The 2013 Rhode Island Comic-Con

The second annual Rhode Island Comic-Con took place on November 2nd and 3rd at the Rhode Island Convention Center, and for two days an estimated 30,000 fans from a wide cross-section of the geek universe took part in all the activities the show had to offer.

While not mild-mannered, this "intrepid" reporter took part in the festivities on Day 1 from celebrity encounters to Artist's Alley and everything in between. Here's the story...

After arriving to pick up my press pass, I wandered up to the 3rd floor where the main show was taking place and took advantage of the early bird entry to get a head start on my day.

With an hour away from opening to the assembled hordes, the first thing I did was make a long slow walk around the entirety of the con floor to get the lay of the land. The aisles were numbered which helped out if you wanted to keep track of where you were, wanted to go or wanted to get back to. There were vendors working on putting the final touches on their merchandising setups and creators readying their tables in Artist's Alley. Staffers were dealing with last minute items in order to keep the show running as smoothly as possible.

I began my early bird tour in the celebrity section to find out where the two guests I was interested in meeting for personal reasons would be located. While some of the media guests were already in place for the early arrivals or at least in the process of setting up their tables, most were not yet on the floor.

After doing that, I spent a few minutes talking with another member of the press covering the show and taking some establishing shots of the Batmobile and the Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters.

I headed over to the merchandise area next. At a con, merchandise for sale is obviously a huge selling point to get crowds in the door and I noticed that there was something for everyone, regardless of what you were looking for. Whether it was comics, toys, clothing, signed merchandise and a host of other options, you would likely find at least one vendor who had what you were looking for.

I should note that while there wasn't a strict line of separation between each part of the con, I liked the way you could figure out where everything was pretty easily. The design layout worked well for the most part.

I wasn't really looking to purchase anything to add to my admittedly overgrown collections, but I spent a few minutes over the course of the day looking at some of the comic options and at some rather interesting T-shirts. While I ended up passing on getting anything, the provocative T-shirt "My private parts want to give your private parts a high five" came pretty close to coming home with me. The guy at that particular vendor booth told me the story of how an 83 year old woman upset and embarrassed her husband by purchasing the shirt for herself.

I noticed some fan groups amongst the vendors and displays set up to allow fans photo opportunities as well. There were two huge Star Wars displays that came complete with audio from the movies. The Jabba the Hut display had a number of people taking photos whenever I passed by during the day. At one point there was even someone dressed up as Jabba's green slave girl Oola, climbing up on the dais next Jabba to get a photo taken.

The other set up was a huge replica of the Rancor beast from Return of the Jedi. Fans were near giddy with excitement as they put themselves into one of the claws so they could have a picture of themselves taken while in the grasp of the beast. The more enterprising (and assuredly TALLER) con attendees put their heads in the mouth of the beast.

After taking a couple snaps there, I made my first pass amongst the denizen's of Artist's Alley. There were artists doing sketches and full on drawings as well as those selling their comics/graphic novels. They were all mixed in together side by side so that you could marvel at the work of well known artist like Alex Saviuk, Bob Almond, Rich Buckler, Jack Purcell and Craig Rousseau.

There were also local artists on hand, some that I have seen at a number of other shows and some that were new to me including Roger Andrews and Frankie B. Washington.

On this initial pass through, I didn't really stop to admire any one artist in particular, but there was a traffic stopping piece of art at the booth of Shaded Areas Illustration that was both a great conversation starter and disturbing on a number of comedic levels. It was a cheesecake (or perhaps beefcake is a more accurate description) drawing of a shirtless Captain Picard laying on his bed. I'd like to further describe it, but I think it is better to just include a shot I took of it. The artist at the booth was Griffin Ess (seen below, right) and when I laughed and said that the photo was disturbing, he chuckled in return and told me that it was certainly one way to get people to stop at the booth.

There were still a few people not yet arrived to their booths in the Alley during my first run through so by this point I was ready to head on back to the celebrity guest part of the floor and start my day in earnest.

