This past Saturday my wife and I spent quality time together once again at this year’s Wizard World Chicago. Due to multiple complications we had to settle for one-day admission, but we did our best to cover the territory and explore our entertainment options as much as we could within our limitations. We appreciated that the show floor was expanded across two levels to allow for much wider aisles and consequently a lot less congestion and personal-space invasions than we endured in years past.

We kick off our mandatory photo collection with, of course, a selection of costumes. It’s one of my favorite parts of any given convention. I’m frequently impressed by the effort and creativity that fellow fans pour into these lavish recreations, whether they select characters that everyone else is also trying on, or they go obscure and bring to life the characters known only to a few hardcore lucky ones.

The average movie geek knows of King Arthur and his knights, wielding requisite coconuts for accurate horsey clip-clopping sound effects, possibly retrieved from the beak of some nearby swallow.

Also from the world of scary movies: Ash from the Evil Dead trilogy, hanging out with the Aquaman of a mirror universe. (Aquawoman? Ms. Aquaman? Lady Aqua? Orange Fathom?)

Behold Barf! There’s a magnificent caption I’ve never had the chance to use before. Blame Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs.

I’ve seen neither of the Blues Brothers movies and didn’t discover SNL till the Eddie Murphy/Joe Piscopo era, but older fans than me do love these guys.

DUFF-MAN! IS FINALLY A CONVENTION COSTUME! OH, YEAH!

Kiki, flown in from Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service.

Ryu Ranger from Gosei Sentai Dairanger sets aside his differences — and his bitterness that his costume was never featured in America’s Power Rangers — to join forces with the nefarious Shadow Blue Power Ranger from Power Rangers Turbo.

For general audiences, please enjoy this Sesame Street Yip-Yip, which shambled around and made weird noises in character, leaving some bewildered onlookers in Artists Alley.

Video game old school in the house! Luigi, Mario, Princess, and Link are joined by Heather Mason from the decidedly not-Nintendo Silent Hill 3. I bet this crossover would make for one fascinating mashup game.

My video game knowledge is far from encyclopedic, but I know Final Fantasy characters when I see them. From FFXIII, here’s Lightning and Hope, gunblade included.

One of my favorite atypical costume choices of the day: Zack and Aerith from the prequel Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII — she with her staff, he with the sword that would eventually be passed on to Cloud.

If you prefer fight games to RPGs, assorted Mortal Kombat characters were all over the con. Left to right: Subzero, Cyrax, Kitana, Raiden, Jade, and Mileena. (It’s sad that I remembered just two of these without seeking a refresher. It’s been ages since I’ve had to bust out any MK2 finishing moves.)

Master Chief turns corporate toady for Apple logo, from the upcoming outsourced sequel iHalo Sellouts. Behind him you can see the audience filing into the costume contest, which we regretfully missed because we had a long nighttime drive ahead of us.

Reps from a local haunted house called Fear City were handing out discount coupons and generally enlivening the crowded upper-level entrance in the afternoon. No boring moments allowed at this show.

To be continued! Next time: costumes from Marvel, DC, and Star Wars.

[Special thanks to my son the Super Sentai geek for his invaluable assistance with this entry.]