Phoenix ComiCon in Review

The Con technically started on Thursday but it’s more of a “preview” type day and I didn’t bother going then. I did head right over there Friday morning though. After standing in line to get my full event pass, I headed into the area with the dealers and artists and such. I picked up a couple free movie posters and even found a nice picture at the booth for one of the web comics I like, WereGeek. The picture was of a “displacer beast” from D&D but done up as a kitten saying “Mew”. It was so adorable. After wandering and checking stuff out, I headed off to meet some friends for lunch… at Hooters no less. (The crew was 4 gay guys and a female. Obvious choice to eat at, right? 😉 ) Afterwards, we met some other friends for a panel on mythology in writing that they had planned to attend. It wasn’t bad. After that, we went over to the game room and played a game and saw Wil Wheaton in his kilt. I was wondering if he was regimental so one of our group decided to tweet to him and ask. Sadly, we never got to find out. After the game, we just hung out for a bit and a couple people headed off to eat. The rest of us hit the dealer area where I ran across the booth for Sorcery 101 and Hijinks Ensue. My friends were on the move so I only had a chance to check out the stuff for Sorcery 101 where I picked up a couple collections of the web comic. The room was closing down so we were soon on our own ways home.

The next day, I headed back down to catch the panel for Robert Duncan McNeil who played Tom Paris on Star Trek: Voyager and is currently working on Chuck (which I’ve never seen). I got a seat and was checking some stuff on my phone when one of my friends from the prior day came over an tapped me on my shoulder. Turns out that he and his friend were sitting on the other side of the room so I headed over to sit with him. After that panel, the other friend went to see the Leonard Nimoy panel but the other two of us headed down to the dealer room where we wandered some and I hit the Hijinks Ensue table. I picked up volumes 1 and 2 of his collections which he autographed as well as adding some sketches. He even took a picture of me and my friend with the books to show to Josh, one of his friends who is in the strip who happens to be a bear too. After a bit, we headed back up to meet the guy coming out of the Leonard Nimoy panel and split ways as I headed off to the panel with Kristin Bauer, Pam from True Blood. After that I tried to go to the dealer room for a bit but it was so crowded, they weren’t letting people in so I headed to the Steampunk fashion show. Some of the designs were interesting and it was cool to see my friends who were in it. Later, I caught up with them in the dealer room (which I was finally able to get into) and met up with my friends before heading home to rest.

With one day left, I checked the schedule and decided I could sleep in some. I got there in time for one more pass of the dealer room and stopped to talk to the Arizona Avengers and see what they were all about. After that, I hit the panel for The Guild featuring Jeff Lewis (Vork) and Sandeep Parikh (Zaboo). They were funny and it was a good show. After that, I started heading to the panel for Nicholas Brendon (Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and ran into a friend I hadn’t expected to see. We both headed to the panel which turned out to be the best one of the weekend. We knew it was going to be interesting when the moderator asked Nicholas to be more PG and he said “If you’ve been to my panels before, you’d know they are never PG. Maybe KY.” From there, he “admitted” to giving syphilis to 2 cast members and responded to one person’s question about what to expect after the first season with “Butt sex. Lots and lots of butt sex.” I decided to head up with a question of my own. I mentioned how I’d read that they originally were trying to figure out if it would be Xander or Willow that was gay and asked how he would have taken it if they had chosen Xander and if he and Allyson had any input on it. First he answered with “We had a big bitch fight over it” with a a major lisp which got a good laugh. Then he clarified that that was just a rumor and that he’d only heard of it a couple times at panels well after the fact but he wouldn’t have minded it and would have considered it a challenge. I mentioned that at least he would have had Larry to pair up with and he look at me saying “I know what you do at night.” The off-color commentary ran through the entire panel and he kept everyone laughing. After that, everything was over and it was time to head home one last time.

I have to say that I enjoyed the con a lot more this year than I did last year. There was a lot more too it and a lot more space for it. The panels were great, there were a lot of great costumes that people showed up in, and it was fun to enjoy it with friends. The one down side was the fact that they had to stop people from going into the dealer area because there were too many people in there as per fire codes. They were need to find a better way of handling things next year to make more room so people can get in. Enough people just turned around and left the area when they say half hour plus lines just to get on the floor which could have meant a lot of lost revenue for the people with booths and tables. It seems to be growing each year, though, so it should be interesting to see what it’s like next year.

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