Author - Artist - Voice Over Actor

Tag: cosplay

2020 Comic-Con Thoughts

            Nearly forty years ago I went to my first comic book convention.

            It was fun, and quite small.

            Next I would attend a Robotech convention, it was fun, and even smaller.

            A few years later I went to my very first San Diego Comic-Con.

            At the time it was held in the old San Diego Convention Center downtown, I’m not old enough to have attended in the hotel where it first began. But that year, it was quite an amazing experience for the kid who had his hopes set on becoming a comic book artist.

            Two things stand out in my memories of my first Comic-Con. Getting inking lessons from Dick Giordano, (especially how to create ‘Kirby Dots’) and hoping to meet one of my favorite writers. Unfortunately, he missed his panel, afterwards a few of us attempted to have him paged, but he never showed.

            Many years later I spotted him across the lobby of one of the San Diego Comic-Con hotels and I rushed across to talk with him. I told him how much his comics, his writing, his research, influenced the young boy that I was and the man I am. That was probably one of the best experiences of all my Comic-Con visits.

            The year of my first San Diego Comic-Con the attendance was 5,000.

            That sounded like a massive amount of people at the time, but it is nothing compared to the 120,000 to 160,000 that have attended each year over the last decade or so. Many more who hang out in the Gaslamp District.

            In over 30 years I only missed San Diego one time.

            I’ve always been a loner geek, and in a massive con crowd even more so. I’d have to find someone to go with me.

            With in weeks of when the woman who would become my wife moved to Southern California, I took to her to her first convention. To the San Diego Comic-Con. She’d later say I should have started her off small, but she enjoyed it all the same, and has gone with me every year since. Both of us with Pro-Badges now.

            This year things are different, for all of us. Convention season hasn’t been canceled; it has gone virtual. The Convention Center, Exhibit Hall, The Masquerade, the Panels, they all exist in The Cloud right now. On YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, and more.
For San Diego Comic-Con they are now Comic-Con@Home. Wednesday, July 22nd. to Sunday, July 26.

The 2020 Comic-Con souvenir book. Click on the image to download a PDF copy.

            It’s disappointing, but it’s not gone.

As for the future, no one really knows yet. Conventions will probably never be that large again, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s time that our love for comics, movies, video games, science fiction, and fantasy returns to being more intimate. Where a small group of fans can enjoy their shared love for a comic book, or good naturedly argue over how a movie didn’t quite get their favorite character just right, and not be crowded out and have to shout over one another. Where Disney Princesses and Transformers don’t have to worry about thousands of feet tramping on their costumes.

            The Cons are about us, the fans, and our love of stories that exist in four-color comics, books, celluloid film, digital pixels, computer screens, smart phones, and much more.

            Speaking of that love, and of our fandoms, I’d like to recommend something:

ONCE UPON A CON

            As I write this blog I am finishing reading a book for the third time. It seemed to be the right book to read in the midst of this Con Season.

            It’s title is GEEKERELLA: A FANGIRL FAIRY TALE, part one of author Ashley Poston‘s ONCE UPON A CON series of novels.

            This book is a love song to comic and science fiction conventions, to comics and science fiction television, to fans and fandom, to just plain being a geek no matter who you are. Are you an actor, a writer, an artist, a blogger, or just a good old fan of an old TV series, you exist inside the impossible universe of Geekeralla.

            While not being able to go to a con and need something to pull on your convention heartstrings, this book will do it.

            Then go pick up the second book in the series THE PRINCESS AND THE FAN GIRL, and coming in August BOOKISH AND THE BEAST.

            Your Inner-Geek will thank you.

HALLOWEEN – I’m dressing up like a Missed Deadline

Do you remember the very first costumes you wore for Halloween?

I’m not meaning the ones your parents may have put you in when you were an infant. “Oh, isn’t that a cute little pumpkin.” The ones you chose yourself.

Do you remember those plastic sheet costumes? Even as a little kid I thought they were dumb (forgetting itchy and hot). I wanted to be Superman, not wear a picture of Superman. The plastic mask was bad enough, with that dry rubber band to hold it on. We all knew it would never survive the night.

Even though I had seven years of marching in my elementary school’s Halloween costume parades, I only remember maybe three of the costumes from back then. I was Dracula twice, (and a magician using the same outfit), and The Mummy.

After Elementary school I don’t believe I put on another costume. I was picked on enough in High School; I didn’t need another reason, (see last week).

But I did go to one Halloween party during college dressed as Doctor Who. Or as close to being dressed as Doctor Who as I could.

(Has anyone else noticed how writing about Doctor Who confuses the grammar checker in your word processor?)

Back then I was a big Tom Baker years fan of the show but also liked Sylvester McCoy. So my costume, which was thrown together from clothing I had, became a merger of the two. I even took the time to draw red question marks on my shirt collars as was worn by Peter Davidson, Collin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy. Really wish I could have had McCoy’s umbrella. At the time that would have been cool.

No one, absolutely no one, knew who I was dressed as. And so ended my Halloween costumes.

Now I keep thinking about being invited to a Halloween party and dressing up. Times sure have changed since school.

Back in school, High School and even college, no one would have shown up with a Superman t-shirt, and yet now its very common to see such a shirt around town, or a Batman, Flash, or Green Lantern (even a Darkest Night) shirt. For girls the Supergirl or Wonder Woman logos aren’t all that rare.

On top of that dressing up as different characters isn’t all that rare.

When I first began to attend the San Diego Comic Con, there would be dozens of people dressed up for the Saturday night Masquerade. Now those costumes are out the entire con every day.

Not only at the Con but also because of Anime strong influence on American popular culture, cosplay has become a regular part of lie as well. I’ve seen girls wearing catgirl hoods around town.

Then there is Steampunk, which I’m only beginning to learn about, but has some of the most fantastic costumes. Though based on a alternate world where technology took a different turn, there is still something solid and real about the costumes. As wild as the costumes are, they might be something I’d be interested to slip into sometime, if I could afford it.

If not that then I might dress up as Doctor Who again, this time David Tennant or Matt Smith. I think I look like Tennant when he was wearing the pajamas.

Or I’ll just dress up like this Deadline I’m just barely going to make.

One last thing before I sign off.

The webcomic I write with Shannon Muir: FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY, is included in a collection that is published. “Webcomics: What’s Cooking” Is a cookbook produced by webcomic creators and it will feed the hungry in both Canada and the U.S. Preorders open up Friday October 29, 2010. http://tgtmedia.com/

Help Flying Glory save the world in a real way.

Trick or Treat

Kevin Paul Shaw Broden

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