Whew! What a weekend! Comic-Con has come and gone and a good time was had by me and my pals.
Where to begin? Well, why not begin with my personal high note, meeting Adam Baldwin. Why was meeting Adam Baldwin a high point for me? Because it was the first time I personally shared Age of Animus with someone I didn’t know, and not just anyone, a movie and television star! And he liked it (or did a convincing job of pretending he did)! For those of you who may not know, Adam, played the role of Jayne Cobb on Firefly, which only happens to be one of my very favorite shows, and also the subject of much mash-upping here on Age of Animus in the last two weeks.
Sometime this summer, after finding out that Adam Baldwin would be coming to Montreal and Jewel Staite would be coming to Trois-Rivieres, I got the idea of drawing a poster of the cast of Animus Funnies dressed up as Firefly characters and how cool it would be to get that poster signed by the cast of Firefly. This is typically the kind of great idea I get and put off working on until it’s too late and then give up on. This time, although I did wait until it was almost too late, I got the poster finished and printed in time for Comic-Con. I figured I’d pay for an autograph from Adam Baldwin, but there was no guarantee he’d sign my poster (some folk are reluctant to sign third party stuff). But Adam was very nice, and he even gave me positive comments on the piece. I gave him the Jayne-Barnaby mash-up I drew and he took my site name down. All very thrilling for me.
Of course, Mr. Baldwin is an actor who must get this kind of thing all the time, and not being privy to his inner thoughts, I can’t 100% be certain that he wasn’t just being polite However! I prefer to believe that he was being genuine and that just made my day.
That was on Saturday morning. On Friday night, I had my picture taken with Mr. Baldwin (he’s a big dude) and attended his panel. Incidentally, the first day of an event that celebrates nerdy interests of all kinds? THAT’s the day I chose to wear non-nerdy clothes (I almost always wear comic/sci-fi t-shirts). Later, we saw James Marsters in concert. Very enjoyable and to be honest, much better than I expected. He sounds better live than he did in the Buffy musical.
On Saturday I was in costume as Flint from GIJoe. I have to admit, this was my biggest disappointment of the con. Wearing a costume at a con really puts you out there and people either respond positively or they don’t. In my case, they didn’t react at all. In fact, I got as many pictures taken of me this year wearing a full costume as I did last year when I was simply wearing black shorts and a Charlie Brown shirt. I firmly believe that I put together a swell costume, which only leads me to believe that if the costume was good, it’s the guy in the costume that was the problem. It certainly doesn’t make me feel very excited about wearing a costume at next year’s con.
But enough about the disappointment! I had a great time at the con. I witnessed Patrick Stewart (who I spoke with ever so briefly after standing in line for a (very) expensive autograph) and William Shatner share the same stage for a jam-packed room, I saw Wil Wheaton speak in person and spoke with him the next day. Adam Baldwin walked within spitting distance of me twice (once at our hotel and again at the con), I joined in in singing Happy Birthday in French for Mike Mignola, and saw a lot of neat people in costume and even more neat stuff, only an infinitely small part of which came home with me.
Also, the cast of Animus Funnies made another appearance at the con when I wore my cast t-shirt on Sunday. I think I caught one girl reading the names while we were all waiting in line (neat!). It reoccurred to me then that the one thing that’s missing from that shirt design is an Age of Animus logo…DOH!
On our way home, Lyne said that the worst thing about leaving was that we were the longest time possible away from attending Comic-Con again. It’s so true, but my wallet for one is thankful!
Nothing wrong with the guy in the costume. I blame the lack of non-Snake Eyes Joe characters at cons for pushing the cool characters out of the public’s eye.