Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fifth edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. In 2022 they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times, and have expended tremendous efforts to maintain the previous showrunners’ geek-marketed traditions to keep luring in longtime fans and newcomers alike…

…and it all comes down to this: one last photo gallery touring what else we saw beyond the cosplay, besides the celebs, past Artists Alley, and even outside the convention center’s walls. The con was large; it contained multitudes.

One thing our weekend contained much less of than expected: severe thunderstorms. Our local feeds showed us countless photos and stories from the destructive floods that too many consecutive rainy days had brought to Indiana — surpassing all expectations, overwhelming meager precautions, overtaking numerous areas and forcing more than a few evacuations. Our hearts go out to those affected, the families who’ve lost loved ones in the resulting calamities, and the communities struggling to recover.

As for us? The previous Wednesday, a power line snapped right down the street and left us without electricity for an hour and (for some reason) without internet for at least three hours. A couple large branches were knocked off the maple tree in our front yard. My lawn is stronger and greener than ever, possibly surging with gamma-irradiated strength. I’d mow it if the week hadn’t been so hectic and if the rains had paused long enough to let me before we left. Storms followed the first couple hours of our drive to Chicago, then more or less left us alone.

Call this a tragedy acknowledgment before we finish babbling about all the fun we had getting out of town.

On the way to Rosemont we made a pit stop in Merrillville and topped off the gas tank so we could skip Illinois gas prices all weekend. Every station in town was an absolute madhouse with long lines at every single pump. Some of that morning rush might be due to the floods causing power outages or resource issues in surrounding towns. Some of that might also be because, unlike Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Indiana Governor Mike Braun keeps suspending our gas tax to mitigate fallout from the Iran fracas. Regardless of whether he’s being generous or just toadying for his party (or why not both?), lately our gas prices have been averaging about 60-80 cents cheaper per gallon than Illinois’.

We pulled into the convention center’s parking garage at 11 a.m. CDT and thought it’d be wise to grab lunch before heading into the con. Parkway Bank Park has a handful of solid eateries, all of which validate. I’m partial to Crust Brewing, but Adobe Gilas and Bub City also do good work. We were sad to see the ice cream purveyors at the Sugar Factory temporarily closed due to “maintenance” issues.

We’d preordered our badges, received them by mail and activated them online before we left home. That foresight let us skip all the will-call lines and head straight to check-in. We paid extra for Ultimate Fan Package passes, which granted us early admission into the exhibit hall all three days and a bunch of swag we mostly didn’t care about. Between the two of us we received:

• Giant tote bags: on one side, the Fan Expo Chicago 2026 logo; on the other, the original cover to Batman: The Dark Knight Returns #1 reformatted into an ad for DC Universe Infinite.
• DC Universe Infinite posters with new art by Frank Miller showing Batman folded into a big blueberry cinnamon roll and touching his shoulder blades with his heels.
• Reprints of Dark Knight Returns #1 with new variant covers — a new one by Miller and Alex Sinclair, the other a “1:6 B/W Virgin Sketch Edition” version of same sans Sinclair’s flourishes.
• PiXL cute li’l Lord of the Rings figurines — Anne got Frodo, I got Sauron.

This might’ve been cooler if I still craved anything with Miller’s name on it. While we waited in line to enter the convention center, we struck up a conversation with a father and daughter; when we ran into them again at the end of the day, we gave them one of our bags and one of our posters. Hopefully they enjoyed.

(Also in that pic: the Sorting Hat pin we mentioned in an earlier chapter; and a button we got in exchange for a charitable donation to the Windy City Ghostbusters.)

While we waited in the next line to enter the exhibit hall, we chatted with a couple from New Mexico named Jake and Jessica. Line chats are among our favorite comic-con activities, but we’re both terrible at introducing ourselves or asking other people their names. Special thanks to Jake and Jessica for compensating for our social awkwardness!

