Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, plush dolls, variant covers, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. We missed a couple of past installments since their inaugural 2010 gala, but more often than not, whenever they send out the call to convene, we’re happy to answer…

…and call they indeed did! This year the showrunners at ReedPop assembled a dense guest list with cast reunions for quite a few beloved works, which attracted larger autograph crowds to McCormick Place than ever and forced us attendees to weigh a lot of tough choices. Anne and I kept our checklist short and modest, but still ran into scheduling issues that forced us to exercise one of our least favorite comic-con tactics: we had to split the party.

As a married couple (twenty years and counting!) who enjoys cons as a shared experience — as date weekends, if you will — they’re a little less fun to spend on opposite ends of a convention center, connecting only via intermittent texts across overtaxed wi-fi and saving our anecdotes for swapping later. Nevertheless, we parted ways for short whiles and long walks, each alone among the teeming masses except for whatever line-mates we’d meet along the way.

First thing Friday morning when general-admission ticketholders were unleashed upon the show floor at 10:00 a.m. CDT, we said our goodbyes-for-now and joined separate stampedes. Anne rode one wave into the exhibit hall and toward the leftmost end of the celebs’ autographing area, which was largely devoted to the highly publicized reunion of all five stars of the 1985 classic The Breakfast Club on the occasion of the film’s 40th anniversary. We knew that would garner a massive response, especially here in the Chicagoland area — it was shot in the suburb of Des Plaines, five miles north of Fan Expo Chicago‘s home of Rosemont. This weekend’s mainstream media attention to the event proved our easy prophecy.

We pondered the potential awesomeness of getting a photo-op with all five of them, but we knew we wouldn’t go all-in on meeting the entire quintet. Five autograph lines without VIP passes or other special perks (which we almost never opt for) would’ve meant devoting the entire weekend to their lines, and for more than a pretty penny. (Let’s just say they would’ve set us back slightly more than Mark Hamill did.) Sure, a jazz-hands photo-op would’ve wowed our families and friends, but impressing others is not the best reason to overspend, and, if I may share with you in a conspiratorial whisper…I was never a big Breakfast Club fan.

Look at me in horror if you must, but…sorry-not-sorry? I realize the majority of Generation X worships at its altar, but John Hughes’ middle-class magazine-cover milieu never meant much to a lower-class kid like me. Club‘s archetypes didn’t connect with my own loner-whiz experience. It came off as just another ordinary affluent-teen dramedy. With the exception of Vacation, Hughes’ works in general never made my Best-of-the-’80s head-listicles. To this day I still haven’t seen Pretty in Pink because what little I know about it is already irritating. If Club villain Paul Gleason were still alive and came to this shindig, then I totally would’ve been first in line, but with Die Hard in hand for him to sign.

For us, though, one name stood out from the rest. Once upon a time in 2011 Emilio Estevez came to our hometown of Indianapolis as a guest of the Heartland Film Festival to premiere his then-latest directorial effort The Way, alongside his producer as well as the film’s star, his own father Martin Sheen. The trio appeared for a post-screening Q&A, but there was no option for us commoners to approach within a hundred feet of them. Nearly fourteen years later, Estevez was back, agreeing to his very first Club reunion as well as his very first convention appearance. This time, personable options were on the table. So that’s where Anne began her day.

Anne sped ahead of the pack and found herself fifth in Estevez’ general-admission line, which was contained inside its own large, curtained booth. While waiting she had a view through the curtains of the industrial back-wall entrance where actors came and went to and from their own signings. The booth soon filled up behind her, doubtlessly with many a viewer starting their Club quest there. (A logical start, as not all the cast were there Friday.) She passed the time chatting with a lady in a Mighty Ducks jersey who’d come all the way from New Hampshire. She wasn’t the only fan of the film to make a long journey for all this.

Estevez arrived shortly after 11:30 in high spirits and announced, “This is my first one! You guys are poppin’ my cherry!” And thus did the day begin for the star of such films as Repo Man, St. Elmo’s Fire, Judgment Night, Stakeout, Young Guns, and more, more, more.

Despite being just fifth in line, her wait as a humble peasant-fan extended a bit as their line had to keep deferring to the separate, higher-priority line for VIP pass-holders, ADA-verified attendees, and subscribers to ReedPop’s Popverse fan service, whose “C2E2 Superfan” package perks include Fast-Pass privileges at the show. Estevez’ handlers did a fair job alternating between Fast-Passers and gen-pop folks, so she only had to wait till 11:45 for her turn. She chatted up our previous Heartland experience, and he revealed a sequel to The Way is, er, underway. Fingers crossed!

