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Confessions of a Former Costume Contest Fan

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C2E2 2015 Finalists!

C2E2 semi-finalists, left to right: a Warhammer 40K Inquisitor; Takuto Tsunashi from Star Driver; an original Norse Valkyrie; the Khorne Marauder, also from Warhammer 40K; and I believe you’ve met Groot.

Each time my wife and I attend a convention, we love coming home with dozens upon dozens of photos to save for posterity once we’ve turned elderly and forgotten everything we ever did, to show to frn con
iends and family interested in what we do, and to share with followers and passing strangers here on Midlife Crisis Crossover. To us it’s all a part of the geek experience, a sort of community service for those who couldn’t be there, or for those who were there but are looking for more shots, different perspectives, or simply proof of their existence when they were unable to take or locate any pics of themselves.

On a related note, for better or for worse, MCC’s highest single-day traffic figures every year are nearly always from cosplay photo galleries. Longtime readers who have no use for cons may wonder why I devote multiple entries to each con, but for me the math is easy: cons provide plenty of new content, anecdotes, and visual wonders to share with the world; and we usually see a traffic spike with each miniseries, especially when it comes to reporting costume contest results. Everybody loves winners, and even runners-up in such showdowns are impressive in their own right.

The grandest of them all is Gen Con, which we’ve been attending since before the recent boom in the Indianapolis con scene. Anne and I aren’t even tabletop or TCG gamers, but their exhibit hall contains scintillating multitudes and their costume contest attracts some of the most imaginative, hard-working, dedicated fans around with a penchant for representing characters and concepts far from the mainstream norms. I come away from each Gen Con a little more wowed and schooled at the same time. I’ve made no secret that the costume contest is the primary reason I attend Gen Con.

After our recent con experiences and no small amount of self-examination on my part, I think I need to let the whole costume-contest thing go.

Any longtime MCC readers who paid obsessive attention to the past several months’ worth of con write-ups may have noticed we’ve encountered difficulties with recent contests. They’re among the most popular events at every con and require tremendous effort and patience just to attend, let alone bring back reportable results. You’d think the process would be as simple as showing up at the appointed time, taking pics willy-nilly of all the people ever, uploading the best shots, adding perfunctory descriptors, reveling in the responses and becoming internet king for a day.

Oh, my, if only. If you attend these things as quote-unquote “Press”, maybe it works like that. I wouldn’t know.

Indy Pop Con 2014 Finalists!

Finalists from 2014’s inaugural Indy Pop Con: Sauron, the Hound, Smaug, and Kohakuren from Kamidori Alchemy Meister.

Tradition demands that official, major-stakes costume contests be held on Saturday evening of every con. In the respective cases of 2014’s Awesome Con Indy and last month’s second annual Indy Pop Con, our reason for skipping the contest was basic: by mid-afternoon we’d run out of things to do. We’d seen all of the exhibit hall, we’d met all the creators and actors we’d planned to, we’d done all our spending, none of the remaining panels or activities spoke to us, and neither of us enjoys simply loitering. As we’ve found at past Gen Cons, there’s no other more painful form of boredom than when you have a few hours to kill, you’re surrounded by a wealth of entertainment options, and you can’t or don’t want to do any of them.

Our mutual agreement between the two of us today is we leave a con once we both feel like we’ve done everything we wanted to do. People-watching and cosplayer-hunting aren’t necessarily off the table as pastimes, but there’s a thin line between anthropological observer and paparazzo stalker that I’ve lost interest in approaching, especially if all I’m trying to do is prolong the convention magic out of a desperate, clingy urge not to return to the non-geek outside world. When it’s time to go, it’s time to go.

In the case of Indy Pop Con 2015, I understand we were fortunate to exit when we did. The overwhelming crush of thousands of YouTube fans took up all the Main Stage seating, refused to let go, effectively shut out anyone who hadn’t wanted to see the previous panel, and generally made for uncomfortable times. As I previously wrote: “If I hadn’t lost the urge for cosplay-photo hyperdrive like we had last year, odds are I would’ve stuck around and counted myself among the fuming and the furious. As it was, apparently we saved ourselves a lot of anguish.” A round of high-fives for us old folks who’ve never seen a Markiplier video.

When it came to the first-ever Wizard World Indianapolis last February, the activities kept us cheerfully occupied till an hour or so before the contest. The con scheduled a time-killing pre-show, which we ultimately declined. As I wrote back then:

Longtime MCC readers know we normally take dozens of costume photos, including the costume contest winners and good sports, and share them over the course of multiple MCC entries. With WWIndy, attending said contest came with a catch: if you weren’t a VIP ticketholder, the only way to reserve a seat was to attend the event preceding the contest in the same room -— in this case, a concert by a World of Warcraft tribute band.

Some of you read that last clause and are now excitedly searching for free sample songs online. That’s understandable, and maybe they’re amazing at what they do, but I’ve never gotten into WoW. They could be the Weird Al of MMORPG filking for all I know, but I wasn’t really in the mood to spend nearly an hour listening to a set list whose contents and in-jokes would all be over my head. Unless, mind you, every aspect of WoW is a straight-up ripoff of Dungeons & Dragons, which I played in my youth and still retain a lot of (obsolete) working knowledge in my head. See, if they were a D&D tribute band calling themselves Band of Vecna, I might’ve given ’em a listen, except then my wife would still be left out. Sure, she’d abide by my decision and wait patiently and fall asleep on my shoulder, but she shouldn’t have to do that, even though she’s a big fan of napping.

Anyway. We missed the Costume Contest. Hopefully those who stuck around saw cool things.

According to subsequent complaints on WWIndy’s Facebook page (which was later subsumed into the Wizard World main page and no longer exists), if we had stayed, we would’ve had the off-putting displeasure of listening to costume commentary from sexist dude hosts all too happy to share their lusty thoughts about various female contestants with the all-ages crowd. From a blood pressure maintenance standpoint, perhaps our absence was for the best.

The following month, I fully intended to attend the costume contest at the second annual Indiana Comic Con. This was my experience:

…the Costume Contest was scheduled for 4:00. Anyone who’s attended a Costume Contest at a large con knows you have to arrive at least 60-90 minutes early (sometimes more) if you want a decent seat.

Same as Gen Con, the Costume Contest would be held in the 500 Ballroom. When I arrived ’round 2:50, people were sitting against all nearby walls, none of them in a line-shaped pattern. Observing Gen Con tradition, I headed due west and sat to the right of the last person along the Ballroom wall. Over the next forty minutes, the hallway grew dense with cosplayers and viewers alike, none of whom knew how the lines should work or which doors we’d be using.

At 3:30 a volunteer showed up long after one should’ve been posted there in the first place and ordered entrants into one door and viewers into another. As I approached from the Gen Con-traditional direction, I could see a few hundred people entering the Ballroom before me from the opposite, even though I’d been waiting longer in the hallway than many of them.

I’d had enough. I walked away. Objective incomplete.

The TL;DR version: Indiana Comic Con failed at basic costume contest planning. For what it’s worth, I didn’t hear any negative feedback about the contest itself after the fact. So that’s a point in their favor, I guess.

But the mere act of seating is simply the first hurdle to leap in the race to costume contest enjoyment. It’s all part of the Game. Fans who’d rather not sit a thousand yards from the stage have to line up an hour or more in advance. Even if you head straight toward the venue at 10 a.m. and wait all day long with a sack lunch and a superhuman bladder, you’ll still be stuck behind ten or twenty rows filled with VIP ticketholders and quote-unquote “Press” attendees. And after waiting and waiting and waiting for your precious vantage point, then you’ll have to abide the same room’s previous panel or the contest’s opening act (consult your program for whichever option applies). With Gen Con we’re used to the half-hour belly-dancing show that precedes every contest, but neither of us is into any kind of dance and we see it as just another intermission we can use for snacking or resting our feet after a long day or, sometimes in my wife’s case, literally napping.

But it could be worse. Lots of aspects could be far worse. That brings us to a story I’ve been keeping to myself since last April: our unpleasant evening at the C2E2 Crown Championships of Cosplay.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Wikia and ReedPOP are conspiring to establish a corporate dominion over the cosplaying pastime, expand its increasingly formalized requirements into an international industry, and next year begin bringing overseas winners from conventions in India, Australia, Shanghai, and France in to Chicago every year for a higher-stakes world cosplay tournament. For the time being, thirty-two competitors faced off in four categories in front of three judges — a costume designer, a creature makeup artist, and a cosplayer who’s been on TV — for four-digit cash prizes.

(For MCC followers who’ll be sticking around with us after this special photo series has concluded, I’ll be revisiting some elements in that preceding paragraph at a later date.)

This, then, is that later date.

C2E2 2012 Finalists!

Assorted Costume Contest participants from the third annual C2E2 in 2012, before Wikia overtook the scene.

We knew we were in for a long night. We ate an early supper around 4:00 at one of the meat carts in the exhibit hall, then arrived upstairs at the Main Stage room a good 90-120 minutes before showtime, just in case. There was no line to enter the room per se. You could either lounge around in the foyer furniture, which was all taken; start a line yourself; or simply enter and attend whatever panel was in progress. Given the choice, we entered and grabbed seats while they were still available. That’s us, the master planners taking advantage of every, uh, advantage.

To our horror, the panel-in-progress was a Q&A with some guys from Adult Swim, which lost my interest once they finished airing Cowboy Bebop, and my wife’s only ever used it for King of the Hill reruns on road trips. If a steady buffet of F-bombs and masturbation jokes are your idea of an awesome time, this panel was for you. For us this became one of those Stories We’ll Probably Never Tell Our Pastors.

I would’ve preferred belly dancers. Or breakdancers. Or college scholars discussing the sociocultural relevance of dance in eighteenth-century Scandinavia. We should’ve fled. We stayed put only because this would guarantee us seats for the costume contest. I thought of it as an endurance test and spent some time climbing down a rabbit hole inside my own head. Anne napped like a slug. It was her only defense.

A depressing number of listeners somehow lasted until the very end of the panel and then left. Upon their exodus we moved up a lot closer, maybe three rows behind the VIP seats. The next event was a trivia competition, which turned out much more engaging than expected, as previously recounted. Bonus fringe benefit.

Then came the grand finale to our C2E2 experience. The VIP rows filled up. The lights were turned off so as to better ruin most of our photos. The contest began. Promotional stage patter commenced regarding the expansion, globalization, institutionalization, and monetization of the Crown Championships of Cosplay. It’s not even the plain ol’ “C2E2 Costume Contest” anymore like it used to be. Entrants are more strictly vetted than Gen Con’s, and only the most worthy are allowed onstage and in the contest. Now it’s a high-stakes, high-pressure competition where the points aren’t made up and the prizes totally matter because they’re large and they could lead to theoretical employment opportunities in whatever domains would consider “cosplayer” a job title. That meant entrants needed to bring their A-plus-plus-game efforts, spend hundreds of hours and/or dollars on their unique renditions, and come in looking like nothing less than professionally tailored models. Y’know, as winners look.

The crowd majority applauded and cheered with approval. ReedPop has basically reinvented beauty pageants for the 21st century. Three cheers for corporate co-opting of geek culture and fan commoditization.

That’s not what we signed up for. At all.

Far as I can tell, other cons haven’t put up the budget to head in that direction, but if there’s enough money in it, I’m sure future showrunners will find ways to make it happen. That’s not our tempo. We just like costumes. We appreciate fans who go to the trouble of spending their own money to create costumes based on the characters they like a lot. They don’t have to look like award-winning Edith Head gowns or WETA Workshop armor. It’s okay for art and bodies to have seams and flaws.

Once we got past the foreshadowing of the alienating future of costume contests, then came the best part: costumes! At last, the main event! The kind of thing we like to see! The reason we stayed in Chicago much later than we prefer! Because of the kind of things my readers and visitors like to see! Plus I’d gotten a new camera last December and couldn’t wait to test it out in this environment so that my pics would be improved over previous cons and readers would fall in love with them and I’d be hailed as a C2E2 hero shutterbug across all the internets!

Meanwhile next to me, Anne was gnashing her teeth and having the exact opposite of the time of her life.

Darkened ballroom settings are a challenging photo setting in the first place, especially for amateurs like the two of us. But she found herself trapped in a worst-case scenario: a photo-happy guy about my height and width sat right in front of her, was taking multiple shots of every single contestant, was taking his sweet time focusing and adjusting his DSLR settings for each individual frame, and was letting his Popeye forearms take up most of the airspace in front of her.

A lot of Anne’s shots from that evening looked like this:

C2E2 2015 Iron Man barely!

This was one of the least benign examples that she didn’t delete as she went, in between exasperated grumbles. She was not happy. But the seats were too packed for us to rise up and relocate. I tried to reassure her that I understood her frustration and that she shouldn’t let it upset her. Well, I said as much in between snapping my own pics, of course. I’m nearly a foot taller than she is, and the person in front of me was puny. That meant it was up to me to save the day, take all the pics, and become C2E2 photojournalist supreme. Maybe later I could have it out with the bounder in the next row.

At some point it dawned on me: that guy is me.

My wife is cute and tiny and harmless and has never blocked anyone’s line of sight in her entire life. I, on the other hand, am neither short nor narrow. I put the camera down occasionally, but I’d been trying a few times to capture each contestant as they stopped onstage and posed for us and the judges. I was probably as much a human obstacle to others as that guys was to my wife. A living MST3K Shadowrama head enjoying the show at the expense of anyone behind me.

I spent the rest of the show still taking pics, but keeping my arms as close to my body as possible and doing my best not to extend too far outward anymore. Eventually my equally evil twin moved up to a closer seat away from us and probably won endless approval from his Instagram entourage. Anne’s pics beyond that point were much better, but between the day-long convention experience and her disappointment at perceiving herself as having let me down, her smile had disappeared.

After the contest ended, I briefly joined other viewers in the time-honored tradition of approaching the stage for close-ups of the finalists, then returned to the foyer to see if any straggling losers were still hanging around. As usual, they weren’t. The emcees at many costume contests like to tell their audience to stick around afterward and they can take pictures of anyone and everyone at their leisure. This is FALSE. Once they realize they’ve won nothing, the average cosplayer flees the vicinity at Road Runner speed, holes up in their hotel room, and changes into civilian togs faster than you can say “Clark Kent”. You can never, ever depend on simply seeing everyone later. After the contest there’s not much left to do but go away.

