Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the twelfth edition of the Indiana Comic Convention at the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis — a fun opportunity for fans to look at walls covered with old comics, build lightsabers, buy 3D-printed knickknacks, overstock on Funko Pops, respect the anime fandom whose population dwarfs us older generations, avoid AI “art”, and scratch their heads at the inexplicable comeback of the 19th-century rubber-duck fad.

Rather than dump all our pics into a single omnibus entry, we’re mercifully splitting them into a trilogy of galleries…

…concluding with anything and everything involving neither celebrities nor cosplay. Meeting Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage may have been the sensational headline news, but he’s not all we saw during our two days onsite.

A fun prelude first: the Tuesday before ICC, our local Fox affiliate’s morning-news show ran a segment (whose co-hosts include former Straight No Chaser member Ryan Ahlwardt) promoting the con via an interview with two reps from a startup whose purpose and/or mission seems to be “We attend cons, and then…something something something, profit”? As of today their official main page is just a contact form, but their piece used video footage from last month’s Pop Con Indy that included silent cameos by the two of us around the fifty-second mark, walking down an aisle. Anne’s mom happened to catch it on TV and gave us a heads-up.

…so that was cute.

DAY ONE: FRIDAY, JUNE 5TH.

We parked for free at my workplace a half-mile away and walked toward the Convention Center through one of Indy’s myriad construction sites that are absolutely everywhere right now, some of which have recently sprung forth as summertime projects while school’s out and Hoosiers are ostensibly leaving town for vacation to get away from it all. I’ll spare you a thousand-word digression about how many road closures have turned my daily commute into a tedious video-game maze and have nearly killed any joy I find in the basic act of driving. Indy’s citywide state of disrepair is what happens when you try to save taxpayers a few bucks over several decades at the expense of infrastructure, then decide to play catch-up with 6000 shamefully deteriorating areas all at once. I can only imagine the consternation it caused any out-of-town fans trying to navigate their way toward the festivities.

(Okay, sorry for not sparing you all the digression.)

We got inside the Center around 10:50. Registration was upstairs in the Sagamore Ballroom, where the lines moved at near-Dragon Con speed. Despite the hundreds in front of us, we had our wristbands a half-hour later, which we were required to wear all weekend long — no badges for us, sadly. I still have badge ribbons in my con bag left from Dragon Con 2025 that I’ll never get to hand out if cons keep cost-cutting on their admission accessories.

VIPs were unleashed into the exhibit hall at noon; we general-admission folks followed promptly at 12:45. The place was packed with far more teens than normal for a Friday, all taking advantage of what I’m pretty sure was ICC’s first time ever being held after school’s out for the summer, a shrewd move from their traditional springtime berth. We entered through the doors on the far east end of the show floor; the autograph area was of course on the distant opposite end, adding a few more football-fields’ lengths to our total steps for the day.

After getting Paul Wesley’s autograph, we fetched lunch from the food court on the opposite end of the show floor (yep, back by the entrance), where a mix of food trucks and stands offered some variety at typical comic-con prices — i.e., more expensive than leaving the con and visiting any nearby fast-food restaurants. Unfortunately, with last year’s closure of Circle Centre Mall and the demise of its food court to make way for a planned years-long construction project, con attendees in downtown Indy have far fewer economical options than they did in years past. (Fair warning to you tens of thousands planning for Gen Con 2026 in July.) We stayed inside and dined on Asian bowls from Bibibop and dessert from Sub Zero Nitrogen Ice Cream.

Sights seen on our first tour through (most of) the exhibit hall:

The showrunners scheduled nearly all the Friday photo ops in the late afternoon and early evening, presumably to allow the stars to autograph more continuously throughout the day. The designated area was helpfully spacious, though for some reason they hung the big PHOTO OPS ceiling sign at the exit rather than at the entrance gate, which was confusing at first.

On our way to the 4:00 Timeless panel, we happened across a street team who were making the rounds inside the Center with petitions to get former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard on our 2026 state ballot for Secretary of State as an independent candidate, in hopes of unseating the wildly corrupt Republican incumbent and besting the Democrats’ freshly anointed, 30-year-old nepo-baby nominee. (Full disclosure: we met Ballard once when Anne’s grandma chased him across an exhibit hall.)

We finished up our last photo op around 6:50 (long, loooong day), made the long, hot walk back to the car and slumped into our seats, effectively dead. Upon trying to leave downtown and return to the west side, I was so exhausted that I totally forgot the 16th Street bridge over the White River is closed for the next two years for a much-needed construction project.

We detoured back to 10th Street and eventually grabbed dinner at a White Castle whose drive-thru was powered by an A.I. cashier, something we’d never run into before. We were dismayed at the off-putting, programmably cheerful robo-voice, but in its defense: (a) it got our order right, even the part where Anne asked for no onions on her sliders; and (b) at least a job-stealing A.I. tool can’t call in sick or do a no-call-no-show on Friday nights. As a former fast-food manager who worked hundreds of closing shifts over twelve years, most of which colossally sucked because of delinquent employees, I can relate to the temptation to seek staffing-shortage workarounds. Our order cost about as much as a single Bibibop bowl.

DAY TWO: SATURDAY, JUNE 6TH.

We skipped the con altogether due to a family commitment. Please enjoy a peek at our nephew’s graduation party.

