KC Comic Con

Superhero's and Villians and Adults Living in their Parent's Basement, oh my...

(Who you gonna call? Better not be my girlfriend)

My affinity for science fiction is not what I would classify as secret, nor a fad I picked up as an adult as a ploy to get girls. Like a recurring thumb injury caused by excessive and intense gaming, it unexpectedly flares up for a period of time, at which point I aggressively fill my brain with a Thanksgiving-sized portion of intergalactic/robotic/zombie/vampire/dinosaur media. When my cup full of these beautiful and totally not uncool creatures and droids runneth over, I pump the brakes and move on to other, normal activities such as exercise, talking to humans and, you know, my job. 

This can't really be my fault - it's in my (dino) DNA. It began in my youth, watching episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Sea Quest and The X-Files with my dad, gobbling up Michael Crichton novels when forced to read over summers (later, I continued this habit, without stipulation from my parents) and watching many movies that I didn't necessarily understand, but contained outer-space explosions, the constant "shiny thing" that kept me interested. 

Sci-Fi flared up my senior year in college, when Spike TV ran a STNG marathon and my three roommates and I realized we all watched the show as children, with our dad's. For almost a month straight, the only non-STNG program we watched were KU basketball games. We debated The Prime Directive and slung insults at each other in Klingon. OK, we just yelled KAPLAA!!! at each other - a lot. We were awesome. 

And so it came to be that when a neighbor asked me if I liked sci-fi, I replied, "Go Onnnnnnn". The good news was that there was a KC Comic Con this weekend. The bad news was that we found out about it on Saturday night, and it was half over. As such, we arrived Sunday morning with no idea what to expect at all. I was wearing the "I'm Number One" Riker shirt that Eric bought for me. I had two others options, both gifts, I feel inclined to clarify. My Geordi LaForge Night Vision artistic shirt was amazingly in the wash, having been on my shoulders for a birthday the previous week (why not?). The "Estar Guars"  Star Wars rip-off is hilarious, yet subtly racist, so I decided not to wear it to the convention. Nobody wants to be the nerd who gets beat up at Comic Con.

The show was...how to put this...awesome. Being the sci-fi geek in my group of friends in no way prepared me for what I saw. I felt like George Clooney as I entered the building. Luckily for me, the second geekiest member of my group of friends is Melody, who apart from owning more Harry Potter merchandise than Daniel Radcliffe himself, wanting to dress up as Data from STNG for Halloween, and forcing me to read one of her double-digit fantasy novels, is my girlfriend. You know how when you start dating someone and there are certain parts of your personality that are slower to come to the forefront? You won't hide it, but you also won't advertise it. Well, ours is the same...we enable each other's nerdiness. 

Weaving our way through the minivans of parents dropping off their adult children in costume, we were too overwhelmed to comment. This would be a perfect situation for mind reading, as my brain's task of processing what my eyes were seeing, then relaying filtered thoughts through my mouth proved challenging. There was too much going on, but I will attempt to summarize.  

Darth Maul from the Star Wars movies was outside the front door, smoking a cigarette. I don't remember that part of the movie. A pretty good Luke Skywalker look-alike snuck past us in the fast line to buy tickets. He purchased just one, even though there was a Yoda stuffed animal hanging on his back, similar to the movie. They both had light sabers. There was a bald Storm Trooper. How did I know that? See below...

(Either Darth Vader ripped this Trooper's helmet off. Or he needed some ventilation.)

I tried to get Melody to take a picture with a swaying and (probably not faking it) drunk Captain Jack Sparrow, but she refused, citing "I don't want to tough that guy...he's gross". Though I tried to press the point, I absolutely agreed with her. 

We saw six characters from the Street Fighter video game. Wolverine was there, or maybe it was just a guy with a stinky denim jacket and mutton chops - hard to tell. There were two atypical Supermen: One was a seven foot plus African American who didn't need fake muscles, and the other was a guy dressed as Clark Kent - glasses, suit, fedora, etc. - with the Superman costume underneath his normal clothes. Soak that up...he came to a comic convention and wore a costume under a business suit. Talk about commitment. 

Some pictoral highlights...

This happened...

So did this...

And this too...

This almost happened, if "this" is Melody buying a Big Bang Theory shirt. Sadly, there no women's versions of the design she liked. Go figure : (

We may also have seen the tallest man in the world. His sandals were a size yacht:

And this too, but it's not for kids...

But here's the kicker...

Billy Dee Williams himself was charging, and this is not a typo, $40 for an autograph. Mr. Dee Williams also reserves the right to personalize the autographs, presumably to prevent the perpetuation of the highly profitable black market memorabilia scandal, the focal point at which Mr. Dee Williams obviously is. So of course I forked over the forty dollars my camera to Mr. Dee Williams Melody and had him sign my lucky Colt 45 poster her take a surreptitious picture of me looking not at all interested in meeting him. I think it turned out well.

Had this been Geordi LaForge signing autographs, I would have shown him the respect he deserves and at least turned to face him while sneaking a picture. Oh who am I kidding, I would have totally paid to meet him. And herein lies the one disappointment in the convention. The main focus was not on STNG or the Star Trek series overall (though there were selling some killer Star Trek Uniform Robes), or other well-known Sci-Fi movies and shows. There were far more pale costumed characters that we didn't recognize than ones we did. Plenty of warlocks, witches, samurai's, hero's and villians, all jumping to real life from comic books as opposed from the big and little screen. Artists were there signing prints and drawing as we walked by, poorly hiding our wide-eyed stares. The work looked great, but that's a bit out of our stratosphere. We'll take a hand phaser or a transporter over a mint edition of Spidey Meets the President any day of the week (yes, this exists).  

So if we receive a post-event survey - and we should because we gave out our non-fake email addresses - we'll both recommend more STNG, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter...the Sci-Fi we both love. Until next year though, we have plenty of Fringe, Walking Dead and oh what the heck, STNG to catch up on. 

To see the rest of the pictures: SpaceRobotDinosaurDracula Pictures