For me, Saturday was the best day of the 2013 Phoenix Comicon. Although I had a great time on Thursday and on Friday, Saturday was still the best… mostly because I got to share it with my awesome wife, Amy!
Back off, Guys… she’s MINE!
We got a little later start than I would have liked, so we missed some of the great panels in the morning, but we made up for that with an awesome lunch at the Tilted Kilt, complete with special Comicon inspired drink specials.
The Lightsaber was especially tasty!
When we finished lunch, we headed over to the convention center to get the day started. Before even entering the convention center we were treated to the awesome sight of several “famous” cars. We had KITT from Knight Rider, The Ghost-Mobile and even the General Lee!
Once inside, we started looking for cool costumes to take some pictures of. There were a ton of great cos-players there, and all were more than willing to pause for a photo! Next year, I’m going to bring a better camera than a cell phone and make it a point to get as many pics as I can. For this year, however all I managed to get was a few of my favorites, which you can see below.
Of course the people weren’t the only ones dressed up!
We had some time to kill before the Babylon 5 reunion, so we decided to check out a panel that was titled “Doctor Who: Original vs. Reboot. As a fan of the reboot, I wanted to see what the “experts” might have to say about the comparison between the series.
The panel was 5 members, but almost all the talking was done by 2, the “leader” of the panel, a local blogger, and Jeff Jones, who is a member of the AZ T.A.R.D.I.S. group.
They were very knowledgeable in all things Doctor, but there was obvious bias from most members towards the older incarnations of the Doc. Even so, it was a fun, and informative.
Then it was time for the main event of PHXCC 2013. The Babylon 5 reunion panel! We were able to get in early enough to get decent seats, and had a good view of the stage and one of the large screens.
Blurry cell phone pic is blurry
The panel itself started out very slowly. The moderators were trying to ask questions that had been submitted on Facebook previously, but after 2 or 3 questions that fell flat, J. Michael Straczynski took over the panel and from there things started getting good.
We were treated to several great stories from the crew about their days filming B5, as well as a lot of emotion when they showed the “in memoriam” reel honoring all the cast & crew that had passed before this event. This of course led to many touching stories about many of the “fallen”.
J. (Joe) Michael Straczynski was presented with a lifetime achievement award for his amazing body of work contributing to Popular Culture. It was a nice moment that caught Joe by surprise. In his thanks, he deflected most credit to the people he worked with and the fans for supporting his many works.
After the panel it was off to dinner at Networks and some more people watching before going back to the convention center to catch part of the “Masquerade” costume contest and check out a hilarious stand up comedy show put on by Phoenix Comedy.
To end the night, we tried to get into the Live Action Rocky Horror picture show, but were told along with about 50 other people that the room was at capacity. I hope next year they plan better for some of these late shows and reserve larger spaces.
But even with ending the night on a slight disappointment, I still have to rank this as my top day of any Con. I had a blast, got to hang out with cool people, see more awesome art and costumes, listen to great panels and most importantly share my geekdom freely and openly with my Wife and 40,000 other nerds.
It’s US!