Crossing one off the Bucket List: Comic-Con

Hey ladies

Could there be a better coincidence than arriving in Phoenix for a conference only to find Comic Con is also in town? I’m guessing there’s a lot of overlap between attendees, so maybe they were just making it convenient for everyone. We played the “are they going to Comic Con or are they a professor” game, and it got pretty tough pretty quickly.

It was pretty hard to hide how excited I was for this. Going to Comic Con has always been on my bucket list, and to have some free time to just hop on over and go was an opportunity that couldn’t be passed over. I speak nerd very well, but comics are definitely not my specialty, so I still felt a bit out of my element. Of course, not having an anime costume was a real problem.

 There were a ton of people walking around the city in costumes, from the really well they-must-be-professionals to the dear-god-that-shirt-didn’t-fit-twelve-years-ago-why-now??!!? There were anime folks and Dr. Who folks and video game monster folks and a ton of Batmen. I saw people with light sabers and samurai swords and chainmail and cardboard boxes for armor, and there were families and little kids and grownups and actors and writers and artists.

Lou Freakin Ferrigno

The convention center smelled like a cross between buttered popcorn, urine and nerdsweat (though all are weirdly similar), and we dropped $30 to get a day pass. The booths were divided up: a lot were devoted to buying and selling comics or collectors toys or autographed pictures. Some had new comic book series or specific artists, and lots sold jewelry and clothes and swords and things like that. One side of the floor were for the featured actors/personalities who were signing autographs or shaking hands, and that’s where we saw LOU FREAKIN FERRIGNO, the Hulk himself, hulking it out. There was also a guy from Battlestar Galactica I was really excited about. There were about 300 people in line for an anime voice actor. We missed Lavarr Burton (READING RAINBOW!) and Crazy Shane from the Walking Dead.

There were people who dressed up in real armor and fought each other with real, blunted swords. True story, I was IN this club for three weeks in college, but that’s another blog post. My favorite thing about them was their king was absolutely wearing my grandmother’s sofa upholstery for his tunic, the swordsman had a cell-phone holder attached to his scabbard, and another fighter had an actual soup pot as part of his shield. I mean, I swear I made rice in that three days ago. They would say “HUZZAH” when someone won. They had one fighter who was in a wheelchair, and fought another guy (who was standing) while he sat on the floor. This was pretty cool, and it was a good fight. Note, these aren’t choreographed or anything. People legit bang on each other with maces and things and try to knock each other out/down.

There were really cool lego sculptures (I had no idea they had a Death Star LEGO kit!), and even a booth where they could take any picture and turn it into a poster-size picture made entirely out of LEGO. They had all these different painted walls you could stand next to and get your photograph like you are In an apocalyptic world, or the future or the desert or even next to Batman on the top of a skyscraper. They also had R2D2s that moved and you could get your picture taken with.

Everyone looked like they were having a good time. There was an odd zombie girl who would stand in my periphery and put on a zombie face and (I guess) try to be scary when I looked over and noticed, but that was just really weird. Tons of people would ask cool costumed people for photographs (seriously, some of these people must have put in 100s of hours and many 100s of dollars into these costumes) and they’d always stop and do it. There were some heated bartering going on with the comic book collection booths but that was about it.

They also had a Real lightstaber booth. These light sabers were guaranteed to be the best on the market; the most durable, the most realistic and the most awesome. You could pick from a ton of different hilts and blade colors (and even blade type, I’m told). They were from $50 to like $500, where the high end stuff had SOUNDS when you turned them on and waved them around. These were really sturdy too, they were made for dueling! My friend spent something like an hour an half looking at them to pick one out, but it was definitely worth it. There’s nothing like walking into your Communication Conference with a fully functional light saber. He looked like a total badass. I should have got one.

All in all, this could not have gone better. I also had a life-changing experience (stay tuned). Worth every penny.