The 3½-hour drive home to Indianapolis in the middle of the night isn’t our favorite memory of the weekend. We were both exhausted and not in any real condition to discuss what had just happened, though we tried for a while anyway with mixed results. But it brought up something I’d suspected was the case for quite some time now: I like taking cosplay photos way more than she does.

We’re both pretty good at doing the loving husband/wife thing of supporting the other’s endeavors, lending a hand where asked, being patient with each other at cons as we take turns enjoying our respective activities. She liked to contribute where she could to our photo parades, but her height wasn’t the only problem. She’s not as familiar with as many fictional universes as I am, and often can’t tell which people are in costumes and which ones are just making independent fashion choices. We’re agreed that we don’t take photos of every single warm body in every single outfit (we’re both burnt out on Jedi, Stormtroopers, Ghostbusters, and other too-common sights), but sometimes she second-guesses herself on which costumes to pick up or pass. It can be distracting and time-consuming and take more concentration than an incidental sideline activity really should. For her, cosplay photos were becoming less like a joyful hobby extension and more like a job — or worse, like an unpaid internship. She was Peter Parker trying to bring me usable shots to the best of her ability, and I was J. Jonah Jameson with a firm editorial vision and an ostensible readership to satisfy and technically grow. Mind you, I wasn’t barking orders at her or even getting visibly rankled, but that wasn’t the point. She wasn’t having any fun.

Gen Con 2009 Finalists!

Finalists from Gen Con’s 2009 costume contest: original character Brass the Dwarf; an Imperial Guard Commissar and a Sister of Battle from Warhammer 40K; and an original Ice Elemental.

Any selfish inner voice that tried to take comfort in how I personally benefited from the experience was quelled and banished once I saw the end results over the next few days. MCC traffic for the next nine posts barely budged. I’m used to virtually flatline results from Wizard World Chicago or our local Thanksgiving sci-fi con, but not from the C2E2. Four hours of discomfort and all we came away with in the final analysis were some decent photos for her scrapbooks and a humility lesson for me.

Cosplay traffic isn’t a given anymore, especially not for low-end sites like mine. I imagined we were contributing to the geek community, or at least helping to lay a foundation for present-day costume contest legacies. The internet has no Wikipedia page or other archive where costume contest winners from all conventions worldwide are tracked for future generations to look up and respect in hindsight. I rather liked the idea of creating a modest space where I could do a little something like that for our favorite shows. I took pride in the fact that, unlike a lot of social media users, I do my best to identify every character in every pic, and ask others for labeling assistance whenever we meet new faces from new universes beyond our old folks’ limitations. It was all part of the service.

But well-meant fanboy intent isn’t nearly enough of a value-added perk to compete with millions of other geeks doing the same thing with far more expensive cameras and vaster spheres of influence, even if they’re just captioning them as “Some Anime Guy” or “Hot Chick #27″. We can’t compete with folks who possess photography degrees, or who take cosplayers aside to run them through thirty or forty carefully posed shots, or who come armed with tripods or selfie sticks or Steadicam rigs or whatever. For them it’s not about “fun”. For internet users at home, the photog’s motivation is irrelevant. Either the costumes look awesome or they don’t.

That’s never what MCC was meant to be about in the first place. Its main goals are giving me a sandbox for self-expression, a testing ground for weird ideas, a personal archive for longform thoughts and opinions, an online home base for our annual travelogs, and a centralized sharing mechanism for friends or anyone else who cares to tune in. I still think cosplay in general is cool and we’ll continue sharing pics of the cosplayers we happen to run across casually in the course of our natural convention walking paths in the months and years ahead, but the costume contest quests have deviated from their old purpose as a simple hobby extension and become a dispiriting pursuit of clickbait.

Gotta admit, though: those figures are hard to resist.

My writing’s normally above “Old Man Yells at Cloud” level, but not of the sort of quality that gets picked up for reprinting by news services, or even for light Facebook forwarding by friends or family. Writing for myself and a core circle of listeners is frequently satisfying enough to keep me going, but when you stumble onto a kind of content that generates five or ten times your normal traffic, it sends a message to the writer within: look how much better you could be doing. Look at all these new possibilities for attracting attention. Rethink your everyday priorities and rewrite them to chase this larger, fickle, fleeting audience instead. Exploit those searchers. Find the BuzzFeed within you.

Too bad the retention rates on all that cosplay traffic are, like, zilch. There’s never an influx of new followers. No inherent improvement to the tools in my toolbox. Just a short-term ego boost from this alleged public service for fellow fans who aren’t looking for it. Ultimately it’s not me, it’s not something I can realistically provide on a monthly basis, and it’s not sustainable.

And it’s definitely not worth pursuing at the expense of the twinkle in my wife’s eyes.

WWC 1999 Jedi!

Fans of The Phantom Menace at Wizard World Chicago 1999. One of the first cosplay photos I ever took, in simpler times.

Gen Con 2015 is this week, July 30th through August 2nd. Another installment of the Best Four Days in Gaming for 56,000+ attendees who’ll flock to town, spend lots, play hard, compete harder, and geek out to their hearts’ content. Many will be costumed. A select, hardy few will vie once again for contest supremacy.

Anne and I will be missing the con in general and the costume contest in particular. Hopefully those who attend get to see cool things.



Experiment #3: Red Sonja

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Red Sonja.

Whenever time allows, I’ve been scavenging online for any existing copies of the thousands of photos and years’ worth of writings that were vaporized when our hard drive crashed three weeks ago. Among the scattered remnants I found last night was this photo of a Red Sonja cosplayer I forgot I took at Gen Con 2009.

This brief entry is a peripheral counterpart to one of the paragraphs in last night’s feature-length article, and a polar opposite on a number of levels uncountable and intentional for reasons. Regular readers, I appreciate your patience and odd expressions. Rest assured we’re back to normal doings next time. I’ll explain later.

For those just joining us: Gen Con Indy 2015 is coming up this weekend! Order tickets today!

(No, this post wasn’t sponsored. I’m not that guy. An on-topic postscript just seemed like the way to go.)


Gen Con 2008 Memories: Super-Heroes, Costumes, and Old Friends

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Hygena!

A souvenir of that one time we knew someone who’d survived a reality TV show and pulled off the rare miracle of giving us a reason to want to watch reality TV. Photo by the Defuser.

[Today kicked off Gen Con Indy, where enthusiastic hordes of gamers and related geek types have returned to game, and game, and game and game and game. North America’s largest tabletop convention has called Indianapolis home since 2003. In 2008, my wife Anne and I attended for our first time for a special reason.

Despite our recent computer disaster, we’ve recovered many of our photos from four different sources to varying degrees of quality. As my own way of marking the occasion and unearthing unshared items from our personal archives, presented above is a photo of the two of us with someone we knew at the show. More about her in a moment.

The following writeup was previously posted a week later for about ten or fifteen friends. I’ve subjected it to minimal Special Edition-ing to scrub a few in-jokes and satisfy my own fussiness. I also wrote a brief article about the experience for a short-lived wannabe news site, but that’s lost forever and someday I will have my revenge upon those responsible for pulling the plug without giving me a heads-up first. Not that I’m bitter.]

* * * * *

d20!

This pic of a giant d20 previously appeared with the article I wrote for the aforementioned “news site”. I WILL GET THEM.

The following souvenir pics come from our exhausting one-day trip to Gen Con 2008. It’s one of the highest-ranking holy lands for gamers of all stripes worldwide. Not only does the Indiana Convention Center host tens of thousands of incoming geeks, but Gen Con also rented out additional space in seven different downtown hotels nearby for extra event space.

Gen Con has been in Indianapolis since 2003 — a privilege earned after our fair city impressed the con-runners with the way Star Wars Celebration II was handled in the same venue the year before. At least, that’s the story I was told, regardless of some differences of opinion I might have on that subject. I’m just glad the ink was dry on all the contracts before SW Celebration III found new and different ways to make things even worse. They’re slated to be here through at least 2010, so I assume they like something about us.

Despite living mere minutes away from downtown (and I even work downtown), Anne and I had never attended a Gen Con. We’re not gamers. I used to play AD&D and own several TSR games when I was a kid (Star Frontiers, Top Secret!, Marvel Super-Heroes, Mayfair Games’ DC Heroes…), until all my friends moved away and I had no one left to play with. The subject never came up with any other kids in high school, or even during my college stints. After my son was born, I eventually sold off my complete collection of original AD&D hardcover manuals, plus several years’ worth of Dragon Magazine, plus the first year’s worth of Dungeon Adventures (I was a charter subscriber!), through a want ad to a retailer in New Jersey for $100. That low sum may sound as though I was ripped off, but several of the magazines were coverless, and and in my youth I’d thought it’d be brilliant to color all the pics in the hardcovers with colored pencils. Advantage: ME.

So Gen Con has never quite appealed to our specific fandoms. Anne’s more of the hardcore Star Wars fan and Trekker-on-the-wane, whereas I bemoan Indiana’s complete unforgivable lack of any real comic book convention. This time was different, thanks to this woman: Hygena!

Hygena!

Once upon a time in 2006, Sci-Fi had a reality TV series called Who Wants to Be a Super-Hero?, in which the Stan Lee presided over twelve would-be super-heroes competing to win fabulous prizes, including their own comic and an appearance in a Sci-Fi Original Movie. We ignored it because we avoid all reality TV outside The Biggest Loser. Also, that first season looked…um…not quite our cup of tea. My lingering bitterness over Sci-Fi’s years-ago unfair cancellation of Mystery Science Theater 3000 sure didn’t help their case.

Then came season 2, with ten new heroes striving for that top spot once again. This time, we knew one of them. Long before a strange twist of fate bestowed great powers and responsibility upon a young lady named Melody, the three of us were eight-year veterans of the same Star Wars message board. Obviously we as an online community had to unite and be there to see one of ours make good. So we were in for season 2. Even my son watched with us. It was only eight episodes, and sure, sometimes the cheese was thick enough to clog an artery, but our family loved it. We debated it, we argued back and forth over which heroes were worse, and we got a kick out of it all.

Hygena survived elimination after narrow elimination until the final episode…when she lost to this man: The Defuser!

Defuser!

When they were announced as guests for Gen Con, we suddenly had the greatest reason of all to invade gamer turf.

We arrived downtown Saturday at 8 a.m., parked at my workplace for free (sticking it to all those downtown garages charging $20 “event parking” — pffft!), walked the half-mile or so to the Convention Center, then sat for over an hour searching through the Gen Con program that was glossier and thicker than some areas’ phone books. When the Exhibit Hall opened at 10 a.m., we made a beeline for the autograph area and were first in line to meet Hygena. All those gamers ran in the opposite direction for the freebies and the colorful displays and the wicked video-game demos and such, so we had a wide berth for over an hour, just hanging out with a familiar, friendly face. And TV star. The Defuser showed up only a little late, but happens to be more hilarious and charming in person that the shows’ editors ever let on.

An hour later, in came this man: WWtBaSH season one winner Feedback!

Feedback!

(Apparently he’s a gamer. Hence his lateness. Did I mention the Gen Con gaming events run literally around the clock? From Thursday 10 a.m. to closing time Sunday 4 p.m., Gen Con has something happening every single hour. Maybe if I were fifteen years younger…)

Feedback was likewise genial, though we made a point of not mentioning his cameo in the Sci-Fi Original Movie Mega-Snake, in which he delivers sound advice on electrical safety to a group of students, then saves their lives through the power of super-escorting. The guy was a trooper, all the more impressive because his suit is all Latex and the lights in the Convention Center are merciless. He perspired so much, it might’ve killed him if his electric powers were real. Fortunately a Gen Con roadie was on hand to bring him plenty of napkins on demand.

Just for the record, all of the heroes’ spouses were lovely people, too. (Okay, maybe Mr. Hygena would prefer something other than “lovely”, but you know what I mean.) We made sure we got merchandise from each of them. Anne’s favorite may have been the homemade Jawa hairpin from Hygena (check out her Profile or her MySpace page, and you can order your own online!), but mine was one of the Defuser’s more high-ticket items — a WWtBaSH Season 2 press kit that includes a DVD rough copy of their first episode, with added footage and scenes that look plain weird because the FX were unfinished at press time. (Amazingly, Mr. Mitzvah came off even worse before the episode was trimmed down. Just…wow.)

We also bought a Season 1 cast poster autographed by Feedback…but I lost it somewhere on the show floor. The autograph was personalized, so it’s not exactly gonna fetch much on eBay. We even turned in a description at the lost-‘n’-found room, but we never heard from them.

Other celebrities were present, but we met none of them. Peter Mayhew, the original Chewbacca, looked like a wizened Joey Ramone just as he did as SW Celebration II and CIII, but he wanted twenty bucks an autograph, while I wanted more than one autograph per twenty bucks. Two busty wrestling chicks were also there, but I’m not a wrestling fan and I have a wife that I dearly love, especially when I’m not giving her reasons to slug me. Rounding out the guest list was TV’s David Faustino, former child actor from Married…with Children. I can think of absolutely no connection between him and geeks, so I assume he was there because no one told him “no”.

We spent the next several hours just roaming the Exhibit Hall, staring at the dozens of booths and spectacles and doodads and pretty things. I got to see established talents in person such as original DragonLance author Margaret Weis, fantasy illustrator Larry Elmore, and Nodwick and PS238 creator Aaron Williams. I got to meet Mouse Guard creator David Petersen, who was surrounded by stacks of books and looked a little overwhelmed, but he tried to be cordial even as I somehow lost coherence and began to babble like a nervous character from The Office.

Star Wars 2-3-D!

Star Wars 3-D ship made from 2-D pieces. Or vice versa, maybe.

I had to appreciate the writer of the webcomic Dire Destiny over in the Artists’ Alley for attempting one of the stubbornest yet most upbeat feats of shameless hucksterism I’ve ever seen at a con…though his product just wasn’t for us. This was much like webcomics, which I almost always avoid, but I applaud his self-promotional gusto. Feel free to look up his creation and check it out. I promised I’d mention it, since I bought nothing from him.

We also saw some strange results from other creative activities. Gaming widows and other hapless attendees had their choice of offbeat activities such as needlework, foam weapon design, scrapbooking, building houses of cards for charity, or carving Spam sculptures. That’s hundreds of dollars’ worth of Spam — somebody better have eaten all that.

Spam Sculptures!

Spam Bear!

After lunch at the McDonald’s inside the crowded Hyatt Regency, we attended the standard Costume Contest across the street at the Westin Hotel, where Hygena had the pleasure of being one of the judges, and the Defuser worked as stage manager. From here we segue into what else this is really about: costumes!

