This is what Carrie Fisher did to me today.
Yes, that Carrie Fisher.
Category Archives: Conventions & Events
Indiana Comic Con 2015 Photos #1: Our Lucky Friday the 13th
MIKE MIKE MIKE MIKE MIKE MIKE MIKE! GUESS WHAT DAY IT IS!
Last year my wife and I attended the inaugural Indiana Comic Con in our hometown of Indianapolis, a decent-sized Midwest city whose Indiana Convention Center went from merely one geek gathering every year (Gen Con, always a fave) to no less than five such shindigs in 2014. ICC was first up to bat that year but had issues, which I covered at length here and here. We figured it would take a lot of nerve for Imaginarium, ICC’s out-of-state showrunners, to return and try again.
We considered shunning ICC forever until they added a pair of irresistible names to this year’s guest list. Even then, our decision to forgive and relive wasn’t made lightly. To improve our chances of deriving some unblemished enjoyment from the experience, we took a different approach: instead of attending only on Saturday (the most crowded day of every con ever), we anted up for full weekend passes and burned through most of our to-do list today, Friday the 13th, in hopes that a Friday would be tough for any convention to screw up.
I have no idea what tomorrow will bring (other than much longer lines), but today for me was a winner.
Wizard World Indianapolis 2015 Photos, Part 2 of 2 : What We Did and Who We Met
Or, “How My Wife and I Spent Valentine’s Day”. With special guest star Karen Gillan!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we attended the first annual Wizard World Indianapolis, the newest version of the geek convention franchise that’s popped up in numerous major cities nationwide. Part One was all our costume pics; Part Two is the rest of our experience, including but not limited to the fun photo op seen above.
Right this way for more Karen Gillan, our rundown of the day’s events, and still more photos!
Wizard World Indianapolis 2015 Photos, Part 1 of 2: Costumes!
The Baroness welcomes you to Wizard World Indianapolis 2015! Unless you’re with that accursed GI Joe. Then you can go attend the dental networking seminar across the hall for all she cares. (Fun MCC trivia: we’ve actually met before! You can visit her Facebook page for more pics and future cosplay plans.)
As of this writing WWIndy still has one late evening and all of Sunday to go. My wife and I attended today and stuck it out until we ran out of energy and hit a programming snag I hadn’t expected and didn’t have the patience to endure. Derailed plans notwithstanding, today was a vast improvement — in terms of attendance and organization — over the issues we encountered with last year’s events.
What We Know So Far About Wizard World Indianapolis 2015
The Indianapolis convention season is starting earlier than ever this year, thanks to our first invasion from the forces of Wizard World. As previously reported for MCC readers a while back, this weekend will be the inaugural Wizard World Indianapolis, downtown at the same Indiana Convention Center that’s hosted several successful Gen Cons and three 2014 comics/entertainment conventions of varying degrees of achievement.
Tonight is the night my brain has chosen to shut out all headlines and focus on pre-planning, which is just as well because I have no worthwhile thoughts at the moment on Spider-Man, Brian Williams, or Jon Stewart, except to say if they all joined forces to costar in Ghostbusters 4, I’d totally add that to my Netflix queue and then forget to watch it.
Right this way for plans, guest list, potential issues, and more!
MCC’s Top 15 Favorite Cosplay Photos of 2014
Extremely honorable mention: Captain America’s sidekick Bucky, comics old-school style.
As of last weekend my wife and I officially finished our 2014 convention schedule. We attended seven cons this year, our new all-time record. In addition to our annual Chicago trips, Indianapolis itself became the epicenter of a Midwest convention explosion and offered us more opportunities than ever to meet comics creators, greet actors old and young, buy cool stuff, and see lovingly crafted costumes drawn from across several decades and all available media. Some cons fared better than others; some will return in 2015 with lessons learned and bigger plans than ever; and at least one will be a mere footnote in local geek history. At least two more newcomers, Wizard World Indianapolis and Culture Shock, are also inviting themselves to the dance for 2015. Somehow our convention bubble is bursting and expanding at the same time.
We here at Midlife Crisis Crossover would like to thank the crew and guests of all the cons we attended this year, throw a shout-out to those people we met whose names we didn’t catch (and vice versa), and salute the scores of cosplayers we saw, photographed, and appreciated for their presence, their fandom, their inspired creativity, and their fortitude in the face of the physical rigors, the construction costs, the naysayers, the gatekeepers, and the gawkers like us who stop you every three feet because either (a) we don’t get you but we love what you did, or (b) we do get you and your brilliant character choice just made our day.