About that photo in the photo: on occasion Anne would seek autographs the old-fashioned way, by sending handwritten fan letters to actors in care of their approved addresses posted online for such materials (pretty much never to their actual homes, which is creepy stalker misbehavior) and including a self-addressed stamped envelope in case they were of a mind to respond and/or had the staffing to facilitate that. After we saw The Way she wrote such a letter to Martin Sheen, who responded by sending her letter back signed, as well as a signed The Way promo pamphlet and this very photo, also signed. Since Estevez was also in the pic, she brought it for him to cosign, and he was very cool with it.

I’m sorry I missed out on that moment, though I’d have my chance to share space with him later that afternoon for a photo op (i.e., our lead photo). He was a bit confused when we asked about jazz hands, but we quickly assured him he didn’t have to mimic us. We do accept “no” as an answer because we’re not entitled jerks. After the shutter clicked, he said he at least attempted “a jazz face”. Good enough! ‘Twas a better effort than some guests will offer us.

Meanwhile…first thing Friday morning when general-admission ticketholders were unleashed upon the show floor at 10:00 a.m. CDT, I immediately darted left and joined the other wave heading upstairs toward the Main Stage at the far end of the fourth floor to attend what I knew would be one of the day’s biggest occasions: an 11 a.m. Lord of the Rings panel featuring six of its stars. Fortunately we’d already met all six at previous shows: Sean Astin at C2E2 2012 and HorrorHound Indianapolis 2017; John Rhys-Davies at Indiana Comic Con both in 2016 and last year; Billy Boyd at Wizard World Chicago 2017; Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan at Fan Expo Chicago 2022; and Andy Serkis at Fan Expo Chicago 2023. Those were six huge names we could cross off our C2E2 to-do lists.

But I liked the idea of seeing all six share a stage. As it happens, so were several thousand other fans. VIPs were of course given priority seating, with signs and ropes reserving fully half the ballroom just for them. There were no great seats for us budget-minded gen-pop folks, though it could’ve been worse: had I lollygagged, I would’ve been shut out and redirected to another ballroom to watch on closed-circuit TV, which also filled up quickly. In such settings Anne’s camera beats either of my devices, so I had to make the most of my own gadgets. My shoddy visuals notwithstanding, the Q&A was quite the party, as I’d expected.

The show cleverly reformatted the standard comic-con Q&A setup. Rather than having fans line up at microphones in the aisles and saying whatever they felt like unless a moderator stepped in, instead a QR code was projected onscreen, which the audience could scan with their phones, leading to a link where they could submit questions for the moderator to use, reword or ignore at their discretion. This system saved much time, boredom, heartache, self-aggrandizement, faux pas, and social awkwardness for any fan with a fear of public speaking. I would dearly love for this to become the comic-con industry standard.

From her perch in the Estevez line, Anne saw Serkis enter the convention center a few minutes after 11 and texted me two minutes before he arrived fashionably late to the Main Stage nearly ten minutes in, interrupting Boyd mid-answer to much joy amongst one and all. Subjects that came up included:

• Their favorite filming locations
• Their wigs
• Their favorite New Zealand foods
• Their favorite potato forms
• The time Peter Jackson planned to shoot Astin in The Longest Dolly Shot Ever, for which Astin’s suggestions made the rig move almost too quickly
• Rhys-Davies and an unnamed elf capsizing in a canoe, though a cartoonishly indignant Rhys-Davies pointed out that same elf capsized again later in a boat with someone else, so that was certainly not Gimli’s fault
• The New Zealand set guard who ended up doing prison time for nightly prop thefts
• Boyd and Monaghan’s new culinary travel show Billy and Dom Eat the World, not yet available in the U.S.
• A disastrous incident involving Boyd, a shrimp-and-chili dish, severe gastrointestinal distress and a school of flying fish
• The Hunt for Gollum, the prequel spinoff that Serkis is directing
• Serkis singing a bit of “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease in Gollum’s voice
• Monaghan’s interest in cosplaying as Walton Goggins’ character in The White Lotus season 3
• When LOTR filming was shut down for inclement weather with the announcement, “There will be no filming tomorrow because the lake is underwater.”
• Astin suffering a panic attack five months into the year-long shoot, calmed by remembering how his mother Patty Duke taught him to be a professional (Rhys-Davies responds, “We are more capable than we think we are”)
• How Rhys-Davies learned to “lead” an ensemble by watching Richard Chamberlain during the making of the original Shogun, especially during a horrific day of filming on a boat where Chamberlain remained stoic to an insensitive extreme while seasick cast and crew “were dying around him”
• The sorrow of shooting the sendoff to the Gray Havens, made worse by having to do it all over again because Astin forgot to put Sam’s vest back on after lunch
• Serkis’ first day as Gollum in a MOCAP suit, working out the character in all seriousness while Jackson and the crew unhelpfully kept laughing at him
• The day Maori elders came in to bless the set
• How Astin cried when the costume department showed him the dress for his daughter, who cameos as Sam’s daughter at the very end (fun trivia: she’s now 28, which made me and Wood visibly wince upon hearing this)

…and more, more, more. The moderator didn’t use the goofy question I submitted, which is understandable. Those that made the cut were entertaining enough.