Now we minimize the words and make with the eye candy.

(Please ignore the occasional blurriness. Just keep adding saline drops to your eyes until everything works itself out.)

We start off on the right foot with professional models performing a live demo of the HeroClix game, standing on life-size HeroClix bases. They’re not just statues — Mr. Fantastic, Spidey, Ms. Marvel, and Daredevil moved and strutted and acted all heroic and pompous.

Heroclix!

Mandatory Star Wars representation from Jedi Aayla Secura.

Aayla Secura!

Predator! Complete with rubber mask and Garfield custom coloring.

Predator!

Army of Frankensteins. They performed a spot-on group reenactment of the “Puttin’ on the Ritz” number from Young Frankenstein.

Frankensteins!

A real live Visitor! Anne is a huge fan of the original V. He was a nice fellow who didn’t mind her stopping him dead in his tracks to praise his costume. He regaled us with lots of tidbits about various upcoming V projects, all of which are likely either hypothetical or doomed to die stillborn.

Visitor!

Team Rocket, surrendering now. Here they’re being interviewed by our local ABC affiliate, no doubt to accompany the evening news’ requisite “Downtown Freakshow in Progress” human interest piece. Their friends are standing off to the left, dressed in anime-based Catholic-schoolgirl uniforms. I can’t imagine why they didn’t make it onto the evening news.

Team Rocket!

Random contestants. Fantasy elf gal on the left, something anime/manga on the right. Take it from me, trained geek authority.

Fantasy Warriors!

Some princess I don’t know from Avatar: the Last Airbender, and, uh, a shiny armored guy.

Avatar!

Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, though I was confused at first and thought she might be either Rag Doll from the Secret Six or the Patchwork Girl from the Oz books.

Sally!

Cassandra the Last Human from Doctor Who and her accompanying doctors.

Cassandra!

The Costume Contest was not without its problems. The sound system was horrible. The hostess was a lady dressed as Lucius Malfoy (no, I do not mean Narcissa) whose voice tapered off just before every punchline, so I don’t think I laughed once. Anne and I were seated third row from the back in utter darkness, making photography and character recognition mostly impossible. Many cosplayers came and went with little explanation of their identities — either you got it or you didn’t. I must say, this was 100% more colorful than the last time we attended a costume contest — at a Trek convention years ago — so I’ll give it that much credit.

Handy tips for future Costume Contest entrants, based on this experience:

1. If you think there’s even the remotest chance of developing instant stage fright…just don’t.

2. If your child refuses to go onstage without you, and they’re in costume but you’re not…just don’t.

3. Actually resemble your character. Simple, right? Well, some people just need practical advice.

4. If you’re including any kind of performance or catchphrasing onstage, make sure your microphone works before you begin speaking.

5. NO MUMBLING. SPEAK UP. Yes, even if your microphone works. If I want garbled muttering, my old R.E.M. and Jesus and Mary Chain albums are better than you.

6. Would it kill you to have the emcee tell the crowd your character’s name and source material? If only three guys in the entire crowd get you and your in-jokes, bet on not winning.

7. Test out your jokes for funniness prior to your performance. Bombs are never pretty. More than once, I had mental images of Michael Scott standing at the podium and yelling, “JELL-O PUDDING POPS!” in his worst Cosby voice.

8. Don’t leave the building till you’re absolutely certain you lost. At least one young contestant missed out on their moment of glory.

9. Pretty-please don’t chicken out of the after-contest photo ops. If you didn’t want to be seen and appreciated (so to speak), then why were you there? Yes, I’m looking in your respective directions, Impressive Hellboy, Giant Super Mario Goomba from Bowling Green, Axel from Kingdom Hearts 2, Waaay-Out-of-Your-League Spock, and Big Magneto.

After all of this, we ran home, picked up my son (who was enjoying the house and unlimited computer use), then returned to downtown to do dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, where we got to chat up Hygena, the Defuser, and their spouses until their reserved table was ready. Some local folks from the scifi.com forums had made reservations and gotten to ’em first. Both of ’em still hang out over at Skiffytown on occasion, so I can’t begrudge their members beating us to the punch. It helps that they had much more advance notice than we did.

Our family spent the remainder of the night watching music videos on the Hard Rock’s wall TV and educating my son in musical pop culture from whichever era was onscreen. Bonus points for playing videos by Vampire Weekend, Cake, and BT; major scoldings for thudding performances from too many ’70s geezers. The food was mostly harmless.

After we went home and collapsed after our 14-hour day at Gen Con, then we woke up bright ‘n’ early Sunday at 7 a.m. and spent all that day running ourselves into the ground at the Indiana State Fair. The End.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Runner!

Evidence from the original writeup suggests at least eleven missing photos we’ll never see again. I’ve also deleted four surviving photos that were far too blurry ever to have seen the light of day in the first place, even by my amateurish standards. In their stead, please enjoy this inexplicably indestructible photo of a Duel Runner from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s.

[Historical notes:

1. Hygena today remains an active wife, mother, geek, and contributing writer to GeekMom.com.

2. We’ve seen the Defuser at two other cons since 2008 — not as a guest, but supervising convention security. He was a police officer in real life before the show, and certainly has the skills. We didn’t approach him or anything, but it was cool to see him out in the field.

3. Locals and MCC followers are well aware that Indianapolis now has its own comic cons — three in 2014, three so far in 2015. I’ve been doing my best to enjoy the bubble before it bursts.

4. Gen Con today takes up much more than seven mere hotels. The Hyatt Regency remains one of them, though the McDonald’s closed years ago. To this day I have no idea how they messed up the simple job of being a McDonald’s.

5. So I was wrong about the likelihood of a V reboot. I do wonder if our Visitor thought the results were worth it.

6. There is no Number Six.

7. If you don’t remember phone books or a TV channel called “Sci-Fi”, ask your mom or dad.

8. If you don’t know what a MySpace is, ask Grandma or Grandpa.

9. As previously explained at record length, Anne and I are skipping Gen Con this years, but we wish attendees well and strongly recommend they check out nearby Downtown Comics for all their comics needs.

10. At the time we hadn’t watched any Doctor Who; now that we have, we retroactively love Cassandra and her doctors to pieces.]


Wizard World Chicago 2015 Photos, Part 1 of 7: Team Cosplay

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Team Miyazaki!

Team Miyazaki: Princess Mononoke, Totoro, and Markl from Howl’s Moving Castle!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time of year again! Anne and I are at Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we’re so far having a blast even though parts of it resemble hard work and our feet feel battle-damaged after two days of endless walking, standing, lining up, shuffling forward in cattle-call formation, and scurrying toward exciting people and things…

My wife and I took an okay number of photos over the course of our three-day stay and will once again be sharing the most usable over the next several entries. Part One kicks off with clusters of themed costumes, because arbitrary categorization helps me organize my thoughts more clearly. I’m not the kind of guy to upload a hundred unlabeled cosplay photos all at once on the go. I’m all about pacing, parceling, staggering, and serializing our experiences for measured reading and perusing. Hence, chapters. Enjoy!


Scooby Gang!

Team Mystery Inc.: the original Scooby Gang! Fred, Velma, Daphne, and Shaggy are backup for a tiny Scooby-Doo.

WWC X-Men!

Team X-Men: Wolverine, X-23, Storm, and Cyclops.

Hammer and the Reynoldses!

Team Fillion-Whedon! Captain Reynolds, Captain Hammer, Captain Reynolds.

Team Flintstone!

Team Flintstone!

WWC Simpsons!

Team Simpsons! Lyle Lanley from the still-awesome monorail episode, Marge, Duff-Man, and Duff Cheerleader.

Marvel Netflix!

Team Marvel Netflix! Iron Fist, Jessica Jones a.k.a. Jewel, and traditional Daredevil.

Star Wars vs. Meteor Man!

Team Star Wars versus the might of Robert Townsend’s Meteor Man!

Harley and Ivy and Daredevil!

Team Mandatory Harley and Ivy! With special guest season-1 Daredevil! (Advance warning: these were the only Harley and the only Ivy we photographed all weekend. More on that in Part 7.)

Super Mario Squad!

Team Mario! Princess Peach, Mario, Wario, Dr. Mario, and Waluigi!

DC Comics Heroes Family!

Team DC Heroes! Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Batgirl, and the most adorable Flash cosplayer in world history.

To be continued! Other chapters in this special MCC miniseries:

Prologue: Five Shots from Our Convention Weekend in Progress
Part 2: Marvel Cosplay
Part 3: DC vs. Star Wars Cosplay
Part 4: Last Call for Cosplay
Part 5: Actors We Met
Part 6: Cars and Other Objects
Part 7: Why We Convention


Wizard World Chicago 2015 Photos, Part 2 of 7: Marvel Cosplay

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Ant-Man + Star-Lord!

Teaser pic from the set of Ant-Man vs. Star-Lord: Clash of Hyphens.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time of year again! Anne and I are at Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we’re so far having a blast even though parts of it resemble hard work and our feet feel battle-damaged after two days of endless walking, standing, lining up, shuffling forward in cattle-call formation, and scurrying toward exciting people and things…

My wife and I took an okay number of photos over the course of our three-day stay and will once again be sharing the most usable over the next several entries.

Tonight’s episode: familiar faces from the Marvel House of Ideas!


Mandarin!

Trevor the Mandarin prepares to destroy anyone who doesn’t want his photo.

Iron Cap + Scarlet Witch!

Iron Cap and the Scarlet Witch teaming up at the Iron Brothers of Topeka booth.

Carnage!

Carnage wreaks havoc with sinister stretchy symbiote slaying simulation!

Beast!

The Beast represents on behalf of both mutantkind and the blues.

Kingpin!

Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin, a.k.a. the Ill Intent.

Beta Ray Bill!

The first Beta Ray Bill we’ve ever seen at a convention.

Beta Ray Bill!

The second Beta Ray Bill we’ve ever seen at a convention. We encountered these guys ten minutes and a fraction of a wavelength apart.

Infinity Gauntlet!

If you love the Marvel Cinematic Universe but you’ve never read a comic, you’ll be hearing a lot more about the Infinity Gauntlet over the next three years. Usually its wearer is in charge of its vast power, but this one has a mind of its own. Be very afraid.

Agent Carter!

Agent Peggy Carter, who’s probably tired of being called “Marvel’s Agent Carter” and being defined as corporate property.

J2!

Looks like variant Juggernaut, right? WRONG. This is his son J2, from Marvel’s “MC2” alt-future timeline. This is my kind of obscure. Kudos!

Dr. Doom!

DOOM NOW RULES THE MARVEL UNIVERSE AND HAS DECREED THERE IS NO ROOM FOR THIS “J2” IN IT!

* * * * *

CAUTION: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE MANDATORY DEADPOOL PHOTO GALLERY. FAN DISCRETION IS ADVISED. NO, I DON’T KNOW WHY THESE KEEP HAPPENING TO US.

Deadpool!

Standard baseline Deadpool. Mostly harmful.

Deadpool Also!

A more cartoony version of Deadpool. I would’ve asked for details, but this was one of those awkward busy-intersection photos that would’ve gotten us murdered by disgruntled traffic if we’d stayed in place another five seconds.

Deadpool vs. Slade!

Deadpool vs. Slade! Marvel vs. DC! Swords vs. more swords! Grim vs. goofy!

Deadpool and Vegeta!

Now that Cable isn’t returning his calls, Deadpool finds a new partner in Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z.

WBC Deadpool!

Scottish Westboro Baptist Deadpool. Or something. I, uh, I’m thinking this is a great place to stop.

To be continued! Other chapters in this special MCC miniseries:

Prologue: Five Shots from Our Convention Weekend in Progress
Part 1: Team Cosplay
Part 3: DC vs. Star Wars Cosplay
Part 4: Last Call for Cosplay
Part 5: Actors We Met
Part 6: Cars and Other Objects
Part 7: Why We Convention


Wizard World Chicago 2015 Photos, Part 3 of 7: DC vs. Star Wars Cosplay

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Freeze + Riddler!

Mandatory Bat-villains: Ms. Freeze and the Riddler! Incredibly, we somehow didn’t photograph a single Joker at WWC this year. Not one.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time of year again! Anne and I are at Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we’re so far having a blast even though parts of it resemble hard work and our feet feel battle-damaged after two days of endless walking, standing, lining up, shuffling forward in cattle-call formation, and scurrying toward exciting people and things…

My wife and I took an okay number of photos over the course of our three-day stay and will once again be sharing the most usable over the next several entries.

With the average con we usually have enough pics for themed entries of a solid size, but our WWC 2015 results turned out so fractionalized across a number of media, companies, and universes that not much else besides Marvel achieved a real consensus. DC and Star Wars each put in a modest showing, but after using up a few of those in Part 1, both universes fell short of supporting their own independent entries. Hence today’s senseless duplex of an entry. Enjoy!

DC first, simply because of numbers:

WWC Flash!

TV’s the Flash. The show floor was crawling with Arrows and Arsenals, doubtlessly thanks to big-name guest Stephen Amell, but I’m more a fan of DC’s other big show.

Reverse-Flash!

The Scarlet Speedster’s heinous arch-nemesis, the Reverse-Flash! I think this was one of the con’s “official” cosplayer guests, but I didn’t catch his name.

Catwoman!

Okay, one more Bat-villain, but THAT’S IT. So here’s Catwoman. Happy?

Slade Robin!

Though the thing that reminds me of a Buffy villain takes up the most space, the relevant star here is a fun one for DC animation fans — Robin as Slade’s apprentice from Teen Titans.

WWC Krypto!

Krypto proves pets can cosplay too. I wasn’t aware the Stephens Center would allow animals on the premises, but we never saw security converging on Krypto’s owner, so I’m making at least one wrong assumption here.

Static Shock!

I was a big fan of Milestone Media before Static’s name was forcibly changed to Static Shock, before he got his own animated series, and before DC’s New 52 reboot failed to capture a single thing I liked about the original series by Robert Washington III and John Paul Leon. Nevertheless, I will totally brake for any Static cosplayer anywhere, anytime.

…I did promise Star Wars costumes, didn’t I. My wife and I avoided all human Jedi, Vaders, and Stormtroopers on principle, but we found a few less common faces from that galaxy far, far away:

Sith Lord!

I’m assuming this Sith Lord is from either one of the video games (I’ve played almost none of them) or one of the Dark Horse books we never read. Little help?

Shaak Ti

Jedi Master Shaak Ti, from the same alien race that brought you Ahsoka Tano!

Han Solo in Carbonite!