Throughout the day, I had the pleasure of running into some friends I'd made at other cons and some friends from my non-media life as well.

The first of these was catching up with Ashley Bottoms, the host of the radio show Bottoms UP: Appetite for Discussion. We caught up on how things were going for us and what we were planning on covering for our individual articles, or in her case, video interviews. It is always a blast talking to her and she actually wanted to take a shot of us together as a behind the scenes kind of thing. We caught up again a few hours later and things seemed to be going good for her in regards to landing interviews with some of the celebrity guests.

Never let it be said that conventions can't bring the family together or at least out for some group entertainment. The Vary family (Dad Phil and daughters Hannah and Makenna) made the scene. Hannah came in costume and later in the day I saw Makenna in line to get the autograph from Jeremy Shada of the animated series Adventure Time.

A friend of mine from high school was working the show. Roger owns a couple of tattoo shops including Sinners & Saints in my hometown and is involved in promoting wrestler appearances, bringing Rikishi from the WWE to the convention. He was rather busy with people looking to take shots and get photos, so I didn't really get to talk to him much beyond exchanging pleasantries.

Amongst the fan groups at the show included the CT-V, the Connecticut Mothership It's a fan group for the classic TV series V. The members in attendance were decked out in their self-made Visitor uniforms and displaying some of their series used memorabilia. You can check them out at http://www.facebook.com/CTvisitors

I also spent some time talking to the members of the Rhode Island Science Fiction club. Dave Forrand, Adam Tuchman and Calvin Watts gave me the lowdown on their group and there was some conversation about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I ended up taking their group flyer as well as two other flyers for Star Trek specific fan groups. You can check out their group at http://www.risfc.org

There was also a podcast doing a live recording at the Con as well. I didn't get the time to stop and talk to the hosts of The Geek Generation, but I did make a point of writing down their info to check out the show at a later point at http://www.thegeekgeneration.com

Speaking of podcasts, the one disappointment of my day was not getting to meet up with Kevin Bachelder. He's one of the hosts for the Tuning into Sci-Fi TV podcast ( http://www.tuningintoscifitv.com ) and we've been online friends for a while now, exchanging messages on the forums of the shows website. He and I were both interested in attending the show for the sole reason of meeting one of the guests. Unfortunately, he was unable to make it to the show due to illness. If you haven't listened to the podcast, you are missing out. The highest praise I can give it is that it is one of only two podcasts that I still listen to after all these years.

The convention ran a simultaneous Kids Con for the younger show attendees. The events included a bunch of story time reading events from authors at the show. There was a Quidditch event to take part in and there were workshops on making your own comics and costumes. There was also the chance to make your own costumes right there in the main lobby.

I checked out the reading by author Jonathan Hall (pictured, right). His book Toto the Tornado Kitten had the children listening to his performance paying full attention. The story being based on a true tale and the appearance of that actual cat in the story helped.

It was a wonderful idea to provide a separate space for the kids to have their own space to participate in the con without necessarily having to worry about the more adult nature of the regular con.

The cosplay aspect of the show's attendees was out in full force. There was someone representing nearly every possible movie, TV show, comic book and video game character. If you could imagine it, you likely saw it.

I particularly enjoyed the people dressed up as various members of the cast of the Firefly TV series. The Star Wars bounty hunter foursome was well done. And Doctor Who was well represented with a number of 10th and 11th Doctors in particular. Other Who-vian characters included Amy Pond and Rory Williams. There was also a Dalek that looked well done and opened to reveal a kid dressed as the 11th Doctor!

The effort that goes into making the best looking costumes must be phenomenal. I saw an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. outfit on one girl while a number of Batman looks populated a lot of the crowd as well. One attendee was dressed as a member of the cast of the webcomic Homestuck. Poison Ivy was another popular costume.

