Certain annual events are marked by sightings, such as the return of the swallows at Capistrano, the blue fireflies returning to the Piedmont, etc. In this case a Friday night sighting of the Batmobile driving down Main Street marks the return of the South Carolina Comicon.
This weekend had already been crazy busy, so Chip and I made arrangements to do the second day of Comicon. We would meet at his house on Sunday and head over with Anna and the kids.
When we got there the lines were pretty long. There was quite a crowd of superhero wannabes and costumed characters.
We had taken separate cars. I arrived first and waited for them to find parking. When they arrived, Olivia was dressed in her Princess Zelda outfit. Ethan was wearing a Ninja mask..sort of.
Yeah, it was basically Halloween. The lines moved quickly. These guys are always well-organized and even though the lines were long, we didn’t have to wait that much. Of course, these are all geeks, so Olivia got lots of recognition and approval of her outfit.
The general layout of the conference was similar to last year. There were lots of vendors peddling comic books, bits of outfit, and props from shows and movies.
And, of course, there were the cosplayers. Personally, I never liked that word – cosplay. It always sounded…dirty, maybe a bit kinky. That’s just the semantics, though. I can appreciate the effort these folks go through to get their costumes just right. Some were professional…
…but most just liked dressing up.
The popularity of costumes depends on what movies have been released recently. There are the standards, like Batman and Superman, but others come and go. Last year there were quite a few Harley Quinns because of Batman v Superman. This year Star Wars seemed to be popular, with Rogue One coming out at Christmas and SWVII not far in distant memory. There were Jedi, a young Rey wandering around, and even a Darth Grievious and a couple of full-sized remote-controlled generic Astromech R2 droids (not R2D2.)
The Greenville Ghostbusters were there, as well as two different Batmobiles. There was the 1960s classic with the Ford Futura frame and the Batmobile from Tim Burton’s first movie with Michael Keaton.
The kids loved it. Chip and Anna let them pick out a couple of small things from the vendors. We also found the booth for J. Chris Campbell. Chris draws some great little robot illustrations. I have an early original set of his “Three-Minute Robots”. This time I bought a T-Shirt for the upcoming eclipse designed by Chris’s wife, who works with Chip. The kids got personalized robots drawn right there by Chris.
Comicon was fun but there was certain sameness, a repetition from last year that somehow failed to hold my interest. Been there, done that. I was actually ready to go before the kids were. However, seeing the event through the lens of the kids, and watching how much they enjoyed it added a different dimension. Who knows? Maybe next time I’ll find a costume, dress up, and have yet another experience.