Even encased in carbonite, that rascally Captain Solo somehow escaped the cargo hold. Possibly his captor Boba Fett was just that terrible at his job.

To be continued! Other chapters in this special MCC miniseries:

Prologue: Five Shots from Our Convention Weekend in Progress
Part 1: Team Cosplay
Part 2: Marvel Cosplay
Part 4: Last Call for Cosplay
Part 5: Actors We Met
Part 6: Cars and Other Objects
Part 7: Why We Convention


Wizard World Chicago 2015 Photos, Part 4 of 7: Last Call for Cosplay

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Daft Punk!

Half of Daft Punk welcomes you to the party!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time of year again! Anne and I are at Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we’re so far having a blast even though parts of it resemble hard work and our feet feel battle-damaged after two days of endless walking, standing, lining up, shuffling forward in cattle-call formation, and scurrying toward exciting people and things…

My wife and I took an okay number of photos over the course of our three-day stay and will once again be sharing the most usable over the next several entries.

Tonight’s episode: all the usable WWC 2015 cosplay photos I didn’t already post. If you’re not here, we’re sorry we missed you. We did the best we could on Friday; we spent most of Saturday in lines; and by Sunday I eased down because I was sick of living life through a narrow viewfinder.

Anyway: yay costumes! Enjoy more!

(With special thanks to my son for naming assistance with several pics in this entry.)

Shego!

Shego from Kim Possible.

Wednesday Addams!

Wednesday Addams believes she’s found her next victims.

Hitman: Agent 47!

Agent 47, star of several Hitman games and, somehow, two motion pictures.

Nergal!

Nergal from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.

Vegeta!

Vegeta returns after dumping Deadpool (see Part 2) with her new teammates Spider-Man, old pal Goku, and Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat.

White Mushroom!

A White Mushroom from Kingdom Hearts, shocked at the news that KH3 just might be released before the end of the world.

Jason Voorhees!

Jason Voorhees is about as close as we ever got to the Bruce Campbell Fest horror section on the second floor.

TMNT!

Leonardo brings his trusty swords and an unarmed brother carrying only a tube of radioactive goop. Maybe it’s the long-lost Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle they call Pollock.

The next three pics are brought to you by the Department of Characters I Don’t Recognize. If you, the Viewers at Home, know any of these faces that I don’t, please feel free to chime in and teach me a lesson. Thanks in advance!

Alucard!

Alucard from Hellsing duels a bazooka-wielding warrior, and the fate of the Mystery Machine hangs in the balance.

Stilt Monster!

Stilt Monster roams around the panel rooms, preying upon unseated bystanders.

Flowery Archer!

I wrote down “Flowery Archer” in hopes that someone would come to mind later. Alas, I remain stumped.

Despicable Me!

Gru from Despicable Me refuses to have a good time, while a clingy Minion hangs in the balance.

Celebrity Jeopardy Burt Reynolds!

Straight out of SNL “Celebrity Jeopardy!”, it’s Burt Reynolds, a.k.a. “Turd Ferguson”, who probably thinks he’s in line to see Jaws.

Addams Family!

Another Wednesday Addams accompanies her father Gomez. This was the very last non-blurry cosplay pic we snapped on Sunday. And then we left, drove home for three hours, and died.

That’s all for costumes, but that’s not all for our Wizard World Chicago experience. We did a lot more than just watch other people enjoy themselves. Most of the time, I mean.

To be continued! Other chapters in this special MCC miniseries:

Prologue: Five Shots from Our Convention Weekend in Progress
Part 1: Team Cosplay
Part 2: Marvel Cosplay
Part 3: DC vs. Star Wars Cosplay
Part 5: Actors We Met
Part 6: Cars and Other Objects
Part 7: Why We Convention


Star Wars Celebration 2005 Memories, Part 3 of 3: Costumes!

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Jedi M&Ms!

Jedi M&Ms: they melt on Mustafar, not in your hand.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: a flashback to our four-day weekend at 2005’s Star Wars Celebration III in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. Part 1 was nearly three thousand words’ worth of anecdotes, bullet points, actors, friends, Star Wars creators, popes, and the worst line we’ve ever endured in our entire lives. Part 2 was a basic photo gallery of stuff ‘n’ things that were pretty exciting to us at the time. Now it’s all standard convention decor, but we were younger and easily impressed.

And now we reach the grand finale to this very special all-35mm MCC miniseries in a predictable fashion with predictable fashions. It’s vintage cosplay time! Here’s what the Star Wars fans of yesteryear were wearing before cosplayers divided sharply into two camps: those spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on painstakingly self-tailored tributes; and dudes in store-bought Halloween costumes. Enjoy!


Kit Fisto!

Not the real Kit Fisto we saw in Part 1, but an impressive simulation.

Sandpeople!

Not authentic Tusken Raider costumes like we saw in Part 2, but impressive simulations. Tiny Sandpeople fan approves.

Gamorrean Guard!

This Gamorrean Guard was accompanied by a Rancor Keeper who didn’t make it into the shot. My old notes indicate this may not have been an accidental omission.

Aayla Secura!

Jedi Master Aayla Secura, little realizing the tragic fate that awaited her in Revenge of the Sith.

Mandalorian!

Random Mandalorian.

Jango + Zam!

Specific Mandalorian: Jango Fett with old pal Zam Wesell.

Tauntaun!

This Luke/Han on a Tauntaun was a complex one-man costume. And probably a sweaty one, at that.

Boba Fett!

Boba Fett captures a fan for, like, a ten-cent bounty.

Fun historical trivia: as of 2005 the RCA Dome was still standing and attached to the Indiana Convention Center. The dome was demolished in 2008 and later replaced with the much fancier and more expensive Lucas Oil Stadium.

The preceding pic was one of the only two we took while we were in line to enter CIII. The odyssey began at the front of the Center, wrapped around the west wall to the rear of the building, then went up onto the ceiling of the Center. Entering the con on both Thursday and Friday took us hours, despite Anne’s ostensible fan club perks that were largely an unrequited sham.

Warriors 3!

Sandtrooper, another Boba Fett, and the Emperor’s Royal Guard band together as a very different Warriors Three.

Clonetrooper!

A lone Clonetrooper in a Stormtrooper world. Not that he’s bitter.

AT-AT Driver!

When it comes to Stormtrooper variant costumes, the AT-AT Driver is among the rarest of all.

Stormtroopers!

Vader and his entourage, ready to rumble.

501st Legion!

The other pic taken in the long, long entry line: the 501st Legion hanging out between patrols.

Stormtrooper Parade!

Stormtroopers on parade, because Emperor Palpatine is all about pageantry.

…and that’s the story of why we don’t get excited about taking pics of Stormtroopers at cons anymore. Because once upon a time, we overdosed on them.

And they never held another Star Wars Celebration in Indiana for the rest of our lives. The End. Thanks for reading!



Halloween Stats 2015: The Comeback Before the Storm

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Star Wars Halloween!

At Walmart, The Force infringes on the Great Pumpkin’s religious turf.

Once again our annual Halloween traditions were besieged with lousy weather that interfered with the one day out of the entire year that my neighbors and I agree to look at each other. Fortunately, this year Mother Nature compromised: temperatures were in the rather hospitable low 50s, much preferable to last year’s anti-seasonal snowfall, and the rains didn’t arrive till around 7:30. In fact, the precipitation was so gentle that we no idea it was even raining till I went to shut off the lights at 8:30. That went a long way toward explaining why we’d gone a full 55 minutes with no further visitors. Duh.


Halloween Dragon!

At our local home-improvement store back in September, this giant inflatable Halloween dragon tried to strike a pose despite the efforts of photobomber Santa.

Each year since 2008 I’ve kept statistics on the number of trick-or-treaters who flocked to our doorstep during the Halloween celebration of neighborhood unity and benevolent snack donation. It’s partly for future candy inventory purposes, partly out of curiosity, and partly because it’s now a tradition for me. Like many bloggers there’s a stats junkie in me that fiends for taking head counts.

Previous years’ Halloween candy-receiver totals were as follows:

2008: 51
2009: 105
2010: 112
2011: 74
2012: 58
2013: 36
2014: 25

As usual, I turned on the lights at 4:30 and stayed on duty till 8:30. The ultimate turnout arrived within a narrower 92-minute range, but the final results were an encouraging three-year high:

First TOTer arrival time: 6:03
Final TOTer departure time: 7:35
Total number of trick-or-treaters for 2015: 39
Gain/loss from Halloween 2014: +64.10%

Saratoga!

An outtake from our one-day trip to Terre Haute: local bar decorates for the holiday.

The cosplayers whose raiment I could discern registered as follows:

cute tiny Hulk (first kid at the door)
2 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1 unknown, 1 Leonardo armed with two swords)
The Scarecrow (as in the Bat-villain)
princess
pirate
Day of the Dead skeleton
skeleton covered in LED lights
ninja
spider
2 cheerleaders (1 costume, 1 actual cheerleader from our local high school, which is cheating)
Princess Ariel
policewoman
Minion
surgeon
fairy
Buzz Lightyear
grandmother

Best of Show: a Hello Kitty who recited the classic extended version trick-or-treater’s credo: “Trick or treat, smell my feet / Give me something good to eat!” At least one American child is being taught properly in school. That industrious pupil earned a double helping from me.

Honorable mention: my wife, last weekend.

Banana Anne!

Anne taught Sunday school in this quite snazzy outfit. The “banana” thing is an in-joke between her and her girls. We owe special thanks to the holiday suppliers at Party City for making this possible by opening strangely early on Sundays.

Most of the roving packs who approached our door did their duty and said their minimum three-word line. I had one staring match with a quartet that wouldn’t speak and just stared at me. I refused to move and stared right back at them. After a few seconds of awkward silence the one in front finally said the magic words and we got on with it. As I wrote previously:

Three words, three syllables: “Trick or treat!” It’s not a secret password known only to members of the Halloween Cabal. Anyone can memorize it. Some of your peers seem to have trouble vocalizing it. No one is expecting you to spout anything nearly as complicated as, say, “supraventricular tachyarrhythmia”. If I open the door for you, your response is THE LINE. Staring at me silently and expectantly will be rewarded with me returning the silence and motionlessness in kind. I can stay locked in that position all night if I have to. I might even make it worse with eye contact. Don’t test me on this.

…and I meant it.

Otherwise, I had the pleasure of meeting some decent kids and their grateful parents. I didn’t even mind the teenagers who spent maybe a buck apiece on masks and nothing else. Heck, I’m just happy to confirm firsthand there’s still life inside some of the other houses in our aging suburb. Despite the terror wrought by a handful of mild raindrops, tonight proved the old door-to-door holiday has a pulse, thready though it might be. Halloween isn’t ready to be stricken from the community calendar just yet.


C2E2 2016 Photos: Star Wars: The New Cosplay Order

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Rey + Kylo Ren!

Can this be? Rey and Kylo Ren working together? Say it ain’t so!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I spent two days at the seventh annual Chicago Comics and Entertainment Exposition, where Midwest comics fans in particular and geeks in general gather together in the name of imaginary worlds from print and screen to revel in fiction and touch bases on what’s hot or cool at this moment in pop culture.

We expected new costume ideas to abound thanks to the interstellar success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the whole new cast of iconic characters for us to watch, study, follow, debate, and impersonate. We saw veritable armies of Rey and Kylo Ren parading around the show floor and claiming it as their own. We caught a mere fraction of a fraction of the Star Wars fans on site.


Mini-Rey!

Rey and Mini-BB-8 steal the scene from Vader, Leia, and Actual-Size Yoda.

Finn!

The only Finn we saw all weekend. With Eastet-egg cameo by Ramona Flowers.

Poe Dameron!

The only Poe Dameron we saw all weekend wants YOU to join the Resistance!

Kylo v. Jedi!

Another Kylo Ren takes on a traditional Jedi who escaped Order 66. But not for long.

* * * * *

STAR WARS MERCHANDISE INTERMISSION!

Lego Star Wars Armies!

Prepping your own all-Lego The Force Awakens fan-film for YouTube? Two different vendors are ready to hook you up with all the background extras you need.

Lego Kylo Ren!

Lego Kylo Ren: soon to be a costume variant, probably.

Lego Rey + BB-8!

Lego Rey and Lego BB-8: both built to survive.

MegaBB-8!

The folks at Funko brought Mega-BB-8, grand emperor of the kingdom of Funko Pop. Or Funko Pop! Or Funko POP! Look, I don’t buy the things, so I’m old and I have no idea which parts are or aren’t capitalized or punctuated.

* * * * *

And now, back to Star Wars costumes:

Wookiee!

Stepping into the path of this much taller, briskly walking Wookiee was one of my more foolhardy acts in the name of cosplay photos.

Fab Vader!

Somewhere in the galaxy, Emo Kylo Ren is wailing and rending his garments at the sight of this version of his idol.

Jedi Spider-Man!

Strong will, tremendous leaping skills, Spider-Sense warning him of danger, dead parents, lousy at long-term romantic attachments because of the meddling of others…Jedi Spider-Man makes perfect sense.

Ahsoka + Fairy Godmother!

Ahsoka Tano lives! And takes questions along with the Fairy Godmother from Shrek 2.

AT-ST!

AN AT-ST lumbers onto the show floor. Right after Anne snapped this pic, a leg fell off. “IT WAS EWOKS!” she shouted.

Rey + Artoo!

This very special MCC series is far from over, but this was the very last photo we took on our very last day before we headed home — one last Rey hanging out with her new comrade Artoo, beeping merrily and welcoming her to the Star Wars Universe and the wild, wild world of convention cosplay legends.

To be continued! Other entries in our special 9-part series:

* Part 1: C2E2 Kicks Off Our 2016 Convention Season in Style
* Part 2: Dance of the Mad Deadpools
* Part 3: We Are Here For Supergirl!
* Part 5: Gaming and Animation Costumes!
* Part 6: Comics Costumes!
* Part 7: Last Call for Costumes!
* Part 8: Who We Met and What We Did
* Part 9: The Things They Carried


C2E2 2016 Photos: Gaming and Animation Costumes!

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Final Fantasy VII!

The family that cosplays together: straight out of Final Fantasy VII, it’s Barrett, Vincent Valentine, and li’l Cait Sith peering into your SOUL. My favorite photo of the weekend.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I spent two days at the seventh annual Chicago Comics and Entertainment Exposition, where Midwest comics fans in particular and geeks in general gather together in the name of imaginary worlds from print and screen to revel in fiction and touch bases on what’s hot or cool at this moment in pop culture.