In hindsight, the schedule conflict worked out to our benefit. We assumed the con would be pure pandemonium in light of the hoopla around Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage’s Very First Appearance at an American Convention. Also, Friday wrecked our aging bodies pretty thoroughly and we ended up sleeping through much more of Saturday than normal. The added recovery time away from those bustling halls was just the boost we needed to finish out Sunday. And, as I previously theorized, Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage seemingly needed a day to acclimatize to the comic-con experience.

DAY ONE: SUNDAY, JUNE 7TH.

The show floor was scheduled to open to us gen-pop ticketholders at 10:45. Out of habit we arrived downtown shortly before 8:30 even though this was totally unnecessary. Cage’s 11:30 photo op was literally our only remaining appointment — no more autographs to seek, no other competitions to line up for. We could’ve slept in a couple more hours, pulled up into my workplace lot late and strolled into the Center exactly in time for our moment with Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage.

But nah. Showing up early is our thing. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

So we grabbed a padded bench next to the meeting rooms, enjoyed some primo sitting, and watched the entrance line grow longer and longer, though not as long as Friday’s had been. I’m sure Saturday’s was far worse. Sights while we waited:

We joined the entrance line around 10 and followed them inside promptly at 10:45. For those keeping track at home, longest autograph line by far throughout this day was for beloved eternal champion Christopher Sabat. Before and after our brush with Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage, we finished walking the rest of the dealers’ booths that we hadn’t gotten to on Friday, plus an encore of Artists Alley. Sights along the way:

After the one last photo op, we grabbed acai bowls for lunch from the same stand we hit up last year plus a latte from the Nitro Yerba Mate stand. Our total exhibit-hall haul:

• A discounted manga hardcover omnibus from Gem City Books, always one of my favorite comic-con vendors
• A Kermit the Frog pin from the vast Disney pin-collection binders of Fantastical Menagerie
• Tyler Mane’s previously mentioned original graphic novel
• Cookies from The Chubby Batch
• Asian snacks from two different exhibitors in aisles 1600 and 1700

…and that’s pretty much it. We did two walkthroughs of Artists Alley, but I’d already met the majority of published guests on hand. On the bright side, one prop weapon vendor shouted out his recognition of the shirt I was wearing — a birthday present from Anne, acquired from the good people at Drunken Dragon Hotel. Dragon Con attendees should recognize the in-joke in our pic with Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage.

We left the Center shortly before 2:00, went home and collapsed one more time. In between brief comas, household chores, and throwing new words and pictures at the internet, we indulged in our favorite post-con tradition: constantly checking and rechecking the con’s unofficial Facebook fan-group.

It still welcomed the usual assortment of cosplay high-fives, but those were shoved into the back seat while members started dozens of new threads devoted to The War Over Whether Meeting Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage Was Worth the Price.

No, Cage wasn’t a cheap date. No, meeting actors at cons in general isn’t cheap anymore like it was when she and I started doing cons in the ’90s. Yes, some autographs look like accidental pen-swipes. Yes, some people want autographs anyway. Yes, some people do in fact spend their money however they feel compelled to spend it. Some people blow their earnings at comic-cons. Some people waste their petty cash on fancy boozes with French labels. Some people blow their riches on buying entire entertainment corporations and running them into the ground. Welcome to America! What a country!

As a veteran of the 2000s message-board era (including nine years as an admin and moderator at one such site), online slap-fights aren’t really my thing anymore. Amid all the pro-vs.-con debates, though, I did take exception to the commentariat who insisted with heated impatience that everyone should just stop being negative and only say positive things. Longtime MCC readers may be aware that isn’t how I roll.

I hate writing things at length only to watch them sink to the internet’s Stygian depths or get deleted outright (one of the many reasons I don’t post reviews on third-party sites or solely on social media), so I’ve saved it here in case I need to repeat myself in the future in some other discussion after some other con:

Con-specific FB groups are gonna talk about “Here’s what we loved about the con, here’s what sucked.” It’s why these groups exist! It’s not always gonna be about unconditional fan-love.

Cage was a pretty bold deal for ICC, or for ANY con, considering actors who once netted 8-figure salaries don’t normally turn up for these in NYC or LA, let alone here in the Midwest. The controversy was inevitable and understandable, especially here in a nexus of folks who each get different things out of cons.

You got the highest-end upperclass collectors, the online retailers looking to cash in, the middle-class geeks who budget fun-money for these, the credit-card overusers who’ll have regrets someday, the cosplayers who’re here for the community vibe, folks who won’t (or can’t afford to) spend a single dime beyond the ticket price, and first-timers still trying to figure out where they fit into all this. Opinions will differ! Fandom is large! It contains multitudes!

I dunno that we needed 10,000 separate threads complaining about Cage’s face, and the cumulative disappointment could be overwhelming (and, frankly, kinda dull) to doomscroll through at times, but there’re happy chats in there too!

The drive-by hecklers who didn’t attend the con and are here *only* to zealously snipe at others could maybe go find a subreddit for that instead, but demanding this be a space for thinking only happy thoughts is unrealistic.

Same as any other con-group: we celebrate what we loved most about the show. We’re candid about what fell short of expectations. And we hope our next con will be even better.

The End. Lord willing, we’ll see you next con! Which will probably not star Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage. If it shockingly does against all odds, hopefully he doesn’t get trapped in road construction on the way there.