In particular, this entry goes out to fifteen of the standouts we captured from among that vast, maddeningly talented crowd. Thanks for helping make our 2014 an unprecedented, wondrous, far-out year of geekiness.
Starbase Indy 2014 Photos, Part 2 of 2: Major Kira and the House of Quark
Ferengi reunion! Max Grodenchik and Aron Eisenberg visited Indianapolis and revisited the roles of Rom and Nog from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Ferengi makeup effects provided by John Paladin. (Not made-up: this writer and his wife.)
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: on Thanksgiving weekend my wife and I attended the nineteenth Starbase Indy, a homegrown, fan-run convention that’s more intimate than your Wizard Worlds and more stable than your out-of-town, fly-by-night upstarts.
Part One was the costumes; in Part 2, the actors and special guests. A few even dressed up for the occasion.
Starbase Indy 2014 Photos, Part 1 of 2: Costumes and Pastimes
Darth Maul/Predator mash-up. Call him Maulator.
On this weekend in 1988, the inaugural Starbase Indy introduced Indianapolis to the amazing world of Star Trek conventions, though it later expanded its dominion into other sci-fi TV shows. Setting aside several years skipped during turbulent times, SBI is one of the most persistent fan-run geek conventions in Indianapolis. It’s a fraction the size of Gen Con, Wizard World, and our other regular cons, but we’ve attended SBI more times than we have any other con. The smaller scale allows for shorter lines and less suffocating crowds, while still attracting talented guests from shows and works we know rather well (and some we don’t). For local geeks such as my wife and myself, it’s a regular highlight of our average Thanksgiving weekend, more fun and with far fewer confirmed fatalities than Black Friday.
2014 marks SBI’s nineteenth iteration, and a more diversified guest list not only from Star Trek, but also from the worlds of Stargate and Battlestar Galactica. Before we cover the guest list, though: mandatory costume photos!
Midwest Convention Watch: What’s Next, If We’re Lucky?
Merchandise and props are keen to look at, but every convention needs guests, fans, and a functional staff. (Photo: outtake from our C2E2 2014 collection.)
After our mixed experience with the first last month, my wife and I were disappointed to learn today that their next show, Awesome Con Milwaukee, which had been scheduled for the weekend before Thanksgiving, has been canceled. On November 5th Awesome Conventions President Ben Penrod posted a statement on their official Facebook page that read in part:
We initially planned for this event to be a huge celebration of comics and pop culture, but we had a number of challenges, and things just weren’t coming together in a few areas. Providing an unforgettable convention experience is key to Awesome Con’s entire existence, but it was looking more and more like this con wasn’t going to be able to live up to its name or your expectations for what Awesome Con is. Rather than falling short, we have decided to cancel this year’s event.
I’m truly sorry, and I’m sad, and I completely understand that you will be upset with us (and we are upset, as well). I appreciate everyone who signed up for the con, everyone who bought a table or booth, everyone who supported us and all of our partners in Milwaukee. It means a lot to us and we’re very sorry that we are letting you down.
Right this way for a few more stories, and our own upcoming con plans…
Awesome Con 2014 Photos, Part 3 of 3: What We Did and Who We Met
Gateway to Awesome! Ostensibly.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend my wife and I attended the inaugural Awesome Con Indianapolis, the latest attempt to bring the geek convention life to our fair-sized city. [yadda yadda yadda] The important thing for now is, there were costumes! And photos of same!
Our Awesome Con experience wasn’t entirely about cosplay photos. Our day had its successes and disappointments.
Awesome Con 2014 Photos, Part 2 of 3: More Costumes!
Louis Tully, a.k.a. Vince Glortho. Hobbies include Twister, Parcheesi, locking himself out, and warning us how we’ll all perish in flames.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend my wife and I attended the inaugural Awesome Con Indianapolis, the latest attempt to bring the geek convention life to our fair-sized city. [yadda yadda yadda] The important thing for now is, there were costumes! And photos of same!
Last time: half of our cosplayer photos. This time: the other half of our cosplayer photos. Regrettably, we didn’t attend the Saturday evening costume contest, but we like to think we saw our fair share. Otherwise, the same MCC disclaimers apply as last time.