In tonight’s photo parade, we focus on artforms made of moving art, interactive or otherwise. I’m not the best guy to ask about anime or XBox games, but I’ve played my share of video games and seen more than a few animated features. The younger cosplayers are great at stumping me, but I love seeing other fans celebrate some familiar faces out there. And as longtime MCC readers may recall, Final Fantasy characters get preferential treatment here, but there’s more where they came from.


FFXII Fran!

Fran from Final Fantasy XII. I didn’t ask her to replicate that otherworldly accent.

Black Mage!

Pretty sure this is a a Black Mage form one of the FF games I haven’t played, or from a remastered version of one of the oldies. I beat the original FF on my old NES back in high school…

Krieg and Tiny Tina!

I’m currently playing through (and gnashing my teeth at) the DLC for the original Borderlands, but I was excited to meet Krieg and Tiny Tina from Borderlands 2.

Lollipop Chainsaw!

Juliet Starling from Lollipop Chainsaw. (It’s a game.)

Mega Man + Zero!

Mega Man and fellow hero Zero.

Bowser!

Bowser! For my fellow oldsters out there.

Pac-Man!

Pac-Man! For the even older-than-oldsters out there.

Fred Flintstone!

Fred Flintstone! Even the most ancient of Ancient Ones know that guy. Bonus points for that regal Water Buffalo hat!

Ursula!

Ursula representing for Disney in our animation cosplay lineup.

Jetfire!

I remember when the first extra-large Jetfire figure hit the U.S. market when I was a kid. Transformers his size were too pricey for my lower-class paws. And if you thought last night’s entry needed more Star Wars in it, then the bonus Mini-Kylo Ren is here just for you.

Aang!

Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Better than M. Night Shyamalan’s version? YOU make the call!

Dr. Zoidberg!

Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama. WOOOOB WOOBWOOB WOOB WOOB!

Sailor Moon!

Nitpickers might point out Sailor Moon was a manga before it was adapted to anime and therefore oughta be moved to our next entry with the other comic-book cosplayers. If that’s your take, then in the name of the Moon, I will ignore you.

To be continued! Other entries in our special 9-part series:

* Part 1: C2E2 Kicks Off Our 2016 Convention Season in Style
* Part 2: Dance of the Mad Deadpools
* Part 3: We Are Here For Supergirl!
* Part 4: Star Wars: The New Cosplay Order
* Part 6: Comics Costumes!
* Part 7: Last Call for Costumes!
* Part 8: Who We Met and What We Did
* Part 9: The Things They Carried


Indiana Comic Con 2016 Photos #1: Friday Cosplay

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Assassin's Creedpool!

The wrong cosplayers to mess with: Assassin’s Creedpool hanging out with Harley Quinn and the Red Hood.

This weekend my wife and I are attending the third annual Indiana Comic Con at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis. Though the first two ICCs had more than their share of growing pains, he wrote with diplomacy wrapped in understatement topped with a Jim Halpert pretend-blank expression, Anne and I found a few names on the guest list irresistible and prayed the showrunners had been taking notes, accepting constructive criticism, and borrowing standard crowd-control procedures from other cons. So far, so good — Friday for us was a rousing success in a number of ways, except for the part where we had too much fun and I’m now typing under considerable fatigue.

While we rest and prepare for a ridiculously early Saturday wake-up, please enjoy this collection of cosplayers who brightened our day and improved quality-of-life around the show floor on Friday, the trial run before the rest of the crowds arrive Saturday and the real test of the showrunners’ mettle begins. The actors, comics artists, and nifty object collections will be shared in a forthcoming entry in this special series. Enjoy!


Deadpool Normal!

Baseline Deadpool against which all the Saturday variants shall be judged.

Deadpool Formal!

Formal Deadpool likes to serve hot tea with his chimichangas.

Trevor Mandarin!

Trevor Mandarin went into detail about all the work that went into his costume. Their gear looks fun, but these intricate designs can take tons of effort.

Green Goblin!

The Green Goblin on his Goblin Glider, which could glide all around the aisles without a sound and without tripping or crashing, like some kind of hands-free no-push skateboard. Cosplay science marches on!

Kylo Ren!

Kylo Ren arrived shortly before we did at 9:30 a.m. The exhibit hall didn’t open till noon, but the Dark Side doesn’t conquer all by arriving fashionably late.

Yuna FFX!

I have to see at least one Final Fantasy character at every convention or else quit hobbies forever. Say hi to Yuna from FFX.

Sora!

For the Final Fantasy rule, I’ll also accept anyone from Kingdom Hearts. Meanwhile, Sora impatiently awaits KH3, which is now 37 years overdue.

TMNT!

Raphael dances while the other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles give him space to work it. They were all booth-reptiles for some company near the back of the exhibit hall whose line of business I didn’t catch.

Calvin and Hobbes!

Calvin and Hobbes, who was probably a lot livelier after we looked away.

Princess Mononoke!

Princess Mononoke, one of the few anime characters I know because I am of the Olds.

Anna from Frozen!

Anna from Frozen, still a popular, classy choice.

Freeze & Hatter!

Batman ’66 represent! Otto Preminger’s version of Mr. Freeze teams up the Mad Hatter as played by Tony Award Winner David Wayne. Leave it to my wife to remember their names off the top of her head.

Wookiee + Bowcaster!

Mandatory Star Wars: angry Wookiee with bowcaster.

Beetlejuice & Lydia!

Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Lydia! Lydia! Lydia!

Moon Knight and Cubone!

Any Pokemon trainer trying to “catch ’em all” and add Cubone to their menagerie will have to go through Moon Knight first.

To be continued! This very special MCC miniseries continues in Part Two (more cosplay), Part Three (last call for cosplay), and Part Four (not cosplay)!


Indiana Comic Con 2016 Photos #2: Batman v. Deadpool: Dawn of Cosplay

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Batwoman!

Maybe Batwoman could take Deadpool alone, but if Wonder Woman wants to cameo, no one’s gonna tell her no.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Friday and Saturday, my wife and I attended the third annual Indiana Comic Con at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis. In Part One you saw every viable costume photo we took on Friday. We caught so many cosplayers in action today that the Saturday results will be split into two (maybe three) entries.

In tonight’s gallery: another batch of Deadpool variants, which we suspect will be a thing for years to come, and heroes and villains from the Batman family, which kept catching our eye more than usual this time around. Enjoy!


Sportspool!

Ready for some baseball! It’s…Ballparkpool? Sportspool? Bettingpool? Cincinnati Redpool?

Harley Quinn!

Harley Quinn! Have hammer, will hammer.

Bedpool!

Bedpool, the Merc with a Mattress.

Joker & Harley!

Joker & Harley disguised and apparently struggling with creative differences.

Jarheadpool!

Jarheadpool, carrying a Zombie Deadpool head as a trophy.

Batgirl!

My wife is undertall, gracious, and quite polite, but if she spots a Batman ’66 character across the way, she will mow down entire crowds crossing the distance just to meet them. Speaking of which: it’s Batgirl!

Refpool!

Refpool, apparently not getting ready to rumble.

Batman!

The Batman of Mishawaka was one of our line-buddies twice today. We chatted a lot and all had a blast, but by the end of the day the poor guy was reduced to 200 pounds of Bat-perspiration. That’s dedication to a character.

Penguin + Goon!

Penguin and his goon hitting the campaign trail, and not the worst candidate in this campaign season. For the boxing-umbrella alone he’s got my write-in vote.

Vote Pengy!

Penguin even gave my wife a campaign button. If only we’d thought to bring a baby for him to kiss.

Penguin Campaign!

Penguin has a message we can all get behind. The best Batman can come up with is “Do you bleed?” Some hero. Sad!

To be continued! Check out Part Three for one last call for cosplay, and the forthcoming Part Four for our complete Indiana Comic Con 2016 not-cosplay report!


Indiana Comic Con 2016 Photos #3 of 4: Saturday Cosplay

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Medusa!

Best headgear of the year: Medusa from Clash of the Titans, giving me flashbacks to when I got scared watching the original at the drive-in.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Friday and Saturday, my wife and I attended the third annual Indiana Comic Con at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis. In Part One you saw every viable costume photo we took on Friday, with the emphasis once again leaning toward Deadpool because that’s what we’re running into, other than hordes of intricate anime characters we oldsters don’t recognize. Part Two was a Saturday selection featuring Bat-related characters and, one last time, all the Deadpools fit to print.

In today’s gallery: cosplay, cosplay, cosplay! All the other costumes we saw on Saturday that looked great and didn’t evade or outrun us. Obviously this is far from comprehensive and I’m still kicking myself with all my mental strength for missing one lady dressed as someone I recognized from the Authority. At one point I dwelt on this weird idea of renting booth space next year and offering to take free pics of any cosplayers who feel they weren’t photographed often enough, just for free posting here as a fun public service — no judging, no body-shaming, no rejecting just because Anne and I have no idea who they are. But I’m not sure how many cosplayers experience that kind of letdown at such shows anymore. Social media operating as it does today, every con probably now has ten “photographers” in attendance for every cosplayer. My idea was a fun pipe dream for the few minutes it lasted. Ah, well.

Anyway: enjoy!

Lightning!

Regular readers won’t be shocked that I’m front-loading this entry with Final Fantasy. Welcome Lightning from FFXIII and Lightning Returns.

Cloud + Rude!

From Final Fantasy VII, it’s Cloud and Rude, who I had to think really hard to remember. Triple experience points to the guy for reviving that deep-cut supporting player.

Twilight Princess!

Link, Zelda, Ganondorf, and li’l Midna from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Portal!

The Portal debate rages ever onward.

Red Skull!

The Red Skull wielding the Cosmic Cube. Or for you movie-only fans, the Tesseract. Whichever.

Fantomex!

Fantomex, the only X-related character we tracked down.

Margaery + Daenerys!

Margaery Tyrell and Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones.

Fourth Doctor!

Naturally the Fourth Doctor was handing out free jellybeans. Non-poisonous and non-hallucinatory, I’m grateful to report.

Teal Android!

At every con there’s always at least one unusual character whose caption is some variation on “looks cool who dis”.

Pennywise!

Pennywise: every nightmare you’ve ever had.

Plague Doctor!

Olde-tyme plague doctor with bonus cosplay family wandering into the shot.

Samurai!

Samurai! No, not the one from the Super-Friends, much to my wife’s regret.

Hook + Pan!

Proof that there’s one reality in which Peter Pan and Captain Hook can just get along.

Rey Padme Clonetrooper!

The section our friends have been waiting for: Star Wars costumes! Beginning with Rey, her probable Grandma Padme, and a Clonetrooper sidekick.

Adventure Time + Thrawn!

The ostensible focus is Adventure Time‘s Finn, Ice King, and Lumpy Space Princess, but waiting in the wings are Mon Mothma and Grand Admiral Thrawn, premier resident of the new Star Wars canon’s answer to DC’s Earth-2.

Sith Parade!

Dark Anakin, Darth Maul, Jedi, nifty Mandalorian.

Rey Padme Siths!

An encore performance from Rey and Padme, this time accompanied by the potential maternal missing link Endor Leia, some new Sith, and old Ben Kenobi hiding in the shadows and biding his time.

Palpatine!

Sharing a photo-op line with us, this Emperor Palpatine rode around on some sort of gliding tech not unlike the Green Goblin we saw on Friday, so it looked as though he was using the Force to float around the con. Spookity!

BB-8 + Rey!

I think it’s awesome that Rey was indisputably the most popular non-Deadpool costume we saw this weekend. This one’s accompanied by an inspired BB-8 that makes me want a set of Star Wars potholders in this exact design.

To be concluded! Next time: who we met and what we did…


My Free Comic Book Day 2016 Results, Best to Least Best

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Deadpool!

Our annual Free Comic Book Day tradition saw us once again at Indianapolis’ own Downtown Comics North, where cosplayers are always on hand to greet kids, accompanying adults, and regulars alike. Naturally for pop culture’s Year of Deadpool there was Deadpool, so please enjoy Deadpool because Deadpool.

On May 7th my wife and I had the pleasure of once again observing Free Comic Book Day, the least fake holiday of them all. Readers of multiple demographics, thankfully including lots of youngsters, flocked to our local stores and had the opportunity to enjoy samplers from all the major comic companies and dozens of indie publishers. This year’s assortment saw more all-ages comics than ever, so this wasn’t just an outreach to longtime fortysomething collectors who need no further enticement.

I never grab copies of everything, but this year I got a little more grabby than I thought. This entry was procrastinated days past its relevance expiration date because it took me that much longer to find the free time to read them all, even those I could speed through in three minutes flat. In my mind, regardless of total consumption minutes, each issue ought to be a satisfying experience for any new reader who opens the cover without any foreknowledge. Historically, each publisher’s offerings tend to fall into one of six story levels, ranked here in order from “Best Possible Display of Generosity and Salesmanship” to “Had to Slap SOMETHING Together, So Whatever”:

1. New, complete, done-in-one story
2. Complete story reprinted from existing material
3. A complete chapter of a new story with a proper chapter ending
4. Partial excerpt from an upcoming issue that will also contain all these same pages
5. No story, just random pinups or art samples
6. Disposable ad flyer shaped like a comic

Surprisingly, none of this year’s samples settled for option 5 or 6. Good show, publishers.

The comics in my FCBD 2016 reading pile came out as follows, from least favorite to definite favorite:

19. Spectrum #0 (Automatic Publishing) — I usually avoid comics co-created by actors as illustrated TV/movie pitches, but the name of Firefly‘s Alan Tudyk on the cover caught my eye. After a sluggish, uninviting, 370-word all-text prologue (for a Star Wars film it’d make a ten-minute opening crawl), the comic proper is divided in two halves, one about Our Hero and his current role in an anti-alien rebellion, the other about an ethereal lady taking over a spaceship from her alien captors through indecipherable powers, decorated throughout with still more sci-fi names that the overlong intro didn’t mention, all accompanied by frequently inscrutable illustrations failing to convey what’s actually happening. I should’ve stuck to my guidelines.

18. Avatarex: Destroyer of Darkness (Graphic India) — Inimitable comics legend Grant Morrison and a not-bad artist introduce a new Indian superhero who awakens aboard a spaceship, acquires his weapons, and goes on and on and on about how awesome he is. That’s twelve pages spent on the print equivalent of an I-am-the-greatest old-school rap single. Also included is an excerpt from Morrison’s ongoing 18 Days, in which other Indian superhumans or possibly deities are at war with each other and prepare for the oncoming battles by debating their conflicting philosophies. The Hindu discussions are weighty but the excerpt ends before they take on enough context. I’m taking it on faith that’s Morrison literati superfans have already annotated every sentence of this at extreme length.

