Denver ComicCon Issue 1

I was pretty jazzed to hear about Denver getting its own Comic Book Convention when I first saw online notes about it this spring.  Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by the various times I’ve been to San Diego, but I’ve never felt like StarFest picked up the slack as far as conventions go.

And everything I saw with their online presence looked pretty good — both the guest lineup and the site itself.

And given that it was Fathers Day weekend, and I’d been thinking about dinner plans for Saturday night (avoiding the Sunday rush), it seemed like a perfect opportunity to put a couple of events together.

So Saturday around Noon we headed for the light rail, and took the train right to the Convention Center, which was both highly convenient and a way to avoid weekend parking costs and annoyances in downtown.

The ground floor of the convention center was taken up with the registration area and, behind that, the various panels rooms.  Registration was a snap because we had pre-registered online — which allowed us to bypass a very, very long line for one with a dozen people in it.  (Kudos to their having staff walk the lines and let people know if they were pre-registered they could skip to a better line up front).

Signage wasn’t very good, so it took us a little while to figure out that the main showroom floor was on the upper level.  There was plenty to see during the journey, though — a lot of folks in costume, as well as some tables set up for some local groups.

The main floor that was open was pretty big, all things considered.  It took us about four hours to go through it, and stayed fairly constantly on the move. There was a large array of retailers (games, woodworking, fezzes, pins, art, dice, comic books, posters) as well as a sizable artist alley.

(Ironically, Mile High Comics, a large, multi-store retailer here in the Denver area, had just a small corner booth with pictures of it stores and computers for its online sales, without any actual merchandise on display. An interesting decision on their part.)

Of note as a difference from San Diego is that they Denver ComicCon sells wine and beer.  Breckenridge had a special “Fan” brew that they worked up just for the occasion.  As Mary noted, the idea of 125K folks in San Diego with brewskis in them is problematic, but it seemed to work out here just fine.

We didn’t attend any panels. They had a few that sounded interesting, but nothing I couldn’t live without or that I was willing to miss out on the floor on (and/or drag the others to).

There was a lot of cosplay going on, a lot more than I’d expected, and some of it was quite good (though I did not take many pix, dagnabbit). Best goes to the two Kaylee Frye’s I saw (Firefly), one in normal jumpsuit, the other in full “Shindig” wedding cake hoop dress (she also looked the part, which made it even better).  Beyond them there were a fair number of Imperial Stormtroopers, a lot of folks with the Doctor Who look (one Fourth Doctor was pretty darned good), a noteworthy number of Last Airbender characters (including at least one Korra), and an array of Catwoman, Black Widow, and Black Canary folks. Only one scale mail bikini sort, and she was way too skinny. Several furries. Some (but not an excessive number) of mysterious anime/manga types.  And, yes, a few other comic book characters (GL, Flash, Power Girl come to mind), but not a lot of them.

Still, if you stood anywhere, someone interesting would walk (or skate) by, often in packs of interestingness.

While we didn’t costume up, we did all make sure we were wearing appropriately Con-friendly t-shirts.

I had several folks give me an unsolicited “I love that shirt.” Margie got more than one “I know that! Girl Genius!” And folks at some of the tables enjoyed trying (or having Kay try) to identify the A-Z superheroes.

So we enjoy comics, but we’re not about the cult of personality sort of thing. I mean, it’s fascinating to meet a famous author or a TV series star you like, but short of stammering out, “I, um, love your, uh, work,” there’s not much interaction to make standing in a long line worthwhile.

So while I saw a number of comics/SF/pop-media figures, I didn’t actually queue up for any of them. Some of the folks I saw included J. Scott Campbell, Barry Kitson, Neil Adams, Bruce Boxleitner (who’s definitely aged, but still looks distinguished) and James Marsters (who doesn’t appear to have aged, which is kind of creepy). I probably saw some other folks I should have known, but didn’t recognized by face, or by name (when the name was clear).

We did pick up some swag (Kay, especially). My favorite person we saw, and from whom we got some nifty bits, was Katie Cook, from whom we acquired a spiffy “Firefly” poster, and who drew a Hogwarts owl for Kay.

And that’s about it for the report. We finished the floor, then revisited some booths we’d wanted to get some stuff from (one of which had run out of the stuff we wanted, as a fair warning). We crossed the street to the Hyatt, where the gaming rooms for the convention were being housed (and where there was also some sort of military unit party going on, as well as the Miss Teen Colorado competition, all of which made for some delightful “Which event is that person there here for?” moments).

And then we went to my office, dropped off the bags, changed into some non-geeky t-shirts, and went out for a nice Fathers Day Eve dinner.

A good time had by all. Especially me.