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| Name: Ryan Roe Email: prawnrr-rmv@this.com-yahoo.com Position: Movie / Television / Comic Book / Trivia Geek View Ryan's Personal Profile |
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| According to my Muujware profile, I am a Comic Book Geek. Hmm… I wonder if anybody will notice that I’ve started a journal post with that exact same sentence before. Nah… As I was saying, I’ve been a fan of the medium since my Uncle John bought me Fantastic Four #331 in 1989. (It’s the one where Reed Richards dreams that Ultron sneaks into Four Freedoms Plaza disguised as Reed’s new supercomputer.) I’ve also long admired many types of genre movies and TV—some sci-fi, some horror, etc. I’ve watched them, I’ve read about them, I’ve checked the fansites. But until recently, there was one thing I had yet to do in my pursuit of geekiness. I had not been to a convention. Comic/sci-fi conventions are held in big cities all over the world. There are dealers selling comics, toys, and memorabilia. There are comic book creators, selling original works of art and promoting their new stuff. There are guests from TV and movies. And of course, there are fans, ranging from the relatively normal-looking to the people who dress in Klingon costumes. At least I think they’re costumes… Not long ago I decided I should let my geek flag fly and go to one of those things, so I looked on comicbookconventions.com and discovered a good-sized “con” (“con” is short for “convention.” But you figured that out) in Plano, Texas, on October 23 and 24. Plano is just outside of Dallas, which is where my Aunt Carol lives, and she graciously agreed to let me crash at her pad that weekend, although she didn’t use the words “crash” or “pad.” For a while, there were only a few special guests scheduled, and I was on the fence about whether I really wanted to go. I said to myself, “If they add any guest from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I will definitely go to the con.” Because I really like Buffy. One day I checked the website, and they had scheduled Robia LaMorte (Jenny Calendar) and Iyari Limon (Kennedy). Not one but two guests from Buffy! And not only were these talented actors, who had played interesting characters on my favorite TV drama, they were also both hot chicks. I was no longer on the fence. I had fallen off the fence into a pile of back issues and DVD box sets. I asked my brother Jason, who is a Buffy fan with a casual appreciation of comics, if he’d like to go, and he said he reckoned he would. I’m not certain whether he used the word “reckon.” On the afternoon of Friday the 22nd, we blah blah blah, drove five hours to Dallas blah blah, stopping to eat at Taco Bell, blah blah blah, singing the wrong words to Come Together in the car, and blah blah. Saturday we arrived at the Plano Centre at about 10:56 for the Dallas Comic Con’s 11:00 start time. I don’t know why they call it “Plano Centre” instead of “Plano Center.” Maybe that’s just their favourite way to spell it. As we waited in line to get our hands stamped with the letters GA (for “General Admission,” though I preferred to think of it as “this Guy’s Awesome”), we were greeted by the sight of Dark Helmet and Princess Vespa’s stunt double from Spaceballs wandering the halls. On entering, we came upon a table full of free promotional movie stuff. I took a poster for Finding Neverland, because it looks like it might be a good movie, and Jason took a poster for just about everything, because, as he pointed out, it was free! I couldn’t help but notice that the large stack of National Lampoon’s Gold Diggers posters went untouched. Maybe they can wrap fish in them. Amongst all the comic book creators in the main hall, there was a table full of amazing Lego sculptures. A Lego club from Dallas had built these things—a Statue of Liberty, a Millenium Falcon, a working train. Man, the coolest Lego thing I ever invented was a flying boat…. and it didn’t even really fly. Shortly thereafter we went to the “Alias fan connection.” Now, I watch Alias regularly, and I think it’s quality television, but the people in that room… wow. In the area of Alias fanhood, they would be King Kong and I’d be a sock monkey. They asked each other trivia questions, and it was very impressive what they remembered, like Sydney and Vaughn’s fake names in episode 11 of season two. I can remember Sydney and Vaughn’s real names from that episode… They were planning on screening some scenes from the show, but they couldn’t get their video projector to work. We looked at a blank blue screen for a while, while hearing the soundtrack of an episode while they failed to get the video working. Alias is a great TV show, but it makes a lousy radio show. Just as they were bringing in a different projector, it was time for the next thing on our list. It was a Q & A session with Kevin Conroy and Arleen Sorkin, the voice of Batman and the voice of villain Harley Quinn from Batman: The Animated Series. They were very friendly, and had some great stories to tell. As you might expect, they got a big reaction from the audience when they said a few words in their characters’ voices. Conroy also discussed the Justice League Unlimited episode in which Batman sings Am I Blue? at a nightclub, but unfortunately, he didn’t sing for us. I first knew of Arleen Sorkin as the original cohost of America’s Funniest People with Dave Coulier, and I thought about asking her something about that. But there were a lot of hardcore Batman fans around who had plenty of on-topic questions, so I decided not to ask what it was like working with the Jackalope. At this point, we had to stand up, leave the auditorium, and get in line to come back into the auditorium. We hadn’t paid extra for SpeedPasses, and SpeedPass people got first seating at every panel. I bet they thought they were pretty darn special, but did they get a green “GA” stamped on their hand? No way. They weren’t awesome. Following the Conroy/Sorkin Q & A was the big crowd-drawing event of the day—the Michael Keaton Q & A. Keaton was at the con to promote his new movie White Noise, and he was in town just long enough to show up, do the session, and make an exit. I wanted to ask him something about his funny and largely unknown movie Multiplicity, but as it turned out, all questions in the panel were asked by a moderator. Oh well. At one point, Keaton was in the middle of answering a question when he just stopped talking and looked up, saying, “You know, it’s very odd to be anywhere and be photographed by Wonder Woman.” Sure enough, among the many con-goers taking pictures of him was a comely young woman dressed as everyone’s favorite Themysciran princess. She drew quite a bit of attention throughout the day with her costume. Keaton talked some about his career, and some about the new movie, and then the Q & A was over. Then we had to stand up, leave the auditorium, and get in line to come back into the auditorium. The next thing was the big event for us—our primary reason for being there. Read about the rest of our comic con day in Part Two of this entry. Comments on this post are closed. |
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