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So, due to classes I didn't get to leave College
Station until 12 on Friday, which meant I arrived
in Arlington for the convention at about three. I
dumped my stuff up in the hotel room, where Dad
showed me the truly WRETCHED looking 1960's
science fiction television show (editor's note Time Tunnel) that he'd already
purchased. He offered to let me watch it with
him, which I politely declined, and took my badge
to head down to the convention myself.
Mom and Mat, I knew, were in the DC Crisis
Management Panel. I scoped out where that room
was and started to make my way into the main
dealer's room. What struck me immediately was how
empty the place seemed. It not only didn't seem to
have attendees in it, the dealer's booths
themselves were pretty sparse. This was curious
I thought to myself and started my first round of
surveying the dealer's room. The left half was
mostly toys, exhibitors, and clothes. It wasn't
until I started to make my way to the right that I
found the actual comic books. But overall, there
weren't a ton of purely comic booths. I think
there were at most ten in the main room. Maybe
I'm just spoilt from having gone to bigger cons,
but this did not feel like a major convention from
the dealer's room. It felt more like a smaller
con that got booked in a room that was too big for
it.
So after making mental notes of where every booth
I wanted to look at more in depth was, I started
to walk out toward the entrance. On my way out,
I spotted my Cepheid
friends at the Comic Book
Legal Defense Fund Booth. I chatted with them
about various things and got told that indeed like
last year all the indie comics were in a separate
ballroom, which frankly strikes me as a bad
business model. You don't want money leaving one
room for another, and given that I spent no money
in the main room and mom bought three things for
me in the small press room, I'd say this might
illustrate that point.
Having done small press comic book reviews and
interviews for the past several years, I know a
lot of the local talent that you see at major
cons. This convention however I only recognized a
couple of people: the ever-present, ever-cool Drew
Edwards of Halloween Man
fame, and the guy that
does Black Bastard. The Halloween Man booth,
while small, was very hard to miss. It had a
BRIGHT orange Halloween table cloth and a neon
green cactus/jack-o-lantern thing, which if it had
legs would remind me of Cactaur from the Final
Fantasy games.
However, the small press section looked FULL, both
with people and with booths. It was a sharp
contrast to the main exhibit hall. I stopped off
to talk to Drew for a bit and find out what was up
with him, and then did my preliminary scan of the
room. I spotted something interesting looking entitled Joe
and Monkey and made a note to come look at his
stuff later.
Then I decided it was time to find
Mom and Mat in the panel. I sneak into the back of the panel room and much
to my surprise, the room is pretty full. In fact,
there are no seats near Mat and mom, who are
strangely easy to pick out in the crowd-really
tall guy and a really short woman with dark
brown/grey skunk striped hair.
Normally Dan Didio and Bob Wayne are pretty funny
guys at panels. Apparently they've even funnier
if you bring them beer to drink while they're
giving a panel. Overall, the last half of the panel was pretty
funny and informative. Assuming they were telling to
truth. Mom told me later Didio opened it up with "I
might lie. The wilder the stuff the better."
Editor's note: And it was pretty wild. Dan talked about the new revamped Sugar and Spike. Sugar was going to be a hooker and Spike was going to be heroin addict. Uh huh
After the panel we went around the dealers rooms
some. We went and actually picked up Joe and Monkey.
We then met up with my father randomly in the hall.
We all kind of split up and looked around at
various things in the dealer's room, including the
400 something dollar Lithograph by Alex Ross that
mom bought because it had the Legion of Superheroes
and the Fatal Five in it. She bought it from Greg at Choice Collectibles . For those of you not in
the know, Legion is her primary crack. (Editor's note: it is also Sidra Roman Roberts' primary crack, too! Greg from Choice Collectibles was very nice, even sending me an email thanking me for my purchase. I was very impressed with his customer service.)
We then popped into the last bit of the Marvel
Panel. The guy they had up there was green as all
get go, and well, I'm a DC Drone, so I picked up
Joe and Monkey and started reading. Dad started
reading over my shoulder and very shortly we were
both giggling and trying to not disturb people in
the panel. Before we knew it the Marvel panel was
over and it was time to eat.
We went over to a Chinese Buffet near the
convention center and had a nice meal. Afterward
in the parking lot I made some silly comment and
did a little stupid dance to go along with it.
Well, of course the stupid dance had to be
recorded for all posterity with the digital
camera, and because I have no shame here's the video.
So after dinner we all went back to the hotel and
chilled for a while. Mat went home after a while,
mom went to make Livejournal posts and comments,
dad settled down with his bad television show, and
I went out like a light.
The next morning everyone was up at an ungodly
early hour. I can't remember the exact time, but
it was ungodly, I remember that. So after
everyone shuffled around, got dressed, shaved, put
on their makeup etc. It was a little too late to
actually have a sit down breakfast at the hotel
because dad and I needed to get in line for Sean
Astin signing tickets and Mom needed to get in
line to go get Jason Bourgeois' little crack, I mean, Dark Phoenix Hero
Clixs Con Exclusive thing. So, we got pastries
and juice at the mini-shop in the lobby of the
hotel, scarfed those down quickly and made our way
to the convention hall to wait in line. Overall,
we didn't get a bad spot in line. It was inside,
it wasn't near any of the benches but that was
okay. After a while we plopped down on the carpet
and waited for things to start moving.
While we were waiting in line this woman with a
camera crew walks by and asks us all to cheer for
the camera when she walks by again with it because
she's with MTV. You know, last time I checked, we
definitely were not cool by MTV standards. Then
again, I haven't watched MTV in close to seven
years at this point. Basically, when they started
playing nothing but boy bands, pop princesses or
rap as their music videos, I stopped watching.