The LOTR panel ran long and had quite the mobbed bottleneck at the exits upon its conclusion, so I didn’t rejoin Anne in the exhibit hall till 12:15. Together again, we jumped into another autograph line that looked a reasonable length: Michael Ironside! The tough-guy character actor was part of the con’s cast reunion for the 1997 cult classic Starship Troopers, but he’s been all over the place. I’ve seen him in such films as Total Recall, Scanners, Top Gun, Free Willy, The Omega Code, X-Men: First Class, and most recently as narrator of Late Night with the Devil. Then there were episodes of the ’90s Superman animated series, Justice League Unlimited, ER, Smallville, Justified, Community, The Flash, and surely more.

Anne best remembers him as one of the stars from the NBC sci-fi miniseries V, the sequel V: The Final Battle, and the subsequent ongoing series. She’s a big, big fan (note her T-shirt in the Estevez pics) and hasn’t met nearly enough of that universe’s stars — so far only Marc Singer, Jane Badler, Sarah Douglas (twice now!), Bonnie Bartlett, and Robert Englund (yes, that Robert Englund). Now she could add resistance leader Ham Tyler.

Between VIPs and Ironside’s gregariousness, we didn’t exit his line till 1:35, just in time for Estevez’ 2:00 photo op. We had no problem securing a decent spot in his line, as they were behind schedule (a typical comic-con afternoon, then) thanks in part to considerable turnout for the day’s LOTR ops. I got a little skittish when an older gent with a clipboard and FIRE SAFETY vest approached the photo-printer station and chatted with someone in charge, but whatever they said to each other thankfully did not result in anyone shutting the whole place down. We were also a bit weirded out to see birds — like, actual birds, not feathery cosplayers — flying above the photo booths and chirping. Fortunately the Illinois Board of Health has no power over photographers.

The next few hours after that were about Artists Alley and the show floor, which we’ll get to in Part 4. We had one last actor-related appointment on the Friday itinerary: an 8 p.m. standup set from comedian Patton Oswalt! We normally skip any and all comic-con events after about 7:00 or so, but we’ve made rare exceptions in the past (e.g., Henry Rollins’ after-hours set in 2018) and decided to grant the same for the star of Pixar’s Ratatouille, costar of The King of Queens (never seen it) and the later seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000, to say nothing of his countless other credits. Oh, and the comedy club thing’s cool.

VIPs were allowed first crack at the seats, but there was no demarcated VIP section. Once their surprisingly tiny minority had their spots, the rest of us could sit wherever. Second row was fine by us. This stop on his ongoing “Effervescent” tour featured bits or mentions about the following:

• A perfect description of soulless AIs churning out so-called “content” on behalf of their unimaginative coders as “the ultimate participation-trophy machine”
• Phone-banking in deep-desert Nevada during the 2020 election
• That time he came this close to spending money at Hobby Lobby
• A 40-minute flight in which a loudmouth was rewarded with a free beer for a minor generosity and the other bitter passengers sitting around him
• Letting his daughter Alice (now 15!) watch Carpenter’s Halloween for the first time
• How she now calls him “dude”
• Her budding interest in stage-tech roles for her school’s drama production

…which in turn led to a killer routine about a Christmas pageant from his own school-age years. Obviously summarizing a standup gig here is a waste of bandwidth, but in general Oswalt was on fire that night. A few punchlines landed more softly than others, and he admitted he was basically still workshopping the AI bit (which aptly fed into his entire point about human creativity), but the pageant bit had me in tears. 9/10, might pay extra and stay too late to my own physical detriment again.

If you’ve made it this far, 2700 words in and counting, thanks for your patience and/or interest! You might be relieved to know Saturday offered fewer anecdotes. It helped that we didn’t attend any more panels. Not for lack of desire, mind you.

First thing Saturday morning when general-admission ticketholders were unleashed upon the show floor at 9:50 a.m. (yep, early!), a sizable chunk of the crowd immediately darted left and headed upstairs toward the Main Stage at the far end of the fourth floor to attend what was apparently the biggest event in America: the 11 a.m. Breakfast Club reunion. You can now watch the entire panel yourself under far less physical duress. I’m sure they were a pleasure to witness, and I will say we’ve never heard anything but upbeat cheer from fans who’ve met that sweetheart Anthony Michael Hall. Otherwise, my favorite thing about their popularity is the absence of their captivated legions gave us much more elbow room in the aisles than normal for a Saturday.