Awesome Con 2014 Photos, Part 1 of 3: Marvel and DC Costumes
Best Joker of the Year. Not just a fan creation, this getup was from a specific episode of the ’66 series that my wife remembers in detail. When the DVD boxed set comes out in November, her pain can be yours, too!
This weekend my wife and I attended the inaugural Awesome Con Indianapolis, the latest attempt to bring the geek convention life to our fair-sized city. The great and powerful Gen Con has had an established presence for years, but cons for other interests besides gaming have had mixed results. In March, the first Indiana Comic Con brought in actors from Game of Thrones and drew in a crowd of thousands that they were ill-equipped to handle, resulting in hundreds (at least) of angry citizens being locked out and turned away. At the end of May, the first Indy PopCon brought in a healthy mix of actors and comics creators, but attendance fell short of expectations. Awesome Con is our newest contestant, an expansion of a company whose previous efforts were in Washington, DC.
Like Indy PopCon, Awesome Con had no specific focus, mixing guests and dealers from the worlds of comics, gaming, TV, animation, and so on. We tried to keep our expectations modest after our previous experiences, but when the local news media kept boasting attendance expectations of 30,000+, particularly in light of the con’s numerous TV ads and interviews, we wondered if perhaps things would go differently this time.
More about that later. The important thing for now is, there were costumes! And photos of same!
Standard caveat for newcomers to MCC: This is something my wife and I enjoy doing, to show our appreciation and awe for those with the flair for this particular aspect of the scene. We apologize in advance for the costumes we missed, and for the non-professional results. Comments and especially corrections are always welcome and appreciated. She and I aren’t plugged directly into every single geek scene out there, so if you notice any wanton acts of mislabeling, please don’t hesitate to call me out. I enjoy learning about new worlds and universes, giving credit where it’s due, and dispelling my old man’s ignorance.
“The Night Before Awesome Con”: a Poetic Live-Tweet Distraction
Awesome Con Indy! October 3-5, 2014. Tickets still available!
Now it’s Friday night and I’m still not ready. I’ve had a busy week (not all of it was my fault) and my attention span has been stretched to its limits in myriad directions. I’m really trying to concentrate and prepare for our big, fantabulous day of walking, shopping, walking, meeting, walking, cosplayers, walking, potentially talking to someone, and after that some more walking because my free parking is several blocks away. But I needed to unwind first before I could resume researching.
Why We’re Spending a Lot Less at Conventions
Sorry, I’d love to spend more at your Artists Alley booth, but I’m too busy being mesmerized by Sharknado.
Food for thought making the rounds in my online circles this week was an essay titled “Denise Dorman Asks — Is Cosplay Killing Comic Con?” The author is the wife of Dave Dorman, a renowned painter with a career spanning over two decades. Their table is a common sight for us at C2E2 and Wizard World Chicago, and doubtlessly a staple at comics and entertainment conventions in other cities. His covers grace several late-’80s comics in my collection and a few items in my wife’s Star Wars library. We’re not talking about an art-school sophomore with iffy talent and no business acumen. He’s a pro.
In the essay, the Dormans reveal the total intake from their first day-‘n’-a-half at Wizard World Chicago 2014 was a whopping $60.00. Their results from this year’s San Diego Comic Con, ostensibly the convention to end all conventions, were technically worse once you factor in the thousands of dollars spent on the experience.
The Dormans’ experience isn’t a singular oddity. The ensuing site discussion, in which Denise herself has participated and clarified some points, has touched on a number of factors that may be contributing to the decline of convention civilization. However, what prompted the most outraged responses — and why I saw a few friends linking to it while rolling their eyes — was the essay’s focus on one theory in particular:
I have slowly come realize that in this selfie-obsessed, Instagram Era, cosplay is the new focus of these conventions — seeing and being seen, like some giant masquerade party. Conventions are no longer shows about commerce, product launches, and celebrating the people who created this genre in the first place. I’ve seen it first-hand — the uber-famous artist who traveled all of the way from Japan, sitting at Comic-Con, drawing as no one even paid attention to him, while the cosplayers held up floor traffic and fans surround the cosplayers — rather than the famed industry household name — to pose for selfies.
