between Smith and the previous Doctor, David Tennant, as well as Billie Piper returning as Rose. (You can read our full coverage of the panel here.)

[Photo by Empress Eve for Geeks of Doom.]

5- The Avengers: Age Of Ultron

The Marvel Studios panel was the finale in Hall H on Saturday (hence why I had to get in line in middle of the night) and as expected, it rocked the roof off the place. With Marvel, it’s always go huge or go home. The studio brought Thor: The Lost World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Guardians Of The Galaxy to the panel. And if the Loki stunt wasn’t enough (see #2 below), they had to bring it even more with the announcement that the sequel to The Avengers would be called The Avengers: Age Of Ultron. Director Joss Whedon came out before the crowd and intro’d a short teaser video, where Iron Man’s helmet smashed and turned into Ultron, revealing Ultron as the baddie for the next film. The crowd did, indeed, go wild. (In a video interview off stage, Whedon gave more details about the plans for the sequel.)

[The Avengers: Age Of Ultron title card courtesy of Marvel.]

4- The Cast Of X-Men: Days of Future Past

While 20th Century Fox had a panel scheduled for Saturday in the convention center’s massive Hall H auditorium, there was no listing of which properties the studio would bring. With the viral X-Men movie presence outside the Con, it was obvious that there would be something to do with the next film in the X-Men franchise, X-Men: Days of Future Past. And man, did they have something: They brought out the hefty ensemble cast, with includes actors from the original X-Men trilogy, as well as the First Class prequel. See photos and video from the panel here.

[Photo by Dave3 for Geeks of Doom.]

3- Superman/Batman Movie Announcement

During the Warner Bros. panel in Hall H on Saturday, Man Of Steel director Zack Snyder made a surprise appearance on the stage to confirm that a new Superman movie is in the works. Oh, and that it will be a Superman/Batman movie. Yeah. Apeshit… that’s what the crowd went when a video came on that showed the Batman logo rising up behind the Superman logo. (Screenwriter David Goyer later clarified that the movie will be a Superman vs. Batman story.)

[Fan art of Superman/Batman logo by Voeten via CBR]

2- Loki Takes Over The Marvel Studios Panel

Just as the Marvel Studios panel kicked off in Hall H on Saturday, the lights went out and the voice of the villainous Loki could be heard over the speakers. When the lights came back on, there stood on stage actor Tom Hiddleston in full Loki regalia, telling us how he was burdened with glorious purpose. As if having a badass like Loki there to gather up an army wasn’t good enough, Hiddleston barely keeping his composure through the act made it ten times better. Check out the photos and video here

[Photo by Dave3 for Geeks of Doom.]

1- Metallica’s Secret Concert

Metal giants Metallica made their first appearance ever at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday evening when they came to Hall H for a panel for their upcoming movie, Metallica Through The Never, which combines performance sequences of the band with a narrative film. We got to see the new poster and trailer, as well as IMAX exclusive footage from the upcoming 3D film, which was cool and all, but umm, yeah, we got to go to the secret show Metallica did later that night! The show took place near the convention center at the Spreckels Theater, where the band put on a raw, no-frills, intimate performance for a mere 1,500 or so people, all of whom were on their feet and banging their heads (yours truly included) for the 90-minute set. (You can see the band perform “Seek & Destroy” here.) Fans had to either win tickets to the show or be fortunate to have the right connections (I was the latter). The band opened with “Creeping Death” and encored with “Seek and Destroy,” but more importantly, they played my favorite Metallica song, “Ride The Lightning.” As many times as I’ve seen Metallica over the years, I’ve never seen them in this small type of setting without all the stage show and pyro. And to see one of my favorite bands play at Comic-Con definitely tops my list. It was fucking amazing. \m/

[Photo by Empress Eve for Geeks of Doom.]

Honorable Mentions

– The Kick-Ass 2 Stuntmen, who saved a distraught women from jumping off her 14-story hotel room balcony right near the Con.
– Chris Hardwick, who made every panel he moderated infinitely better.
– The Game Of Thrones swag.
– The hilarious panel for The World’s End with director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
– The Trolley Signs written in the fictional Game Of Thrones language Dothraki.
– Getting to see the first 10 minutes of Terry Gilliam‘s The Zero Theorem, starring Christoph Waltz.
– And, as always, the Cosplay.

That’s it, these are the things that I personally found exciting about this year’s Comic-Con and that I got to experience. There was a lot of other great happenings in and around the Con that had I not had to spend six hours a day in line to get into Hall H I might have been able to see, too. But, there’s only so many hours in a day and you can only be in one place at one time. But all of this was enough to make me anticipate going back to San Diego next year. If you went to SDCC, feel free to let us know what your favorite moments were.

Be sure to check out Geeks of Doom’s full coverage of SDCC here at the site and through our Facebook and Twitter.

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