After a bit of housekeeping in Artists Alley (again, see Part 4), our next item on the docket was an 11:30 photo op with yet another big guest: John Boyega! The public-at-large might know him best as FN-2187, a.k.a. ex-Stormtrooper Finn from the Star Wars sequel trilogy, but he’s been in other sci-fi films such as Netflix’s They Cloned Tyrone, the sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising, and the harshly feisty indie Attack the Block, where his South London street-gang leader Moses defends his mates and his neighborhood against nasty killer aliens.

We had three prepaid items left on our to-do list: Boyega’s autograph, and an Oswalt autograph and photo op. One catch: both chaps had very nearly the exact same signing schedules, neither of them officially starting till after 2:00. We could either (a) do one and then the other, possibly being stuck here till closing time at 7 if either line was out of control; or (b) split the party again and take them each simultaneously. We middle-aged pear-shaped people were already worn down and in dire need of less walking and possibly an early departure. So we opted for (b) a second time.

After Boyega’s op, he headed off for his 12:30 panel on the Main Stage, more or less the Breakfast Club’s follow-up act. We presumed his Q&A would also be huge (maybe not mainstream-media-coverage huge, but sufficiently huge) and that we were too late for anything but second-chance closed-circuit seating. So we regrettably skipped it, grabbed lunch, wandered a few aisles we hadn’t seen Friday, and around 1-ish approached Boyega’s nearly empty autograph line while his panel was in progress upstairs. We weren’t his only fans who’d compromised for the sake of one Boyega Experience aspect over another. I kept Anne company till 1:30, then headed off toward Oswalt’s 2:00 op.

I ended up first in his GA line, in front of a guy who asked the volunteers if it was okay for him to give Oswalt a gift of some barbecue sauce at the moment of his op. (Pro tip: if you simply must, against our own personal advice, giving celebs gifts that’ll weigh down their luggage is more of an autograph-line ask.) When my turn came to step up to Oswalt, I mentioned my thing was jazz hands, and he responded in a sort of Run-Barry-RUN affirmation, “DO IT.”

I went straight from the photo-op area to Oswalt’s autograph line, where he’d head next. His was deep in the LOTR cast’s Signing Land of Mordor on the exhibit hall’s rightmost side, while Anne was steadfastly in Boyegaville, a suburb of leftmost Breakfast Club City. ‘Round this time the convention center wi-fi went haywire, another typical Saturday comic-con bug-feature, so trading updates with her got spotty across the full length of the hall.

Oswalt reached his chair around 2:20, but VIPs and other Fast-Passed fans kept showing up and getting dibs on his attention first, though the handler seeded a few GA fans into the mix here and there. The line felt worse for a while because several folks ahead of us ignored the bright yellow tape on the floor and didn’t get the “serpentine” concept that would help save space and, if nothing else, at least make the incremental forward motions feel a little more frequent and meaningful. (When waiting in such lines begins to feel like a downloading-progress bar stalled at 8%, every little bit of advancement is like a refreshing hamster pellet.) Eventually a con volunteer showed up and enforced the serpentine paradigm, moving folks up and pointing out the conspicuous tape. This lesson took two tries to fully take.

As it happens, Boyega likewise arrived at his table at 2:20, still enthusiastic. Another volunteer had to explain the serpentine thing to his fans as well. Anne reached him at 3:10 and got two autographs — one for herself and one for me on my copy of Attack the Block. She collects autographed 8-x-10s, knew zilch about DVD-signing preferences, wasn’t sure where I’d wanted him to do so, and misunderstood my (delayed) response, but she got the generous favor done. I was sorry to miss out on a second chance to say hi to him, but at least I’d had the first chance earlier.

At 3:30 I reached Oswalt one last time and proffered for his signature my copy of the MST3K Amazing Colossal Episode Guide. It was published after season 7, years before he’d join in the streaming-era seasons as Son of TV’s Frank, but it’s my personal relic of my MST3K-fandom experience, a long story in itself. I’d already had it signed by creator Joel Hodgson, Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank, Mike and Kevin and Bill and Mary Jo nearly 25 years ago, and most recently by Oswalt’s rhyming costars Jonah Ray and Felicia Day at the first and only Galaxycon Louisville in 2019. His reaction was one of succinct incredulity, a bit distanced as one would expect from a standup comedian who keeps his cards close to his chest to avoid pontential parasocial pitfalls, but I appreciated the chance to have my relic updated.

For my money, though, Boyega wins Best Autograph of the Weekend.

To be concluded! Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:

Part 1: Friday Cosplay!
Part 2: Saturday Cosplay!
Part 4: Comics and More!