Our away mission to San Diego Comic-Con is complete, and the photo above of Timmy and our own Mike Kochis posing with Chief Tyrol pretty much says it all:

IT WAS AWESOME.

We wandered the floor and met folks from Marvel, Dumbrella's @rstevens & @jonrosenberg, and Penny Arcade; finally met @geekgirls and @geekgirldiva and @nerdrage42 at the Geek Girls tweetup; admired the beautiful artwork on display and sale; saw luminaries such as Kari Byron, Doc Hammer, @donttrythis, and Marian Call standing only a few feet away from our very own persons; met @grantimahara and @bonniegrrl; hung out with SDCC staff; stared at some really awesome (and some kinda sad) cosplay; and gave away stuff.

Highlights included handing out free ice cream with @icecreamman at w00tstock and chatting with @rifftrax and @molly23, Barenaked Ladies playing the Big Bang Theory theme before the panel, The Guild panel where we saw a preview of their Bollywood video (posted today!), hearing random stuff (like Incognito) discussed at the Venture Bros panel, and Jamie Hyneman's beet-red face all during the Mythbuster's panel.

We found the crowd respectful and in high spirits, and pretty pleasant-smelling even through Saturday. Between the panels, people-watching, and parties, everything unfolded exactly as they should have: it was like stumbling into a new restaurant and finding precisely what you were craving.

(Click through to see the entire SDCC set.)

The one thing we didn't manage to do is tragic: Timmy's costumes didn't make it out to San Diego in time for the Con. You may have heard us quietly weeping via Twitter, but in case you missed it, UPS didn't get our boxes of RPSLS totes, Geek A Week card packs, Timmy clones, and Timmy's extra-awesome-super-amazing closet of cosplay to us.

We shall make this sad fact up to Timmy's Volunteer Costuming Corps (TVCC) by taking photos of Timmy in each of his getups, and we're planning on displaying the entire collection at ThinkGeek HQ ever after. And the other freebies that didn't make it will be dispersed via Twitter and Facebook, which is maybe even better for you guys. You may thank UPS for that. (And a sincere thank you to @EvanAtUPS for trying to intercept our boxes while they were somewhere in New Mexico.)

And that photo of Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day all romance-novel-ized was to distract you from the FAILage. Did it work?

"So," you may be thinking, "I was at Comic-Con and you guys didn't have a booth so I couldn't frakkin' find you because you kept moving around and how the heck was I supposed to get my free stuff!?"

Sorry if you couldn't find us! We wanted to fully experience the exhaustion of being an attendee and not a booth monkey. The upside to this is we had a good time and got to meet lots of people. But next year--we'll see about next year. This trip was officially reconnaissance and we'll try to be more accessible in 2011. (No promises, mind you, but we'd like to try.)

That also means that if you have suggestions for next time--or our Twitter coverage (was it too much? too little?)--please leave a note in the comments. What would you like to see us do? If you're a vendor or organizer or party-person, how could we work with you to multiply our powers of awesome?

Because that's what we learned from Comic-Con: geeks are better together. Awwwww.