Anyhow, we put up a mild showing for the MTV woman
and after a while the line started to move. Dad
and I had no problem getting in and getting our
tickets for the signing. I was really amazed. I
was expecting it to be more of a hassle due to
what I saw the first year they had one in Texas
and they had Kevin Smith as the big guest you
needed a ticket to see. Mom after much trotting
up and down managed to attain Jason's coveted Dark
Phoenix Figurine/Hero Clixs thingie. (Editor's note: The people at the Wiz Kid's booth actually sent me away from the booth to get the Dark Phoenix heroclix. When I realized that their staff obviously had no clue what their own product line was, I went back and stood in line for it. Lucky for me that the attendance was less this year, and I was able to get it. When I was standing in line, a guy gave out heroclix to everyone standing in line BUT ME. I guess middle aged grey haired women don't read comics or need these things. It really pissed me off.)
So once again we set to cruising the convention
room floor. We went past Summer Glau, River from
Firefly and Serenity, and I SWEAR she looks very
similar to someone I know in Cepheid. We then
went back outside the hall to wait for Joe Singleton and Mat Bredfeldt
to arrive. Dad and I had Joe's goodie bag, but we
didn't have his phone number and he was late. So,
I waited in the hall while mom and dad when back
up to the room to get the phone number and tell
Jason that the figurine was his. While I was waiting down there I ran into Mat,
And rather than having to call Joe, Joe called me. So
I trooped outside the convention center to give
Joe his badge. The staff of Wizard World was
cattle calling anyone without a badge into a line
to fill out their application for a badge, and I
didn't want Joe to have to get caught in that.
So now with Joe and Mat in tow, we waited for mom
and dad to come back, which they did and once they
did we all started back out into the dealers room
again, after agreeing to meet outside the room
where Sean Astin was giving his panel at about
noonish. Everyone bummed around. Joe, dad and I
talked Firefly, Serenity, and other various sundry
things.
We then met and went to the Sean Astin panel,
which was also very funny and very cute. Sean
Astin seems to be a really sweet, intelligent
fellow. Too bad my father game him a copy of Lord
of the Rings Texas Style (Editor's note: our blockbuster B film trilogy we made for Scholockfest. Three years in the making, and a terrible parody! With special effects!) He probably thinks
we're insane. But that's a story for a little bit
later.
After the panel dad and I made our way to the line
for the signing. Everyone in the line was very
polite and they were actually quite entertaining
people to end up stuck in line with, with the
notable exception of the women with the huge fish
nets that some company had hocking their new
energy gum. They were kind of cute the first
time. After that they were just STUPID. Actually,
they were pretty stupid the first time, but it was
cute the first time. I think their cuteness might
not have worn away so fast if I were a man or a
lesbian, but as I am neither, they were not
entertaining the second, third or fourth time
around.
So after a while we finally get up to Sean Astin,
dad hands him a copy of Lord of the Rings Texas
Style and he seems just amazed and flattered that
he's actually being given something from someone.
It was very cute actually. So, dad as I walk up
to Sean points at me and comments," She played
YOUR part."
Sean turns and starts asking me about the
costuming for the part, which I explain and he
then describes as, "So it's like Huck Finn?"
I nodded," Yeah, that's a pretty decent
description."
"Cool, can't wait to see it."
I was very good and didn't laugh like a maniac as
we headed off. We'd seen mom, Joe and Mat head
into the small press area while we were waiting in
line, so we plunged into the room to look for
them. After a few laps, we can't see them, so I
pull put my cell phone to call Mat or Joe and as
the phone is ringing I finally spot them sitting
at a gaming table.
About as soon as we sit down, we're off again.
Some of the group wants to go to the DC News
panel. So, they head off to the panel. I check
out where they are and I make what will be my
final lap of the dealer's room. I was cruising
through all of the half-off graphic novels trying
to find something interesting looking that is self
contained and not some series that got cancelled
after what's collected in the graphic novel. I
must have looked through over forty long boxes
with no luck. I probably should have looked more
at the last booth that I was at, but my head was
beginning to kill me. So, I decided that it was
almost 5, the con closed at 6, I should probably
go lie down so that I would be in some form of
shape for the big group dinner that evening to
celebrate Zack's (Editor's note: Sidra's husband) birthday.
Overall, it was an okay convention. I've been to
better. I've been to worse. I do think that the
lack of wall to wall people while a little
unnerving, made for a more laid back atmosphere
than it had in prior years. You should definitely
go check out the pictures and the panel summaries.
(Editor's note: For me, this was the best Wizard convention I have been to, and I've been to Chicago. With more space and less people, it gave me the opportunity to actually look at things and shop. I spent more money at this convention than I have at any other Wizard. The dealers I talked to seemed happy with their business, too. The panels were some of the funniest I have been to in my comic con going experience, the indy room was full and interesting, and the atmosphere was very pleasant and laid back. There wasn't any hustling to see the people that I wanted to see. All in all, I enjoyed this con very much.
Speaking of bad DVD's, Paul and I picked up the sequel to Flesh Gordon on Sunday. For you young people, long before there was the Rocky Horror Picture Show, we had Flesh Gordon. Flesh Gordon was the soft porn film we played at Houston Cons at midnight on Saturday night. It even had stop motion special effects by Jim Danforth, a protégé of Ray Harryhausen. Anyway, we discovered it had a sequel, so we bought it. On our way out of the convention center, Paul had to stop at the bathroom, as he was going in, I almost called after him, "Paul, I'm going to put the PORN in my purse!," and then I thought, "ya know, maybe you shouldn't be shouting into men's room about porn, bad idea," and stopped myself in time.)
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