Comic Con 2014

This isn't the first time I've been to a comic convention, and I keep expecting to be bored of it.    The first one I went to was in Montreal, the second was the world's largest in San Diego, and nowadays, they've started having them in Ottawa.  And it's true, the novelty has very much worn off.  But still, I found the more I slogged through my marking and did my weeks, the more the idea of going to the third Ottawa Comic Con was consistently a bright light on the horizon.
  In fact, though the Ottawa convention only starts in a small way on the Friday evening, I decided I wanted to go to that anyway, rather than resting up from my week and waiting for the hugely-packed Saturday.  And I've been paying attention to "happy" lately, and "You know?  For some reason I really want..." as well.  So I went with that.  Put in the energy to supplement what was pouring into my brain through my eyes and ears this week.

   Tyler and Danielle went with me last year, and though they've been working a lot of hours, they were into going this year, too.  And Danielle was into hitting up Friday, so Tyler decided to come too.  We took our time, having a leisurely fishy supper at a faux-Nova Scotia restaurant with pretty good food, and then went.
  We had to wait in line for a fair while.  Then we went in, and it was like being let into some magic land or other.  I said I was going to see exactly how long it took before I met some kid or other from my school.
  It took about five minutes.  She was dressed as Harley Quinn and wanted her dad to take her picture with me.  I managed to smile without looking ghastly.

   Eliza Dushku (Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) had cancelled her appearance for Friday.  Actors often do.  They get job offers and schedule changes, and can't come at the last minute.
  Charisma "Cordelia from Buffy and Angel" Carpenter came in place of Eliza Dushku.  I didn't see her either, though, as she had a panel earlyish on Friday and we were dogging it.
  I like Charisma Carpenter better anyway, but never laid eyes on her.  She was even around later in the autograph-signing area, but I don't really "do" autographs and photo opportunities that you have to pay for.  Missed her out of sheer laziness, which is how I was rolling, that weekend.

Gus Fring Is A Meth-od Actor

We walked around, looked at the costumes, tried not to buy things (I made it the whole weekend without buying things.  T and D bought cool t-shirts and patches and pins and things) and ended it off by going to a panel to hear Giancarlo Esposito speak for an hour.  He's the scary druglord from Breaking Bad.  (The really scary one.  With the boxcutter.)
  Just as I suspected, in person he was all smiles and exuberance and funny stories.  He had a lot to say about his long career, and about how we're using technology instead of connecting to people, eye to eye.
  In every photo op picture I saw of him, he suddenly did the Gus Fring "dead face" for the fans, (and even posed with some, holding a box cutter to their necks, like in the show) but on the stage, he never stopped laughing and smiling and telling stories of his long career in the business.
  One cosplayer was walking around being continually photographed due to being so scantily clad I was vaguely uncomfortable and prudish about it.  She was dressed like Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi but her costume seemed even more precarious. And was, you know?  A bit too into being photographed? Made me feel prudish.  The picture the "pro" booth put online looks far more tasteful than she actually did.
   Bit of a scary ride home in torrential, road-burying rain, then back in the next day.  Saturday is the big one.  Unprecedented attendance this year, too.

In Costume

   I'd been toying with the idea of one day dressing up for a Comic Con for some time without ever doing it.  The nerdiest thing I think I have ever wanted to do.  And this idea gave me the excuse to spend money, over the past couple of years, getting stuff for a Rorschach from Watchmen costume, scavenged mainly from thrift stores.
  Last year I didn't have a good coat, or the hat, so I didn't.  This year I got everything.  So I dressed up.  First time ever.  As a kid, I didn't get to dress up for Halloween, so I guess I'm not quite done enjoying dressing up, despite my advanced years.  It sure was an experience.

  Normally at conventions I'm going around stealing admiring glances at people's costumes, but today I was getting all of this attention, without anyone having any idea who I was behind the mask.  They gave me compliments and couldn't see me smile back at them.  I had to say something or bob my head to be polite.

  Dressed as Rorschach, I was almost totally unable to see.  Still, fun.  There's a fair bit of waiting in line at events like this, and it's actually kind of cool, if you're going to have to just stand there anyway, to stand intensely immobile, and have person after person sidle up like they're asking you out, and say "Ummm... I noticed your costume earlier.  You look awesome.  Do you think I could get a picture?"  It was like being a cute girl for the day.