Of course, one of the more interesting booths on the floor was the one for the Spray Blood company (http://www.sprayblood.com). The fake blood in a can was used to cover their booth models (both female and male) and drew a steady line of people wanting to have their photos taken with the "blood soaked" babes and the zombies that were on hand as well. Of course, they also had two other models who were the hit of the entire booth until they were made to cover up by either convention personnel or the Rhode Island Convention Center security. One girl was dressed in a costume made up mostly of black electrical tape and the other was body painted as Mystique from The X-Men. And for those of you who know that character from the movies, that does indeed mean that our blue beauty was topless. When the complaint was made, Mystique disappeared and the girl in the tape had to put on a T-shirt.

Thankfully I got my photo taken with them BEFORE the complaint was made. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Elise. She was on hand at the booth in charge of printing out the photos as they were taken. I had a nice conversation with her and she needed no fake blood or body paint to be the best looking woman of the bunch.

I attended just one panel on the day, for actor Billy Dee Williams - Lando Calrissian of Star Wars fame. I missed out on the Weekend at Bernie's reunion panel even with the time slot switch to an earlier hour. There was a Sci-Fi Speed Dating event that got moved to later in the afternoon. I had planned to check it out previously, as an observer not a participant though.

The panel for Williams was interesting. The moderator was warming up the room by asking the audience to reveal where they were from with a special nod to whomever had come from furthest away to attend the convention. Someone from California got that acknowledgment.

After a rousing ovation when Williams was brought out, the actor sat down and answered all the questions the audience threw at him. The moderator kept things moving swiftly, though some of his banter wasn't quite as funny as he thought it was.

To open the panel, Williams talked about his first acting role at 6 1/2 years of age and his art background. He fielded questions about Star Wars (obviously), the first Batman movie and the TV movie Brian's Song...which is the only movie that men are officially allowed to shed a tear over - to me, anyway.

When asked a question about Lando ending up wearing some of Han's clothes, he joked that Han and Lando had been "an item".

A question on the TV show Robot Chicken prompted Williams to say that actor Seth Green was lots of fun and was like a son to him. He also said that one role he would've liked to play was that of the jazz great Duke Ellington.

There were a couple of questions about his time as a pitchman for the malt liquor Colt 45, even using the ad slogan at one point. That brought a big cheer from the crowd.

The level of questions ranged, as all panel Q & A's usually do, from great, to expected, to foolish. One question that initially sounded a bit foolish gave Billy Dee Williams another chance to break the room up in laughter. He was asked which was a more powerful weapon: A blaster, a lightsaber or Colt 45. He responded, "Colt 45, of course" and the room broke up in laughter.

He was asked about some of his favorite movies and he responded that he always liked the Marlon Brando movies and the gangster films of Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. As for current movies, he loved Life of Pi and thought Meryl Streep was fantastic in The Iron Lady.

I got the chance to ask my question about his appearance on a Season 10 episode of NCIS, how it came about and if there might be a return appearance. He said that he really liked the script and that appearing again was an open possibility, that he'd love to do it because he really liked working with everyone on the show.

Getting back to wandering after the panel had ended, I must admit that I think the Artist's Alley invariably ends up being my favorite part of any show that I attend. I usually come home with a good sized pile of new graphic novels to read from creators I likely wouldn't have heard of without going to the shows.

As a lover of prose novels, I usually try to pick up any books that strike my fancy at shows too. At the RICC, I met the father and son writing team RJ Brousseau (below, left). Their fantasy novel Battle For Honor: Gates drew me in with the back cover synopsis and I ended up getting a copy to read at my leisure. I had a brief though interesting conversation with both men. Check out more at http://www.rjbrousseau.com

I had brought a couple of comics from Jim Starlin's Dreadstar series to be signed by Joe Rubinstein (above, right) who handled the inking duties for the two issues. As he signed the comics, he told me an interesting tidbit about the character design of the Dreadstar character Syzygy Darklock, saying that Starlin had had him (Rubenstein) model for it.

