My son, Kolton, turned 18 this week, and for his birthday, he wanted me to take him and a couple of guys (my other son, Aram, and his friend Zane) to Fandomfest, a three-day comic book convention in Louisville. My inner-nerd/geek was probably more excited than his that I was going to get to go to this AND feel good about myself as a parent in doing so. Those moments are rare. As much fun as I thought I would have, it exceeded expectations. So, I thought I'd share with you guys how the day went, and give you all a chance to either make fun of me, or join me in celebration and tell your Fandomfest stories in the comments.
- Kolton dressed as "#10", Aram holding a bag of Stewart's Black Cherry soda (aka, Nectar of the Gods), and me weirdly protecting his jugular
-- The day started off right, with a Stewart's Black Cherry soda that Aram brought in from Lebanon and an egg-white McMuffin from McDonald's (I will not call it an Egg White Delight, McDonald's. No matter how hard you try). As you can see, Kolton took advantage of his thrift shop-awareness (level: expert) where he completely put together this Dr. Who #10 costume, minus the shoes (he had to splurge on those). I knew the costume was good. I had no idea how good.
-- In typical "me" fashion, I parked in a spot that cost more money and was farther away than about 20 other available places that we noticed on our way walking to the convention center, but not while we were driving. I hadn't even finished the process of overpaying for parking before someone had noticed Kolton, screamed "10!", and asked for a picture.This would occur no less than 30 times throughout the day.
-- Ordering online is the way to go for tickets if you go to one of these things, friends. To get your day pass, you had to go to one of the big rooms at the convention center. I'm talking about a room bigger than any I can compare it to in Danville. Close to the size of the Civic Center by Rupp Arena maybe. There were lines of people in there that made me want to cry, and I knew that half of our day would be spent in there, waiting in line and taking pictures of the good Dr. with his adoring fans. But a grandfatherly security guard directed us to the "Will Call" booth, where we took our PayPal receipt, and had our passes within five minutes. (It would have been three, but Kolton had to stop and take pictures...)
-- Mass confusion set in at this point. None of us had a clue. So we just started aimlessly walking around trying to find a map or a program or a group to follow or something to help us out, since we had absolutely no forethought other than buying the tickets early. Luckily, we ran into paranormal expert Heather Prather who had helped us out with our latest film shoot. She helped us out again by pointing us in the right direction to get to some goodness.
-- We entered what I would call "The Hall of Champions", and immediately went from "we can't find anything to do" to "there's way to much to do!" A room bigger than the first one with the tickets, with wall-to-wall comics, toys, movies, masks, art, books, cards, collectibles, and just about anything else you could think of. Then there were people dressed up like many of the characters depicted on these items. Just about every Batman villain was represented. A couple of Deadpools. Some Star Trek crew members. A lot of Dr. Who's (although Kolton was the best I saw). Some Ghostbusters. Thor. Spiderman (red and black). Darth Vader. Darth Maul. Stormtroopers. ALF. Princess Leia. And, Bloodsucka Jones, who might have been my favorite (more about him in the next post). Then, at the back of the room, you could get autographs from a few celebs that were on hand.
-- While Kolton stood in line to get a John Barrowman autograph (I don't know either, but he was excited. And the dude had a long line, so, whatever), Aram and I decided to hit "comic book alley", where there were boxes and boxes of nerd books to sift through and get wide-eyed at and giggle (out of the gutter, minds. It was with child-like innocence). If I had no morals and didn't fear jail, I'd have made a stab at trying to grab an "Incredible Hulk #181" (first appearance of Wolverine). But since I have both, it stayed on the wall.
-- We made our way to the back of the room, and got to the row of celebrities ourselves. Some were really busy
- Me and the master of the racket, Jim Cornett
(including this Barrowman fella), and some were not so much. One of the "not-so-much's" was a figure from my childhood that I was more than happy to take a few minutes of his time. Jim Cornett is pretty much a legend in wrestling circles around here, and had some pretty long tenures in the WWF and WCW as a manager. He's probably most famous for managing The Midnight Express (with "Beautiful Bobby" Eaton and "Sweet Stan" Lane, neither of which were either beautiful or sweet) and bashing folks over the head with his tennis racket that usually had "JIM" bejeweled on the cloth cover. Jim was the nicest, and it was super cool to talk to somebody that I've seen on TV since I was a kid, and who has made me laugh several times since.
-- Al Snow, who was another wrestling presence on celebrity row, is kind of a weird pervert.
-- Two comic book artists were there that I like a lot. First of all, Neal Adams had a booth set up. If you're not familiar with Neal, he is the guy who basically made Batman into The Dark Knight. Bob Kane is credited with creating the character, but Neal Adams took him from the campy action star with the grey and blue tights, like from the old TV show, and turned him into the modern day version you are familiar with today. Pretty cool. For me, though, I was more excited about Mark Texeira. My favorite comic book, and one I've collected since I got into comics, is Wolverine. And my favorite artist from when I collected them is Mark. For one reason, I always liked Wolverine with the spiked claws instead of the knives, and Mark is one of the few that draw him that way. So, I got to take my Wolverine #61 (the first cover art that Mark did for Wolvie) and get it signed. He also drew a sketch of Wolverine for Aram while he talked to us about who he liked to
- The sketch of Wolvie that Mark Texeira did for Aram while he talked to us for about 5-10 minutes
draw, who was the most difficult, etc., and then he ended up showing us a portfolio of some drawings from an original comic he is trying to pitch to Marvel. He was incredibly nice and engaging, and you could tell he just loved being there and talking to the fans of his work.
-- A few other celebs that were on the row, but I couldn't get close to and didn't really want to wait in line to pay to see for five seconds, were Gillian Anderson from the X-Files, a guy you may have heard of that has recently made our state his home named William Shatner, and STAN FREAKING LEE!!! Stan is the only one that I would have considered waiting and paying for, but the line was already about 200 people deep when we checked it out, and it was still over an hour before he was even coming to the room. I'm not sure we would have even gotten to him in the time they had allotted him to sign, so, reluctantly, we passed. But, I can say that I was in the same room as Stan "The Man" Lee, and no one can take that away from me.
That was just the first half of the day. Later this week, I'll break down what happened after lunch until we finally decided to call it quits at 11:30. Next year, I feel like a 3-day pass is in order.
READ PART TWO >>
READ PART TWO >>