I couldn't count how many people smiled and pointed and yelled out "Hey, Rorschach!" at me and took pictures.  Of course, it meant that walking around, I couldn't see the other costumes terribly well all day.  I took the mask off while sitting in the dark hall during panels, though.  That's what I'm really there for.  To hear people talk about movies and TV shows that I want to know more about.
   Tyler and Danielle had been wanting to dress like characters from Mel Gibson's post-apocalyptic car battle film Mad Max/The Road Warrior.  Their costumes weren't ready for the first or second day, so I helped Danielle talk Tyler into committing to going home Saturday night and completing his costume for the third day.  The third day of what is, for me, pretty much a weekend bible conference, but with people from television and Lord of the Rings speaking about story and art, instead of tired old dead-inside people telling us of the dangers and total lack of worth in things like television and movies.  But still, it was like a bible conference.  Only with less funny outfits.

Serene Summer

First panel of the day was Summer Glau of Firefly, Serenity and various other shows (including Arrow lately).  She was tiny, pretty,  shy, and slow-spoken, trying to hide a Texan accent, which came out slightly when she spoke of doing things with her momma.
   She'd missed coming last year when her Firefly cast-mates were there, due to misplacing her passport at the last minute.  She told us it turned out she'd put it in the pocket of her bathrobe so as not to lose it, and then didn't think to look there, finding it weeks later.
  She was very proper and spoke slowly and quietly and seriously about her first career in ballet, and then working on scifi and sometimes getting to do action scenes which involved some of the same skills.  She spoke of, rather than enjoying sometimes getting to be paid to dance again in scenes, years later, of finding it a blow to her ego to not be able to dance like she used to.  A quiet, homeschooled perfectionist.  Her character on Firefly had, amusingly, gone on an insane fit of going through the preacher character's bible, tearing out pages with anything she felt was incorrect on them.  She was asked what stuff her character would like in the bible, and she said she didn't know, but that her own favourite is Psalms.

  I'd resolved not to go around taking pictures the whole time.  Normally that's what I do.  Making a video or something. But I'm already making a bunch of videos lately, so I decided to just soak in everything and not take pictures.  To "be in the moment" instead of capturing it to share.  And to steal images from the Internet later, which is what I'm doing here, mainly.
   I couldn't really see my iPhone screen if I had my mask on anyway, and I couldn't operate it with my gloves on either.  The washroom was a funny experience each time.  Keeping the ascot out of the urinal, for example.  Washing hands and then putting on tight gloves.

Who Is The Biggest Ash?

 Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead/Army of Darkness put on a real show at his panel.  Not a single thing about himself.  Got members of the audience up on stage and had the audience ask them questions, and was generally an amusing, vaguely insulting, glib and sarcastic master of ceremonies.  Someone brought him a (half drank) bottle of whisky.
  Bruce had everyone who had come dressed as his chainsaw-for-a-hand character Ash go up on the stage and had the audience vote by applause, as to which costume was best, while teasing them the whole time.  Kept us entertained.
   Revealed not a thing about himself and never broke character once.  Said he's trying to get on Trailer Park Boys, which news had everyone over the moon.  Most of these celebrity guests had their Canadian references totally down-pat, often from working here.  And that is appreciated.

Poe-tay-toes

Sean "Samwise Gamgee from Lord of the Rings" Astin was my favourite.  I kind of forget he's my age.  He looked very fatherly, in his sweater and glasses, and he did talk about his three kids a bit.  He also sang the theme songs from both of his parents' TV shows, with the whole crowd clapping along to The Addams Family theme.  He made everyone who wanted to, swear the Goonies oath and pronounced them all goonies.  He did his Raphael voice from the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles kids cartoon.  He spoke of how the list of forbidden activities in New Zealand while filming The Lord of the Rings (motorcycle riding, bungee jumping, skydiving, para-sailing etc.) became a bit of a to-do list for the cast.  He was relentlessly generous and giving.  There to entertain. Would do any voice or song or story anyone wanted, instantly.

   He took many questions and was very warm and kind to each person he spoke to.  He got a roomful of "aw!"s when someone asked:
   "In Lord of the Rings you are there every step of the way for Frodo. In real life, who is your Samwise Gamgee?"
...and he said
   "My wife of 22 years, Christine."
   Aaaaaaaaw!
   Then he said "Of course, I can never get her to make me sausages and poe-tay-toes" in Sam's voice. Which then got laughs.