17. Mixtape 2016 (Devil’s Due/1First Comics) — Three excerpts: li’l Mercy Sparx, one of the few Devil’s Due characters still around in any fashion, which means more to her current readers (not my thing); Squarriors, which are like Mouse Guard with angry squirrels and unhelpful flashbacks; and an excerpt from Badger #4, the recent revival of the classic Mike Baron/Jeff Butler character that was one of my early faves when my teen self first discovered comic shops. Val Mayerik’s art captures all of Badger’s strengths — martial arts and unfettered loopiness — but anyone who doesn’t recognize him, or his old pals Yak and Yeti, will probably be lost and wondering why he’s facing Vladimir Putin in an MMA match. That’s, uh, typically how things go for him.

FCBD Line!

Downtown Comics North opened at 11 a.m. This was the line when we arrived around 9:30…

16. Civil War II (Marvel Comics) — Story #1 is an excerpt from the upcoming annual very special Marvel company-wide summer blockbuster mega-crossover event spectacular that will shake up the Marvel Universe irrevocably forever or whatever. It’s just the heroes gathering so Thanos can appear from nowhere and beat on them for a while, two of them not looking so good by the end. Jim Cheung’s art looks pretty as always, but so far I don’t care. Story #2 introduces the all-new Wasp, Henry Pym’s #1 fan who hopes the late doctor doesn’t mind her stealing his shtick. I’d forgotten the pleasures inherent in the art of Alan Davis, but I tend to avoid superteam books noawadays and will therefore be disconnected from whatever happens to her next in All-New All-Different Avengers.

15. DC SuperHero Girls (DC Comics) — It’s DC’s all-women answer to Muppet Babies but instead of a nursery they’re in high school. Intended for younger audience who like short, sparse sentences but are prepared for new vocab words like “wormhole”, “evaluation”, “carelessness”, “trendsetter”, and “cliffhanger”, a word here which means “an unsatisfying ending like this comic’s that means you’ll have to beg your parents to buy you more comics if you want to find out what happens to Supergirl next”. To be fair, this non-canon side trip treats some of the characters with more respect than their New 52 counterparts have received. And girls will love the all-new all-dreamy Comet the Super-Horse!

14. We Can Never Go Home/Young Terrorists (Black Mask) — Story #1 is an interlude that takes place amidst one of my favorite comics of 2015, bridging the gap toward the second WCNGH arc coming later this year. It fits well within the first arc and is every bit as shocking, though I’m too biased to tell if it does much for newcomers. Story #2 is my first glimpse of Young Terrorists, a less subtle and much more sadistic, nihilistic tribulation of the sort that stopped entertaining me years ago. For those who like this sort of thing professionally crafted, here some is.

13. Camp Midnight Free Comic Book Day Special (Image Comics) — Excerpt from the upcoming graphic novel written by Steven T. Seagle (House of Secrets, Ben 10), about a weird girl sent to a spooky summer camp for monster kids. I think the excerpt lopped off a few too many pages at the start, but the whole promises to be better than just the one part.

FCBD Line!

…and this was the line behind us a few minutes before 11. It wasn’t any shorter by the time we left at 11:15.

12. Bongo Free-for-All! 2016 (Bongo Comics) — The annual batch of Simpsons Comics reprints contains a few painful clunkers, including a two-pager that felt like 30-year-old MAD Magazine leftovers, but two stories both written by Ian Boothby — one a Homer/Pieman story, the other some hijinks in which Bart convinces everyone Principal Skinner is a vampire — got a few chuckles out of me, which is more than I can say for the average new Simpsons episode these days.

11. Lady Mechanika FCBD (Benitez Productions) — Joe Benitez is a fully accredited, upper-tier member of the Marc Silvestri/Top Cow comics design school, which can be a nifty art style to behold if you can overlook the heroine’s curiously modest boob window. I’m not familiar with Lady Mechanika beyond the one time I saw a Lady Mechanika cosplayer win a Gen Con costume contest, but the done-in-one new tale moves briskly, introduces other cyborgs like her as well as a set of nemeses, and threw in a few surprises I didn’t see coming. Two excerpts from other LM works show off even better art by Benitez and other collaborators. It’s not for kids, but this was a more interesting read than I expected.

10. Oddly Normal #1 (Image Comics) — Reprint of the first issue of the creator-owned all-ages series by Otis Frampton, one of the artists behind the YouTube series How It Should Have Ended (one among my very few YouTube subscriptions). The titular young girl is a green-haired, pointy-eared, half-witch outcast mocked at school, saddled with parents who don’t get her, and confused by powers that may have just kicked in. A fast read aimed squarely at all the other young oddballs out there. I can relate.

9. Steve Rogers: Captain America (Marvel Comics) — Story #1: after being dead for a few years, then resurrected and elderly for several more, Steve Rogers was recently rejuvenated and returned to his Star-Spangled Avenger role thanks to some contrivances set up in the recent Avengers Standoff: Welcome to Pleasant Hill very special Marvel mini-crossover event, of which I read exactly one issue. Cap’s comeback looks great thanks to artist/colorist Jesus Saiz, and ends with a declaration of an official War on Hydra, which is tempting to follow but probably leads into twelve more crossovers, so I’m reluctant to commit. Story #2 stars the amazing Spider-Man, whose version of Peter Parker is barely recognizable to me. He’s undergone so many changes ever since “One Moment in Time” severed my last remaining childhood emotional ties to him years ago. Dan Slott’s writing style never disappoints me, and “One Moment in Time” wasn’t his fault, so I can acknowledge this as a pretty fun prologue to yet another upcoming very special Spider-Man major crossover event that will pass me right by.

Free Comics!

The all-ages books had one table; this was the other. Plenty of supplies on hand for would-be readers.

8. Rom #0 (IDW Publishing) — ROM, Spaceknight, one of my beloved childhood toys, is back from a long, long stint in licensing limbo! And now IDW’s got him instead of Marvel! But for some reason at the end of this intro, probably for legal reasons, he calls himself “Rom the Space Knight”, which is wrong wrong WRONG. And the revamped Dire Wraiths are pale anime impersonations of Sal Buscema’s classic creepy designs. But Rom still has his trusty Analyzer and Neutralizer, and his silver armor with just some corners rounded, and his starchy Bill Mantlo speech pattern. It’s a promising start, as nostalgia reboots go. Story #2 is a revival of Britain’s own “Action Man”, about whom I know zilch beyond what writer John Barber’s afterword tells me, but his passing-of-the-mantle does a nice job of connecting the old GI Joe precursor to a young, befuddled successor left to figure out how Action Man things work. It’s got a breezy Young James Bond vibe and deserves a second look.

7. Serenity/Hellboy/Aliens (Dark Horse Comics) — Story #1: River Tam turns the Firefly cast into a really precious bedtime story that’ll warm the hearts of fans like me who still miss Wash. Story #2: Richard Corben draws Hellboy and mostly leaves me cold. Story #3 is connected to Brian Wood’s Aliens: Defiance, which I’ve been on the fence about trying or skipping, so I’m at a disadvantage. The art of Tristan Jones and colorist Dan Jackson is a strong selling point, I’ll give it that.

6. The Tick Free Comic Book Day 2016 (New England Press) — Our annual Free Comic Book Day reminder that New England Comics is still in business even though Tick creator Ben Edlund hasn’t been an active contributor in a long, long time. The lead story, in which the Tick meets dozens of other alt-universe Ticks, reminds me of Alan Moore’s run on Supreme, except this was funnier — the funniest Tick story I’ve read in a long time, truth be known. If regular Tick comics ever appeared at my local shop in any of the other 51 weeks every year, I might have to revisit these old, silly friends more often.

5. Doctor Who: Four Doctors (Titan Comics) — Four new shorts with each of the modern-era Doctors! The Tenth is bogged in the current comics’ status quo, Eleven and Twelve face revamps of classic-Who adversaries I don’t know, but the Ninth — my “first Doctor”, for the record — wins with Rose Tyler and Captain Jack at his side against a “geohacker” who reshapes planetary surfaces like a bored intergalactic Banksy. All four stories get each Doctor right and are worthy additions to any Whovian’s comics library. A trade collecting Titan’s first Twelve arc was one of my non-free FCBD purchases to support our local shops, so hopefully it’s more of the same niftiness.

Harley & Red Power Ranger!

Harley Quinn and the Red Power Ranger doing their exercises before assuming crowd-control and party-hearty duties.

4. Mooncop: A Tom Gauld Sampler (Drawn & Quarterly) — Reprints of the British cartoonist’s single-panel gags from The Guardian are great on their own, but the lead story, taken from the forthcoming graphic novel, is good quirky sci-fi about life on the still-desolate Moon in a time when the novelty of living on the Moon never quite took off. Gauld’s website contains more samples and pointers in case this wasn’t nearly enough, which it wasn’t. More, please.

3. Legend of Korra/How to Train Your Dragon/Plants vs. Zombies (Dark Horse Comics) — The Airbender/Korra universe always wins at FCBD, and the streak continues here with the origin of how Korra met her dog. I think. I’ve never seen an episode of either show, but in print they always impress me. Likewise the Dragon short gives cast members a chance to tell their favorite dragon tales with varying degrees of unaware humor, but all tie together at the end with a heartfelt nod to Hiccup’s dearly departed father, of which I approve. I’ve still never played Plants vs. Zombies, but this year’s story (versus a mad scientist zombie) is more coherent and funnier than last year’s. Well met.

2. Science Comics (First Second) — The title says it all: comics about science, and not necessarily just for the kiddos. In story #2, Jon Chad delivers a handy precis on the wide world of volcanology and answers the important issue of “why volcanoes”, but I’m even more enamored of story #1, in which Maris Wicks tells the inspiring true story of how her double-proficiency in comics and oceanography led her to taking scuba lessons for art’s sake. Many folks are lucky if they can do one thing they really love; Wicks is the rare victor to realize you don’t have to settle for just one.

1. Spongebob Freestyle Funnies (United Plankton Pictures) — Maris Wicks completists can then move on to this one, in which she has a two-pager about underwater mountains. There’s also a mostly okay opener by Israel Sanchez (I haven’t watched enough Spongebob to know that his arms can regenerate, but okay, sure) and a one-pager by James Kochalka called “Patrick’s Guide to Getting Stuff for Free” that had me in stitches (“#4: draw a picture of it and pretend that it’s real”), but the winner and champion of Free Comic Book Day 2016 stars Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, in a super-hero throwback tale written by old favorite Evan Dorkin (Beasts of Burden, Eltingville) and illustrated by Ramona Fradon, a longtime DC Comics artist who graced the ’60s through the early ’80s with work on the original Aquaman and the long-running Super-Friends comic based on ye olde cartoon. To have her drawing a spiffy Aquaman parody in the classic action-adventure mold after so many years in retirement is one of the most brilliant ideas any publisher will have this year.

And that’s the free reading pile that was, which has given me quite a few spending ideas. See you next year!

Squirrel Girl!

Our Free Comic Book Day 2016 Cosplayer of the Year: the unbeatable Squirrel Girl! Buy her amazing comic now or you hate reading, fun, literacy, women, and cute furry animals.



House Party at the Hall of Heroes

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Hall of Heroes!

Gathered together from the cosmic reaches of the universe, here in this great Hall of Heroes, are the most powerful forces of good ever assembled: Captain America! Deadpool! Bucky! Cartoon Hulk! The Lizard!

My wife and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a one-day road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas of Indiana we’ve never experienced before. My 2016 birthday destination of choice: the northern Indiana city of Elkhart, with a bonus stopover in South Bend, both some 100+ miles north of here. Elkhart was regrettably cut a little short because the weather was miserable and tried to freeze us in our tracks, but we had enough fun to fill out another four-part miniseries starring a candy factory tour, a super-hero roadside attraction, and a selection of the “art” in Elkhart. Also, food.

Part Two of Four: a birthday celebration for a venerated super-hero at a museum made by a fan for fans.


Hall of Heroes!

This way to JUSTICE.

Deep in the heart of Elkhart, the Hall of Heroes Museum is easy to miss because it’s in the middle of a wooded residential neighborhood. The museum’s owner and founder, Allen Stewart, is a real estate agent with a longtime passion for comics, super-heroes, and Captain America who has turned his collections into one large exhibition piece. He had the Museum built in his backyard, with plans to upgrade to a larger commercial space someday. Frankly, I felt weird parking in his lawn.

Comics!

A fraction of the wall displays on hand, to say nothing of the longboxes containing 60,000+ comics spanning all the medium’s decades. I’ll admit it: his collection is bigger than mine.

We first hear about the Hall of Heroes from booths they set up at a few of our past cons. In previous entries we’ve shown readers pics of their Captain America actual-movie-prop shield signed on the inside by several cast members from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as the Shelby Cobra that Tony Stark crash-landed on during suit-testing in the original Iron Man. When Anne and I were still gathering birthday ideas the week before, we just happened to catch a segment about the Hall of Heroes on one of our local morning shows and remembered this was a place we might want to check out. Nice timing, that.

Cap #1!

One of their most treasured periodicals: a restored copy of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Captain America Comics #1.

As luck would have it, we’d chosen to visit the day they’d planned a mini-fest in honor of Captain America’s birthday. Now 75 years old, the Star-Spangled Avenger is healthier than ever, ruling the American box office and sporting not one but two noble guys with the name and costume in Marvel’s current comics continuity. The bottom floor and a few outdoor party tents were set up for expanded collection viewing, a sort-of dealers’ room for a few other fans with comics to sell, that damaged Shelby Cobra, face-painting for the kiddos, special guest Allen Bellman (a Timely Comics artist as a teenager while Simon and Kirby were serving overseas in WWII), and two local artists selling their own self-published wares.

And, of course, the one thing every successful comic book party needs: cosplayers!

The Lizard!

Spider-Man’s old foe the Lizard sets aside his differences for good ol’ Steve Rogers’ sake.

Hulk 4 Kids!

Hulk take time out from Super Hero Squad to say hi to Flag Man. Hulk also want cake.

Deadpool + Bucky!

Even in a small-town costume gathering dozens of miles from the nearest major convention center, there’s no escaping Mandatory Deadpool, seen here with A-list film star Bucky the Winter Soldier.