I read a few similar complaints in the days following Indy Pop Con back in May (and talked to one of the vendors recently), a new convention where attendance didn’t meet projections and vendors of all sizes were dissatisfied with the results, but the cosplayer turnout was quite strong. At least one artist guest later took to social media the following week and disparaged the cosplay community for the sins of that weekend, as if thousands of Indianapolis residents had walked up to the Convention Center, saw three Harley Quinns walk by in a row, freaked out, burned their Pop Con tickets, and left to go shopping instead.
Cosplay has its ups and downs. So do all the other popular con activities do. Everything at a con is a distraction to someone. Anyone who’s read this site for any length of time knows my wife and I are cosplay fans. Don’t look to us for impartiality. But we wouldn’t be cosplay fans in the first place if we thought they were a menace to fandom and ruined everyplace they walked.
Honest confession, though: I’m personally not spending as much at conventions as I used to. And it’s not because cosplayers mugged me, or tackled me whenever I whipped out my wallet, or bedazzled me so deeply that I totally forgot to buy stuff. From a commerce standpoint, I suppose I’m part of the problem.
Wizard World Chicago 2014 Photos, Part 7 of 7: the Geek Stuff
Rocket Raccoon: the Cookie! Northbrook bakery Max and Benny’s had a booth selling cookies shaped like numerous characters and personalities. My wife and I split a cookie shaped like Star-Lord’s head. It was great and I wish we’d bought a few dozen more.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries…
…blah blah blah blah blah. And now it all comes down to this, Part Seven, the not-really-grand finale: non-living objects and items that caught our eyes on the premises.
Wizard World Chicago 2014 Photos, Part 6 of 7: People We Met
Yowza!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries…
…and so on. Part Six, then: the actors we met, along with a few folks from the wonderful world of comics.
We saved up for months to bankroll this outing. The guest list blew our minds. Some of them were the the highest-ranking names on my wife’s long-standing autograph want list. A few were people you’d never expect to fly out to the Midwest for pretty much any reason. So we made it work. Costs were cut in other areas of life. Discounts were researched and implemented. We ate cheaply for a while, and we’ll likely continue doing so while we’re catching up after the fact.
Honestly: unless you live in New York, L.A., London, or San Diego, how often in your lifetime will a genuine Doctor of recent vintage appear anywhere within 200 miles of your hometown? So yeah, we took the plunge and met former Doctor Who star Matt Smith for a jolly, five-second photo op. To be honest, the photo-op price was a better deal than his autograph prices.
Wizard World Chicago 2014 Photos, Part 5 of 7: Last Call for Costumes
Who ya gonna call? GROOTBUSTERS!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries, but I’m still too fatigued from the experience to figure out how many entries these will take.
Later we determined the correct number is seven entries in all. Part Five is two smaller subsets combined. Half of these photos are “pot luck” miscellaneous characters. The rest each contain at least one mystery character that defied my knowledge base and all research attempts, both personal and outsourced. The MCC standing plea of thumb as always is: if you recognize someone I don’t, pretty-please feel free to chime in and teach this old guy something new. (Prime example: at far right in the above photo is an original character named Kattosha. That was new learning for me. See the comments below for more of her story.)
Right this way for our last, best hopes for Wizard World Chicago 2014 heroes of cosplay!…
Wizard World Chicago 2014 Photos, Part 4 of 7: Animation Costumes!
Jesse and James fire Meowth, welcome new sidekick Ash. Meet the all-new, all-different Team Rocket!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries, but I’m still too fatigued from the experience to figure out how many entries these will take.
I’ve been dealing with con crud all week long and struggling to reactivate all portions of my brain, but the math finally came together for me: we’re looking at seven entries in all for the WWC 2014 photo parade. Part four of those, then: characters from cartoons and anime. Enjoy!
Right this way for your favorites from Japan and/or Saturday morning…
Wizard World Chicago 2014 Photos, Part 3: Marvel and Dark Horse Costumes!
The Avengers! Classic lineup, different take.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries, but I’m still too fatigued from the experience to figure out how many entries these will take.
Part three, then: representatives from the Marvel Universe, along with a few folks from other comic-book companies. Enjoy!
Wizard World Chicago 2014 Photos, Part 2: DC Comics Costumes!
…BECAUSE I’M BATMAN!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries, but I’m still too fatigued from the experience to figure out how many entries these will take.
Part two, then: the amazing world of DC Comics. Enjoy!
Right this way for heroes and villains from the Distinguished Competition…
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 