   When someone asked about the ferocity he showed in the action scene with the giant spider Shelob, he turned it into explaining how he delivered the heart-breaking lines "Mr. Frodo! No!  Don't go where I can't follow..." in the part where Sam thinks Frodo's died.  Oddly, just him doing that line in the Sam voice brought a sob to the chest.  It really did.  Sean explained how the forlornness of the "o's" in that line is what he's using to make it so sad. And it was.  A class act.
  I came home and Wikipedia'ed him, and found that his past with his family has got to have had some speedbumps, but he was all grace and gratitude.  His mother is bi-polar, for instance, and both he and she crusade against the stigma that can go with that.
   Astin went a fair bit over his time, insisted upon answering more and more questions, joking away the warnings that his time was up, and taking more and more and more questions, especially from children. Showed a little girl his Fellowship of the Ring tattoo on his foot when she asked about it, and teased her for looking up at the big screen the encounter was being projected on, rather than looking at his foot, which was right there in front of her.

So Said We All

Edward James Olmos from Battlestar Galactica (right) was gruff, passionate and amusing.  Tyler and Danielle don't watch BSG, so I was there by myself, a former student and his girlfriend sitting a few rows behind, and me sitting there with a bunch of the Rorschach costume stuck inside the hat on the chair beside me.
   Olmos spoke about "How important is it that a human being who happens to be Latino ends up on a show like that?" He said he heard that a Hispanic kid had seen him in the show and had said to his aunt, "It's about the future, and we're IN the future!"  Made me think that every all-white scifi show kind of seems to suggest that maybe there was some kind of 'more successful Hitler' at work between now and then.  Only white people left, by the future.  Kinda scary.
  Olmos shouted "So say we all!" (important line from the show) at the audience and had them shout it back at him repeatedly, just like we were all in a scene from the show.  A real crowd-pleaser.  He spoke about how his love of ancient Celtic mantras led to the music in Battlestar Galactica incorporating them and giving it that ancient, mysterious, "spiritual" sound, which he took the credit for thinking of and suggesting to the makers of the show, and music guy Bear McCreary, who he spoke very highly of. He spoke of how Battlestar Galactica's writing benefited hugely from the writers following fans' chattings about the show online and adjusting what they were about to write accordingly.
   He broke actor professionalism protocol and revealed that, when the actors thought Battlestar was cancelled, at the end of the season where they think they've found Earth, and it's all destroyed, Aaron Douglas, the actor who played Chief Tyrell, knocked back too much liquor in his trailer, and didn't even make it to the set the last day.  Big laughs.
   Like, Giancarlo Esposito, Olmos spoke with a great deal of passion about how human beings of all kinds need to connect, and not use technology to keep separate from each other.

Virtual Spock
Last year Star Trek captain Patrick "Jean-Luc Picard" Stewart cancelled, and they replaced him with William "Captain James T. Kirk" Shatner, which for me was even better.  I've always been a Spock fan, though, and as Leonard Nimoy is old and not well, I didn't really expect to ever see him.  And when I heard that he was only "coming" to Ottawa this weekend by Skype, I was disappointed, but still into it.  Until Skype kept crashing.  A giant room full of people hanging on Nimoy's every cut-off syllable, the screen buffering, freezing, crashing and hanging up entirely numerous times, to groans from all over the room.  So bad.

   It settled down after a bit, though, and Karl "Eomer: Rider of Rohan from Lord of the Rings and Dr. "Bones" McCoy in the new Star Trek" Urban unexpectedly walked onstage and kinda saved the day/appeased the crowd by asking Nimoy some funny questions once Internet connections were sorted back out.
   Nimoy was sitting in his living room in his t-shirt, looking very relaxed and smiling and laughing a lot, and joking with the parade of oddly-dressed Star Trek fans, and little children and odd people asking non-Star Trek questions.  Did the "live long and prosper" Vulcan salute to a little boy, who returned it.  Almost like he was there with us.
   What the very best of these celebrities seemed to have was the knowledge of how to live life well.  Like, they didn't only know about work, but they knew about that.  They didn't only know about being lucky, and getting success others perhaps just as deserving as they will never know, but they knew about that.  They didn't only know about relationship and family,  but they knew that too.  And they knew about fun and what matters and following passions and making a life that they can look back on and be relatively happy with, accepting the embarrassing and troubled bits, and the bragging-rights bits alike.  I think the most important part is they seemed to have the wisdom to know what didn't matter, and to not worry about it. 