Part of the first floor and all of the second are devoted to the bulk of Stewart’s impressive trove of comics, books, toys, high-end statues, and other nifty hobby collectibles. Guys like me have seen our share of action figures at cons, but they’re always boxed, stacked, hanging, or otherwise unnaturally shackled. Most of the heroes in this Hall are unboxed, posed, free-standing display items grouped with their friends, enemies, and other corporate cohorts out in the open. Touching isn’t invited, but with some pieces, I couldn’t help stopping and staring.

Super-Friends!

A selection of Super-Friends, including those brave DC heroes who entertained us on Saturday mornings but were forbidden inside the DC Comics universe.

JLA vs. Starro!

The Justice League of America faces off against Starro the Conqueror in this statue reprising the cover of their first appearance in Brave & the Bold #28.

Hulk Stash!

I like to call this section “HULK STASH!”

Alpha Flight!

This is the moment, more than any other, that I knew Stewart was One Of Us. What ordinary mortal museum devotes an entire section to Alpha Flight?

The Spectre!

The Spectre looms large and metes spiritual vengeance over in the Heroclix section.

Animation Cels!

Animation character reference sheets are among the wall decorations in between all those comics.

Disney's Spider-Man!

“Spider-Man! You’ve just appeared in your best movie in years! What are you doing next?” “I’m going to Disney World!”

Super-Suit!

A true treasure: Ralph Hinkley’s actual suit from The Greatest American Hero, autographed by William Katt. (Anyone calling him “Ralph Hanley” is banned.)

One corner of the first floor is a virtual Batman shrine. One of the most beloved, most heavily merchandised super-heroes in the medium’s history deserves no less.

BATMAN!

Back in the day it was every parent’s job to teach their kids the two words in the Batman theme song.

Batsuit!

If it doesn’t have a genuine Batcostume, it’s not an authentic Batshrine.

Batprops!

Batman naturally needs his Batprops, including this spare Batmask and the Batphone.

Batpole!

I didn’t ask if this was a real TV prop or just an amazing simulation, but its brilliance bowled me over either way: the Hall of Heroes has its own Batpole.

To be honest, the Hall of Heroes wasn’t exactly what I imagined we’d find after a nearly three-hour drive, but it’s a fun place to be. For a modest yet fair entry free, local fans and newcomers to super-heroing get to see a scintillating panoply of faces and universes, giving them a better appreciation and a deeper dive into the vast imaginary worlds of Marvel, DC, and more. Only a fraction of a fraction of those characters have ever made the transition to summer action blockbuster event movies and are likely strangers to the general public. Stewart’s Hall of Heroes is a neat diversion, a potential educational tool, and maybe even a handy gateway to new reading possibilities for kids and adults alike.

It might even spur new collectors into the hobby, though some rookies might do well to keep their expectations realistic and their hopes grounded. We chatted briefly with one young starry-eyed lady who asked if I have any comics (I casually mentioned “some longboxes”) and bragged that her boyfriend owns “a dozen boxes worth a million dollars!” I thought about my thirty-seven years of comics fandom, my 50+ longboxes, many years spent skimming Overstreet price guides, and that one short time I tried eBay on for size, and I had to fight the urge to reach over and pat her on the head.

To be fair, though, based on what we saw of Stewart’s own accumulations, he would’ve had full bragging rights to come up and pat me on the head.


Indy 500 Festival Parade 2016 Photos #5: Random Acts of Parading

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Indianapolis Chinese Community Center!

Dancers from the Indianapolis Chinese Community Center.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This year marked the sixth time my wife and I attended the Indianapolis 500 Festival Parade in downtown Indianapolis. It’s an annual date-day tradition for us —- partly to see the floats and high school marching bands, partly for the famous names and partly because I love the sight of a bustling downtown Indianapolis. The next six entries (to be posted over the next few days as quickly as time and attention span permit) represent a fraction of the pics my wife and I snapped. In many cases, encores and additional takes of specific subjects may be available if anyone out there is interested in seeing more, or is looking for a loved one who was in one of the many marching bands that day. For first-time MCC visitors, please note my wife and I are relative amateurs, absolutely not trained professional photographers, sharing these from a hobbyist standpoint because fun and joy.

In this entry: parade participant potpourri! Organizations and teams who didn’t ride in on a float or bring any musical instruments with them; random vehicles that showed up and rode along; and a few outtakes from previous entries that I just couldn’t let go.

(As always, photos are clickable for enlargement and resolution and such.)

Police Motorcyclists!

Police motorcyclists, an annual staple, whose giant letters spell I-N-D-I-A-N-A-P-O-L-I-S-5-0-0.

Mounted Police!

Mounted police, without any giant red letters glued to the horses’ heads because that would get heavy after a while.

Nationalities Council!

The Nationalities Council always wears the best outfits and costumes.

Nationalities Council!

After we took this additional Nationalities Council shot, a few of them took out their phones to take photos of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument as they approach Monument Circle. Common phenomenon during every 500 Festival Parade right around this stretch.

Nationalities Council!

The Nationalities Council rear guard had the good foresight to bring parasols for shade.

Ballet Folklorico Mosaicos!

Ballet Folklorico Mosaicos! Because anyone who tells you Indianapolis has no culture either isn’t looking hard enough or is a disaffected teen.

Ballet Folklorico Mosaicos!

More reps from Ballet Folklorico Mosaicos, more presiding than dancing.

Indianapolis Chinese Community Center!

The Indianapolis Chinese Community Center usually brings a pair of dynamic dragons to show us what we’re missing every Chinese New Year.

Crispus Attucks High School Cheerleading Team!

The Crispus Attucks High School Cheerleading Team. Their 1955 winning basketball were at the 2015 500 Festival Parade as its grand marshals.

Colts Cheerleaders!

The Indianapolis Colts Cheerleaders brought some of their tiny proteges.

OneAmerica Walking Flag!

Once again, as in every year, the OneAmerica Walking Flag.

Giant gearshift!

Giant gearshift. Not sure why.

Diamond T Race Car Hauler!

Boyle Racing brings a vintage Diamond T racecar hauler, hauling a racecar.

Ernie Pyle Post No. 1120!

Ernie Pyle Post No. 1120 vintage firetruck.

Alien spaceship!

Alien spaceship! In lieu of Star Wars cosplayers, who were conspicuously absent this year.

Penske truck!

This Penske moving truck is always the last vehicle in the parade. The annual caboose, so to speak. That’s how you know it’s time to race back to your car and escape downtown before thousands of other citizens turn the streets into hours of gridlock.

Camaros!

Each of the eleven rows of qualifying Indy 500 competitors were driven in Camaros, one row at a time. Row 9 — Matt Brabham, Graham Rahal, and Pippa Mann — gave us our best shot of an entire row in a single frame.

Alexander Rossi!

Alternate shot of your 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner, rookie Alexander Rossi, sharing a moment of monument photography time with his companion.

David Anspaugh!

Hoosiers director David Anspaugh also getting in on the monument photography movement. Honestly, I could do a bonus entry with nothing but photos of parade participants photographing the monument.

Nick Gehlfuss!

Chicago Med star Nick Gehlfuss receives a boost from his waving assistant.

Firestone guy!

Driving a modified float-car behind the Firestone float, this guy will pay you fifty bucks not to tell anyone you saw him here.

Emma Davies Dixon!

Eighth-place finisher Scott Dixon with his wife, Welsh athlete Emma Davies. My favorite “couple” photo of the day.

To be concluded! Links to other chapters in this annual MCC miniseries are listed below. Follow us on Facebook or via email signup for new-entry alerts, or over on Twitter if you want to track my TV live-tweeting and other signs of life between entries. Thanks for stopping by!

Part 1: The 33 Drivers in Your Starting Lineup
Part 2: This Year’s Guests
Part 3: Marching Bands!
Part 4: Floats and Balloons
Part 6: Before the Music


Superman Celebration 2016 Photos #3: Cosplay!

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Sinestro + Green Lantern!

Arch-rivals Sinestro and Green Lantern in a rare team-up moment. Some of you may recognize the distinguished gentleman in the middle.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: June 10th and 11th, my wife Anne and I attended the 38th annual Superman Celebration in the city of Metropolis, Illinois. In Part One you met two of the headliners, Mehcad Brooks and Twilight’s Peter Facinelli from TV’s Supergirl. In Part Two you met the other guests, including two more famous Jimmy Olsens — Marc McClure from the four Superman films and Michael Landes from TV’s Lois & Clark.

As with any other comics-themed event, there shall always be cosplay. Rather than stagger our super-hero costume photo gallery across a few themed entry, right here is all the costumes fit to print. Most were from DC, but a few other superhumans infiltrated the proceedings from neighboring universes. Fortunately for them the citizens of Metropolis are welcoming to any and all — especially in times like these, when we need heroes now more than ever. All heroes.

(For value-added puzzle fun, see how many Supergirls you can count. If you can spot five or more, consider yourself an honorary CatCo Correspondent!)

SECTION ONE: THE WORLD OF SUPERMAN!

Bizarro Supergirl!

Obviously we ought to have at least one Superman in the lineup, right? This one’s joined by old foe Solomon Grundy, Bane, Bizarro Supergirl, and Ant-Man, sneaking in from another universe, which is just the kind of thing Paul Rudd would do.

Jimmy Olsen!

Just as we had more than one actor who’s played, so did we have more than one cosplayer with us in Marc McClure’s line as Jimmy Olsen, this one armed with camera and trademark bow tie.

Jimmy Olsen!

In civilian life, the other Jimmy Olsen is local man Mike Meyer, who made headlines five years ago when some heartless bounder stole a chunk of his large collection of Superman comics and memorabilia. The perp was caught and, in an outpouring of love, fans nationwide sent him Super-donations to replenish his collection. The response was so overwhelming that he ended up donating a lot of it to others in turn. ‘Twas an honor to meet him in person.

Mr. Mxyzptlk!

Mr. Mxyzptlk sneaking away from the Fifth Dimension for a bit of mischief. Bonus points if you can correctly pronounce all four syllables.

Silver Banshee!

Silver Banshee, a post-Crisis Superman villain who turned up this season on Supergirl.

Nuclear Man!

Much as we’d like to forget Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, we must never forget the Nuclear Man. EVER.

Superman: Red Son!

What if baby Kal-El’s rocket landed in the USSR instead of in Kansas? You’d have the star of Mark Millar and Dave Johnson’s Elseworlds saga Superman: Red Son.

SECTION TWO: GOTHAM BY SUNLIGHT!

Batman + Robin!

Batman and Robin emerge from the shadows because no one can resist posing in front of the Superman statue. Flaunting the emergency kryptonite he keeps in his utility belt seems kind of gauche, though.

Penguin!

Friday’s Jimmy Olsen, ace photographer, transformed Saturday into Oswald Cobblepot, the best thing about TV’s Gotham.

Jack Nicholson Joker!

Jack Nicholson’s Joker. We’ve got a live one here!

Riddler + Friends!

Nearly every cosplay gallery we share has at least one costume we don’t recognize, and would love any labeling assistance we can get from You, The Viewers at Home. “Riddle me this!” says the Riddler, introducing today’s guest strangers. Little help? [UPDATED 6/14/2016, 10:45 p.m. EDT: super-special thanks to Holly at Bloggity Ramblings for recognizing Slenderman when memory failed me. The jury’s still out on Pajama Cowboy.]

SECTION THREE: HEROES OF THE DC MULTIVERSE!

Flash and Green Lantern John Stewart!

The Flash and Green Lantern John Stewart, your core Justice League members in the house.

Flashes!

From the awesomeness that is The Flash, our man’s flanked by his season-1 Big Bad, the Reverse-Flash, and season 2’s sinister Zoom. Run, Barry, RUN!

Mr. Miracle + Green Arrow!

Mr. Miracle and Green Arrow, fully accredited JLA members who occasionally suffer the indignity of being mistaken for Hawkeye or Iron Man. Kids clearly learn nothing in school these days.

Zatanna!

Also on the old JLA roster: Zatanna! (“Stekcit hpargotua otni nrut, ynnuB!”)

Hawkman!

Hawkman on loan from TV’s Legends of Tomorrow, making himself more useful here.

Hawkgirl!

And the animated version of his beloved Hawkgirl.

Stargirl + Fire + Ice!

Fire and Ice from the ’80s Justice League hang out with Stargirl from the Justice Society of America. Fans will notice she’s wielding the Cosmic Staff given to her by Jack Knight, the early-retired Starman.

SHAZAM!

SHAZAM! is what we have no choice but to call him, because his ex-sobriquet Captain Marvel has been taken by some big movie company or whatever.

Dr. Fate!

Dr. Fate, DC’s own master of the mystic arts. Eagle-eyed viewers of NBC’s Constantine spotted his fabled Helmet of Nabu on a dusty shelf in at least one episode.

Red X!

Red X, undercover hero from Teen Titans — the original series my son and I really liked, not the current one that’s totally not aimed at either of us.

B'Wana Beast!

From the deepest depths of DC’s Who’s Who, it’s the animal-powered hero that men were asked to call…B’wana Beast! My wife thought he was just some dude who had the right idea about how to cope with the 90-degree heat. For once in his career, B’Wana Beast may have been the smartest of us all.

Mini-JLA!

Friday at 5 p.m.: all-ages costume parade! Bonus points to Miss Martian there for thinking outside the box.

SECTION FOUR: HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE!

As mentioned briefly in Part Two, Saturday morning we attended a special presentation in which writer Brian K. Morris taught visitors about the rich, varied, occasionally outlandish history of the DC Comics universe with a little help from some special friends, most of whom are presented below. (Solomon Grundy, seen above, was also among their number.)

Batman!

“I get to go first…BECAUSE I’M BATMAN!”

Joker!

Composite Joker features pieces from the character’s multiple multimedia personae.

Wonder Woman!

Wonder Woman! Soon to star in a major motion picture!

Golden Age Batgirl!

Long before Yvonne Craig represented for women’s lib, there was the original Golden Age Bat-Girl! Not making this up!

Supergirl!

Supergirl, now at the absolute height of her popularity, partly thanks to those quitters at CBS.

Lex Luthor!

Post-Crisis Lex Luthor, complete with glove to cover the hand afflicted with kryptonite poisoning. That was a thing in my day, y’see.

Super-Harley!

Super-Harley! Or rather, Harley Quinn trying to disguise herself as Supergirl and hopefully start scoring paychecks from The CW.

SECTION FIVE: NOT NECESSARILY THE DC UNIVERSE!

Harley & Joy!

Another Harley Quinn with her new partner Joy from Pixar’s Inside Out.

