The last time I attended a local convention here in the Midwest, I did more of a review of it. I thought it might be a good idea to pit it against the others that I had been to. The thinking behind this was to inform anyone that is in the Midwest of what the better conventions are. This would keep you from wasting your time or money on a boring or disappointing convention. All in all, the convention was decent. However, the convention I attended this last weekend, Kansas City Comic Con, was much better. So this time, I’m going to not review it and just write a quick opinion piece and talk about what was going on out there. Disclaimer: I did try to find more relevant stuff for our site like video game related stuff, but that seemed to be limited. Even their game room had more board game and card games. So this is just a quick slice of life piece. Through the eyes of a nerd!
Cosplay:
The cosplay at this year’s Kansas City Comic-Con was so varied and ingenious. I wasn’t able to catch a picture of every single cosplay that passed me unfortunately. But that doesn’t mean that what I saw and captured to share with you all was any less awesome! They’re above and below this section and in no particular order. The craziest thing that I noticed was that more and more kids are joining in on the cosplay craze. In fact, three out of the four pictures that I have here were children. This is of course growing more and more every year. I’m uncertain if they’re recycling their Halloween costumes or if the costumes were made just for this convention. But either way, these things are so imaginative!
There were a lot of adult cosplayers as well. The downside about adults is their need to rehash costumes that they bought once or made. I understand the reasoning. Being to maximize your dollar value or utilizing it because so much time was spent on it being made. But when you go to local conventions, more often than not the appeal wears off as an outside viewer because you see the same costumes more and more from the same people. The great thing about having younger cosplayers is the fact that they grow so every convention they could very well be wearing new costumes and thus switching things up for us passers by. That’s not to say that the adult costumes aren’t great, but just that the people in my area seem too skiddish when it comes to buying or making more and more.
Events/Vendor Hall:
There are loads of pictures here because there were loads of things happening all at once. It was challenging to fit it all in, but that is what is ultimately fun about these larger conventions. As the pictures show (from top to bottom) Kansas City Comic Con had it going on! They had a local wrestling event going on most of the time. You could hear the bodies being slammed in the ring across the whole vendor hall! A couple of booths had some podcasts going on with podcast personalities. There is a panoramic picture that I took to try to show everything as far as the naked eye could see, a few people are funny looking though!
One booth that I spent way too much time at was the one you can see just above this with the busts of horror characters. It didn’t stop there of course. The booth featured lots of creative wall pieces where famous,well known faces are coming out of the wall as it were. The full size Superman was also clearly there since the convention was featuring 6 actors for the celebration of the 40th anniversary of Superman The Movie. As usual, local company R2 Builders was there with their booth. It featured not only their variety of R2 units but also a BB-8, which I didn’t apparently get a picture of. But their stuff never ceases to amaze those who come by.
The three pictures following that are something that I was so surprised to see in person. It was three separate vehicles from TV shows and movies of old. You’ll see the original Batmobile from the 1960’s iteration of Batman. Following that there was the Mystery Machine, but not one from any of the live action Scooby-Doo movies. It was actually from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back if you can believe it. That may have been there because both Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith were at the convention! And last but not least, the third car seen there was the all too famous Delorean featured in the Back to the Future franchise.
The final picture was of Gary the French Bulldog. He used to be Carrie Fisher’s dog before she passed away. He was at the convention to meet his fans and instagram followers. He was so dang cute and a delightful reminder that life goes on and gets better even after our loved ones pass on.
Panels/Guests:
Speaking of Jason Mewes… He was one of the many guests that we saw signing autographs and talking with fans. He was also one of the many guests visiting Kansas City Comic Con that had a panel. His panel was great because he featured a trailer for his upcoming feature length movie which is his directorial debut as well! It had only been shown up to that point at San Diego Comic Con so it was nice to get the skinny on something that only one other room of people had seen up to that point. I also liked how he got up, engaged the audience and answered anything that was thrown at him with the most amount of honesty I’ve ever heard from a panelist. Jason Mewes is my new inspiration!
Burt Ward and Lee Meriwether were also at the convention. They were there signing and meeting fans at their booths. But they also had a panel first thing in the morning on Saturday all about ’66 Batman. I had tweeted out how awesome the two of them were and of course, that was an understatement. There wasn’t a person that I saw that was paying attention to them that didn’t have a smile on their face. Burt Ward answered questions so long windedly, but his answers were so informative and full of Batman trivia. When Lee spoke, she had such grace and poise and chose her words wisely. They were both so kind and even answered a question from me (not pictured)! I had a blast and it was great that day 2 of Kansas City Comic Con started out that way.
The biggest event that I saw and made certain that I got a seat in was the panel for the 40th Anniversary of Superman The Movie. The line was long, but it wasn’t too long of course. I found it funny, I was actually going to actually film aspects of that panel and that was the one panel that they said that no recording devices were allowed. Since they only allowed photography I just got pictures, we took plenty of them. It was an absolute blast overall. The panel featured 6 guests from all throughout the movie, roles small and large. Of course, the star of the show was the adorable Margot Kidder. She was also probably the raunchiest, but it was so fun. Of course she’s older and had to leave us at the halfway point. The whole show lasted roughly 2 hours and I couldn’t have had a better time. It flew by so quickly and I never wanted the Superman trivia to end!
Overview:
All in all, I had an absolute blast. I, of course, have to thank the PR firm that handled the event for getting us the press passes. This enabled us to see the events in a whole new way. I think it is more useful because it let’s me think about and critique the event differently than I would just as a regular show goer. The event was only in its third year and it’s only getting better. I was displeased with the show last year and I think that everything that I had an issue with was out the window. I can’t believe what they’ve accomplished in just three short years. I also think that they have some room to improve as well. They have a lot of convention space to fill and could probably have more events happening at once. I feel like the show is crafted to have some gaps so that the vendor hall gets more attention and I certainly don’t want to spend all of my time looking at stuff to buy. I also feel as though we can definitely get a game room going that has video games. The fact that we had to have handhelds at the convention if we wanted to play any competitive games, is sad overall. I would love to help organize a video game setup for them in the future, I think having competitive games at any nerd convention is a must. But I digress, what they did do, they did it all well. They have much respect from me and I hope to see them grow more and more over the year to come!
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