Bible Conference Flashbacks
It all brought me right back to bible conferences.  In the best possible way.  Lost in a sea of people you felt were kinda like you, unlike the people around you all week, leaving you filled with hope and hearing stuff that touched your heart, and having a "mountaintop experience."
  Samwise Gamgee, Admiral Adama and Mr. Spock sharing heart-warming messages about being good to yourself and connecting with other people and pursuing your passions and so on. (well, that part was the opposite of a bible conference message, but the feeling was the same)
  It was quite a thing.  Laughing and feeling moved, all at once.
  There were vehicles there, for instance the cars from Back to the Future and Ghostbusters, and a TARDIS, and daleks and various robots and characters to be photographed with, for a fee.  Much of it was for charity.
  Last year I caught on video a cute girl dressed as Silk Spectre from Watchmen, who broke her pose while I was filming to say she and I had the same iPhone case. I thought it would be great this year to be photographed in my Watchmen costume, with another character from the same movie.  And that transpired.
  The same girl was there Saturday, dressed as Silk Spectre again this year.  And I had a good chat with her, through my mask.  She explained that she would be dressed as Wonder Woman the next day, and that she was the image used in the Convention's brochures and the various promotional videos.  Apologized for sounding narcissistic in sharing that.
  Tyler got Tony Moore, the artist who drew The Walking Dead, to autograph his graphic novel, and eventually, sated, we went home.

Urbane Karl
The next day was Tyler and Danielle's turn to dress up, and my turn to be able to see, but be invisible, and to stand aside while people photographed them all day. Tyler took the trouble of dying his hair to have a blond patch on each side like Mel Gibson in the Mad Max films.  People wanted pictures of them all day, and each time I leapt out of frame, as I wasn't in my costume and no one needed a picture of me.
  First up was Karl Urban, who was Eomer, the lead rider of Rohan in Lord of the Rings, Dr. McCoy in the new Star Trek, and Judge Dredd in the movie Dredd.  A geeky triple-threat.  I've been hearing women swoon over this guy for years and never really got what it is that they're oohing and ahhing over.  Man did the women who got up to ask him questions simply melt while talking to him!  He sat in his chair, leather jacketed, dirty white jeans and scruff, all rakish charm and sarcasm and smooth.  One woman said "I have to read the question I have for you off my phone, because if I look at you I'm going to forget my own name."
  He was charming and glib and amusingly sarcastic, but revealed almost nothing about himself, though he told some fun stories.

Oddly, while leaving the room Karl Urban had spoken in, I saw the girl who'd been Silk Spectre the day before, go by all dressed as Wonder Woman.  I said "hi" and she looked at me oddly and walked past.  It took me until a few seconds later to realize that she didn't recognize me not dressed up at Rorschach, and had no idea why I was saying "hi" to her.
  Later she was waiting in line with us, and I cleared things up.  We chatted, but mainly I got to hear her pretend to be the real Wonder Woman while talking to an adorable little girl in line with us.  It was so cool to hear her making up stuff about her friends Batman, Superman, and yes, Ariel from The Little Mermaid.

Freddy's Moment On The Stage
 What Tyler really was there for that day was to hear Robert "Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street" Englund speak. Englund was an odd and nice mix of grandfatherly, experienced, world-travelled wisdom and kind advice, with shouted, menacing Freddy nastiness. Playing what he called "the cruel clown character."  Like the Joker.
   Interestingly, Englund first came out on stage with a bunch of fans dressed as aliens from his 80s miniseries V, which some of us remember, and he also had the actress who played Freddy's first ever slashed up victim come out on stage later as well.
  He kindly answered fan questions such as "How would Freddy kill the Ghostbusters, if they came to bust him?"  (He would wait until they fell asleep, then cram their proton pack nozzles up their butts and fry them.)  He told story after story about Italy and Spain and working all over the world, and how shows get made, and get cancelled, and his time in the theatre, and so on.  Spoke passionately about living in Vancouver once.


Sated

After three days, we didn't exactly want things to be over, but we'd been eating bad food and shuffling through uncomfortably large crowds (almost forty thousand people attended this weekend) enough that it was time to go.
  Tyler wanted to cruise by and see if Tony Moore, the artist who drew The Walking Dead, was still around. He was, and after Tyler spoke to him, I talked to him about how I have the graphic novels in my classroom, and how the most reluctant readers are always sneaking them and reading them under their desks, and how I usually let them.  It was cool to be able to have that chat.
  One wonderful, but surreal moment was the guy with the remote-controlled R2D2, driving it all around the clearing convention floor, blasting "Staying Alive" out the speakers in it, while two cute little girls clung to a leg each as R2 drove around the crowd.
   We went home, tired out, poorly nourished, and in my case, feeling depressingly grown up about not wasting a lot of money on all the cool stuff that I really didn't need.