Cyclops!

Cyclops from the X-Men movies, which begs an interesting question: what would happen if he aimed his ruby quartz rays through a piece of red kryptonite? Your move, fanfic writers.

Gambit!

Gambit, for you ’90s X-fans out there.

Deadpool!

Even in a small-town costume gathering hundreds of miles from the nearest major convention center, there’s no escaping Mandatory Deadpool.

FrenchMaidPool!

French-MaidPool, the Ruffian with Ruffles.

Jason Voorhees!

Look out, Supergirl! Jason Voorhees already got to Superman and YOU’RE NEXT!

To be continued!


Indy PopCon 2016 Photos, Part 1 of 2: A Cosplay Sampler

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Fairly OddParents!

Wanda and Cosmo, the Fairly OddParents! Stars of one of the last Nickelodeon shows my son ever watched before he aged out of it. Other than SpongeBob, I have no idea who their popular mascots are today.

This weekend Indy PopCon returned to the Indiana Convention Center for their the third annual gala of YouTube, gaming, podcasting, comics, voice actors, animation, and various other manifestations of pop and geek culture in general. My wife and I still regard 2014’s inaugural Indy PopCon as one of the best convention experiences we’ve ever had, but got a little lost when 2015’s event shifted focus toward luring in droves of younger fans. This time we were in the house Saturday for just a half-day with a short itinerary and muted expectations, but were happy to find ourselves another round of wacky fun.

As always we took photos for You, the Viewers at Home, over half of which were costumes. From the start Indy PopCon has attracted quite a creative crowd of cosplayers at every level, from the monetized pro circuit to the costume-contest hopefuls to the sincerest fans of varying means to literally a guy wearing an outfit made of Amazon boxes. At the crossroads of imagination, resourcefulness, determination, and fandom lies…Indy PopCon.

Before we get too far into this, let’s get the obvious part over with: Mandatory Deadpool! Wherever we go to hang out with or near geeks, from the smallest towns to the largest metropolitan extravaganzas, there shall always be a Deadpool. I promise we’re not just walking up to cosplayers in random costumes, handing them a Deadpool mask and red gloves, and creating our own variants to satisfy some mad obsession. That would be unsanitary and also cheating, both of which are qualities right up Deadpool’s alley but not ours.

Scotspool!

Scotspool only eats chimichangas stuffed with haggis.

Hugpool!

Hugpool giving out free hugs. Obviously a trap.

Baseballpool!

Baseballpool, brave enough to bring bats to a gunfight.

Waldopool!

Waldopool, sick of hiding in crowds like a CHUMP.

Pimppool!

It’s hard out here for a Pimppool.

But wait! There’s more! Granted, as with any convention experience, our Indy PopCon photo gallery represents a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the total cosplay experience onsite, but we did what we could in the time allotted with the encounters at hand. It’s just this thing we like to do.

Pac-Man Ghosts!

Blinky and Inky were ahead of us in the opening line to the exhibit hall, armed with a radio playing Pac-Man music on an endless loop.

Finn Ghostbuster!

Finn ain’t afraid of no ghosts!

Maleficent + Captain Hook!

Maleficent is a friend of my wife’s who was at last year’s Indy PopCon, but this time she brought her husband as Captain Hook.

Jesse Custer!

This year Indy PopCon’s old home at the north end of the Convention Center was reserved by The Gospel Coalition for a women’s conference. Preacher antihero Jesse Custer ain’t here for that.

Deathstroke and Red Hood!

More antiheroes: DC’s Deathstroke and the Red Hood. Or is Deathstroke back to being a villain in New 52 continuity? Or is he both? Neither? Dead?

Red Hood!

Red Hood also available in adult sizes.

Jawa!

Jawa!

Giant Stuffed Thing!

The next three photos represent our usual game of “Stump the Fans” — costumes that caught our eye even though we old folks have no idea who they are. Exhibit A: giant stuffed thing. Is it from one of those things we don’t get, like Skylanders or Overwatch or latter-day Pokemon? We wouldn’t know.

Fantasy Legends!

Exhibit B: probably MMO fantasy characters. My son’s sometimes an authority on these, but this time he drew a blank.

Armor + Joker!

Exhibit C: another armored warrior, hanging out with the Surfing Joker we met at Awesome Con Indy. If you know any of these smart-looking strangers, won’t you please help the quasi-elderly in their ignorance? Thank you.

Steampunk Ferret!

This steampunk ferret may be one of the best, tiniest animatronics we’ve ever seen on a convention show floor. At least I think it was animatronic.

Punisher!

The Punisher, soon to be star of his own Netflix series.

Harley Quinn!

Harley Quinn by Savannah Marie, a rare instance of a cosplayer with business cards.

Edward Scissorhands!

Edward Scissorhands hopes you aren’t leaving too soon and apologizes for any damage done.

To be concluded! Tomorrow: who we met and what we did!


Our 2011 Road Trip #25: Our Last Times Square Parade

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New Year's Eve ball!

This New Year’s Eve ball may be retired, but it’s still got enough magic in it to perform random countdowns to nothing in particular. Kids love countdowns.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

Sooner or later, everyone who can’t afford to live in New York has to leave New York. With a handful of hours left on Day Six, it was our turn to start spreading the news and leave here today. We voted unanimously for one last walk through Times Square — one last chance to immerse ourselves in that vibrant hodgepodge teeming with life and lights and wonder and costumes and tourists needing directions and open-air claustrophobia, often not in that order.

We walked as briskly as we could on the last of our energy reserves from Columbus Circle and down Broadway to Times Square. Along the way we passed the Ed Sullivan Theater, current home to The Late Show with David Letterman and one-time jihad target.

Ed Sullivan Theater!

We’d considered attending a real NYC talk show at some point, but most require audience members be over 18. My son came up a little short.

Not every street corner has been purged for the kiddies. Adult fare still poked out in a few spots if you looked too closely. I noted one mild gentleman’s club with purple awning and super-sized rooftop ad for GNC, but its proximity to the heavy all-ages traffic and shiniest lights seemed an odd choice compared to the crasser holes-in-the-wall tucked away in the shadows near Port Authority.

One feature we stopped to admire a bit more this time: street-side cosplayers!

Cookie Monster!

Anne poses with her childhood pal Cookie Monster while Winnie the Pooh lurks in the shadows, trying not to be a bother.

Winnie the Pooh!

We gave Pooh a turn in the spotlight, but by then he had nothing to say for himself.

Elmo!

Elmo filled with existential angst about Elmo’s career choices!

Dora the Explorer!

Dora the Explorer with a permanent shocked expression, like a lot of Manhattan tourists.

Bowlmor Pin!

Bowling alley mascot wants to know how YOU doin’.

Naked Cowboy!

We have reason to believe this Naked Cowboy is not the genuine article. I’d never heard of him, let alone suspected him of inspiring inferior imitations. The existence of one alone is cause enough for concern. If you see this man, call I-800-CRIME-TV right away and scream into your phone how unfair it is that you can’t get away with dressing like this.

When we stopped to rest near the Times Square permanent bleachers, this man handed us a travel brochure several days too late and spent uncountable minutes extolling the virtues of the great and powerful Hunter S. Thompson, whom none of us have read. I faintly improved his opinion of us by remembering correctly that Benicio Del Toro costarred in that one Terry Gilliam flick about a psychotropic junkie road trip.

Hunter S. Thompson Fan!

Officially the final entry in Anne’s “Faces of New York” photo series. Not a costume.

The giant puppets stood outside the M&Ms Store, which wasn’t as fascinating inside as I had hoped. There were many M&Ms and M&M accessories, all accompanied by rave-volume electronica Muzak that failed to convince us how hip and happenin’ their candy is. Any melting was strictly in our ears, not our in hands or mouths.

Anne found another smashed penny machine outside an Italian restaurant. While she busied herself pressing some coinage into new souvenirs, I watched a scene around the corner where several alarmed people were surrounding an old black man who was leaning against the wall and trying to pass out. I felt awkward not rushing to help, but with seven people already gathered around and offering assistance or sympathy, I’m not sure an eighth would’ve made a crucial difference.

Our last purchase of the week was at a souvenir shop run by a fellow who told us he had relatives back in our own Indianapolis. My son and I got matching black T-shirts emblazoned with the Manhattan portion of the official, boldly colored MTA subway map. I can’t speak for him, but every time I’ve worn it since vacation, it’s started more conversations with strangers than any other article of clothing I’ve ever owned. Oddest run-in was a month later at the Indiana State Fair — a young man who sold me beignets from a concession stand and wouldn’t stop staring at the shirt because he’s currently in college preparing to become a city planner in his hometown and is fascinated by that sort of thing. It’s nice to be inspirational.

The closing lineup of electric Times Square crowd scenes and advertising writ colossal:

Francis P Duffy Statue!

How many Broadway plays can you count behind this statue of fightin’ Father Francis P. Duffy?

TKTS!

Friday TKTS lines beat any line we’d seen or stood in that week. No discount showing of The Addams Family for us, then.

McDonald's!

Even franchise restaurants probably don’t have to look bigger and bolder to draw in the rubes, but they have fun flexing their creative muscles anyway.

Torchwood!

We’ve never watched Torchwood, but I trust this ad impressed its fans.

Toshiba!

Toshiba presents the Toshiba tower starring the Toshiba ads supporting the current New Year’s Eve ball. With special guest TDK, whose blank cassettes were important to me as a music-loving teen.

Me on Times Square!

Anne insisted on one nice shot of me in Manhattan before we left. We were both trying to cross the street at the time, but why not. It’s New York!

This being July 15, 2011, I had the brilliant idea of checking into the possibility of seeing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 on opening day in a real live NYC theater. Of the two movie theaters we could locate without trying, the 6000-screen AMC had lines the length of days, while the Regal across the street wasn’t even showing it. The former was predictable, but the latter was unexpected. Nearly every Indianapolis theater has identical movie listings, especially when it’s time for summer action blockbusters, and rarely sells out of any showings. Once again we saw New York is not now, nor will it ever be, Indianapolis.

Thanks to fatigue and proximity, dinner was down 42nd Street from the theaters at a Japanese fast-food chain called Yoshinoya. Their chopsticks were cheaper than Sapporo’s and their electronica Muzak was cheaper than the M&M Store’s, but their food was a cut above Manchu Wok’s.

We had plenty of daylight left after dinner if we wanted to take advantage, but we had neither the energy nor the remaining ideas. We entered Port Authority one last time, rode one last New Jersey transit bus back to Weehawken, and disembarked one last time at Lincoln Harbor. We were somber yet satisfied.

Our somberness and satisfaction each vanished when we spent some time in the hotel room sampling our Chinatown culinary souvenirs, none of which were more intimidating than the Honey-Flavored Grass Jelly Drink (slogan: “Catch the Dread!”). Its list of natural ingredients were more unintelligible than any chemical-based American snack.

Grass Jelly Drink!

Probably not available in value-priced 24-packs.

My son took a sip. I took a swig. Despite our differences throughout the week’s trials, in this issue we were a united front: this swill tasted like lawn trimmings marinated in mop water with just a twist of death.

I dumped the rest of the Honey-Flavored Grass Jelly Drink (slogan: “Grape, Grass, ToMAYto, ToMAHto!”) in the sink. Much to our surprise and disgust, chunks in the bottom of the can clogged the drain of the nice hotel sink and grossed us out. I grabbed a handful of toilet paper and scooped out the evidence before it jammed up the plumbing for the entire hotel.

Grass Jelly Sink!

Maybe this stuff would make great fertilizer, but I had no intention of carrying it in my luggage to find out.

We later learned those chunks were gelatin cubes that are packaged in every can of Honey-Flavored Grass Jelly Drink (slogan: “It’s like rolling tiny dice into your mouth!”), not a coagulated mess resulting from years of sitting on the shelf unsold. Chinese kids presumably hold those globules in the same regard that American kids used to hold Cracker Jacks prizes. I take back what I said before about their marketing department: whoever tricked anyone into craving that kind of emetic fodder is a staggering genius.

Ranking our edibles upward from there: the cubic gumdrop things had a mealiness to them that may or may not have dated back to Incan times; the Chinese grapes were mostly seed; and the dragon fruit was mostly harmless once we figured out how to penetrate its harmful rind without a knife on hand.

Settling in for the night, the top of my comics reading stack was Marvel’s Journey into Mystery #625, in which a young, reincarnated Loki hatched a scheme that required tense negotiations between Hela, the goddess of the Norse underworld, and Mephisto, Marvel’s proxy for Satan. All involved needed a third-party neutral territory in which to conduct the diplomatic tête-à-tête.

The location of choice for this Axis of Evil: Newark, NJ.

To be continued!

[Historical notes:

1. Now that bubble tea is a thing, those gelatinous cube miniatures are a tad less alienating. This Asian foodie trend doesn’t retroactively upgrade my opinion of the foul taste or squishy texture, though.

2. I deleted one Dick Clark joke that sounded horrid after his 2012 passing. His New Year’s Rockin’ Eve used to be my December 31st ritual as a kid.

3. When we were prodding my son for ideas for our 2016 trip, Yoshinoya was the only restaurant he remembered five years later. That location, the last one east of the Mississippi River, shut down the following January 31st.

4. To this day my son has yet to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. Once a Potter fan along with my wife and me, he lost interest circa Half-Blood Prince and saw Deathly Hallows: Part 1 only because other relatives dragged him to it.

5. In 2016 we saw another Naked Cowboy in Times Square, this one black. Even the New York underwear-model-cowboy union is showing more diversity these days than some TV networks.

6. This past July we shared the story of that time we finally got to enter the Ed Sullivan Theater. A few exterior photos will feature in a future entry, along with a snippet of grainy video. Consider this footnote the official teaser promo.

7. We’ve still not watched Torchwood, but we’ve since gotten attached to Doctor Who and are hoping to meet John Barrowman at a convention this weekend. Consider this footnote a bonus teaser for our very next photo series, starting this Sunday or Monday…]

* * * * *

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for future chapters, and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email signup for new-entry alerts, or over on Twitter if you want to track my TV live-tweeting and other signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

New Year's Eve Ball!

Rather than end on a negative drink review, we bookend here after this chapter’s end credits with a bonus glimpse of that same color-changing New Year’s Eve ball, which resided in the Times Square Visitors Center in its twilight years, counting down up close and in your face. Historical note #8: the Times Square Visitors Center that we visited in July 2011 later closed in August 2014. New York City just can’t have all the nice things, apparently.


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