Early entry at 2:00 Friday was a nice perk, but we spent those bonus hours hitting Karl Urban’s line first before anything else. Before the official opening to one and all at 4:00, the only guest we saw at their autograph table was former star Pauly Shore, who was in position at 3:20 and showing all the latecomers how it’s done.

And now: our gallery of comic-con wonders! Enjoy some of the merchandise, art installations and other sights in the exhibit hall or in the attached hallways and conference areas that we witnessed over our three-day weekend.

I’d reserved two nights at a Sheraton in Elk Grove, several miles down the road and much cheaper than Rosemont’s options, but a month before the con we were notified it was about to “permanently close” and would “no longer be associated with Marriott”. Without soliciting any input from us first, they relocated us to another Marriott in Arlington Heights, even farther away but for the same quoted price. It was perfectly fine, though hopefully the clerk didn’t mind that we we were thoroughly incoherent when we shuffled in around 9:30 — after the Friday photo-op fiasco and a long wrong turn into the O’Hare terminals. Her sharp-eyed manager promptly handed us a pair of lifesaving bottled waters.

Saturday morning, we shared the pre-show line with an intermittent Trek fan who grew up on The Next Generation, never watched Deep Space Nine, and let his Paramount+ subscription lapse before he could get very far into the recent shows. We may have overwhelmed him with TMI about what he’s missed to date.

The only things we bought that we never photographed were from the Kessel Trading Company‘s “Spaceballs: The Booth” — a pair of Spaceballs: The Badge Ribbons. As four-time Dragon Con attendees we’re usually staunchly against buying badge ribbons and vastly prefer trading for them, but sadly we’ll be missing this year’s show (their big 40th anniversary!) and wanted to recapture at least a tiny shred of that D*C magic.

That’s also why on Saturday I proudly sported a new shirt bearing the pattern of Dragon Con’s iconic Marriott Carpet. Anne bought it for me from the good folks at Drunken Dragon Hotel, world’s greatest purveyors of merchandise based on Dragon Con in-jokes. I wore it in my Erin Moriarty photo op and was curious if anyone would recognize it. This weekend I learned some well-traveled vendors work a lot of cons nationwide — eight (!!) of them around the exhibit hall knew of the Marriott Carpet and acknowledged the tribute.

Saturday was a slightly shorter day, but no less stressful. After the con we grabbed dinner at Adobe Gilas, but had to wait fifteen minutes for a table — normally not a big deal, but we ended up standing in a corner with no A/C. By the time they made room for us, our perspiration levels were triple what they’d been in the crowded convention center.

Our hardships were not entirely in vain. Later at the hotel, visitors greeted us at the back entrance.

Our meals were fine, not much worth posting online. We mostly avoided the Stephens Center food court, but did make exception for Nothing Bundt Cakes and for the MVPs at the poke bowl stand. Sunday morning we checked out of our hotel and treated ourselves to breakfast at Parlor Doughnuts. We have them back home, but their extra-large pastries sounded like the fuel we needed to push through our final hours at the show.

Not pictured: for a mandatory protein fix, I also got their bacon-egg-cheese sandwich served on an unglazed doughnut.

Our Sunday to-do list was blessedly short: the Kurt Russell photo op, one last Artists Alley visit, and lots of snacks to-go from the Asian market in the food court.

We were on the road by 11:40 CDT and got home mostly without incident, unless you count trying to fetch lunch from a Wendy’s that was nearly finished being built and hadn’t actually had their grand opening yet.

On Wednesday we finally got the digital copy of our bungled Saturday morning Lethal Weapon photo op. I’ve added that to Part 3 for comparison’s sake. Like I said, whenever a con mismanages their printers, there can be a vast difference between the digital and hard-copy versions.

The End! Lord willing, we’ll see you next con.

Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:

Part 1: A Little Cosplay!
Part 2: Slightly More Cosplay!
Part 3: Celebrities and Catastrophes
Part 4: Comics!