I mentioned artist Griffin Ess previously and he was the artist for another graphic novel I picked up. It's called Healed and he told me "the premise runs through the idea that this is how we are perceiving the world responding tomorrow if every disease and illness was healed today...all at once. So, it's all 8-page mini stories of people coping over the first two weeks after all the disease vanishes. They have no information. They have no idea what's going on, but they still feel they need to make decisions. So you get to watch politicians responding, pharmaceutical industry people freaking out and personal families "oh our grandparents that we put in the nursing home are suddenly getting kicked out because they are all better. But we already changed their house thinking they would never come back and now we have to deal with interacting with them on that level. So its all these little breakdowns of all these people trying to cope with some kind of massive change and seeing how things would go."

Ess also told me that he doesn't like working in comics, that he finds sequentials boring but said that his writer on the project did such a good job on the story he couldn't turn him down. You can learn more about the book at http://www.homelesscomics.com

I picked up three graphic novels at the show, the first of which was The Devil & Jack O'Brien by John Boveri (below left), as Boston area writer and illustrator. I chatted with him and the overview of the story he gave me was that is was a story "about a guy who has a shot at the girl of his dreams if he sells his soul to the Devil. So like all good love stories, it's complicated."

The story was originally released in five parts but is now collected. Boveri added, "It sort of plays off the selling your soul to the devil story, which has been told so many times. I wanted to put a different twist on it, create a dialogue driven story...a little bit of a love story at heart. It was kind of a passion project, it took me about 4 years."

You can check him out at http://www.johnboveri.com

By far, the creator I enjoyed talking with the most however was Jennie Wood (above right). She is a Boston transplant and has fully assimilated as a Red Sox fan. At the con, she was wearing a Red Sox shirt that said "Love Me Ortiz Me". The shirt alone guaranteed I had to strike up a conversation with her.

Our conversation also included music. She's a fan of what I termed ballsy indie rock like PJ Harvey and L7. I chuckled and said "Thank god you mentioned bands I actually knew so I didn't look like a complete idiot."

It's funny how you go up to a creator not knowing them and through the course of a conversation come away being a fan whether you have read their work yet or not. This would be the case with Ms. Wood. I loved talking with her and really look forward to reading the graphic novel she was selling. It's called Flutter and the story is about a fifteen year old girl named Lily. She can shape shift and does so, becoming a boy to get the girl. But pretending to be someone she's not leads to chaos and she has to learn to deal with who she really is and what she's done while learning that being a boy is just as difficult.

Wood created and wrote the story while the artwork is provided by Jeff McComsey. The book has been hailed by The Advocate magazine as one of the year's best LGBT graphic novels. You can learn more at http://www.jenniewood.com

With nearly 100 media guests schedule to attend the show was packed with chances to meet your favorite celebrities. The guest list ran the gamut from TV & Film actors/actresses, voice over actors, wrestlers, models and paranormal investigators. While some of the announced guests never made it to the show (problems flying out of the LAX airport because of the shootings there were one of the reasons for their absence I'm told), there were still a bevy of people to meet depending on your particular area of interest.

I had the chance to speak with Nicki Clyne (Callie Henderson Tyrol on Battlestar Galactica), relating to her that I'd met her at a previous con and then a few weeks later her character (spoiler alert for those who somehow haven't watched the show yet) got blown out of the airlock and killed off. After saying that her character was the heart of the show and when she died, I lost a lot of love for the show I switched gears and asked her how she got into being the face and voice for BlastrTV and was she involved in picking the topics or was that handled by someone else.

Clyne told me, "I actually auditioned for the host's role for BlastrTV with a lot of different people, but I definitely felt like I had an edge with my background. And it ended up being a great fit, it worked out really well. And at this point, I don't have as much involvement because they've already written stuff. They already had some of the ideas in the pipeline but going forward I've come up with a bunch of ideas so they can listen to them. So I'm hoping it will be more collaborative going forward."

And yes, later in the day I got a photo of me taken with her to go along with the table photo accompanying this article.

And last but not least comes my favorite experience at the Rhode Island Comic-Con. It took me 29 years but I finally got to cross off meeting The Last Starfighter's Catherine Mary Stewart off my things to do list. Yes, I am a huge fan of that movie and I freely admit that when it came out in 1984, my 13 year old self wished I was the one Maggie Gordon had run off to outer space with.

I was lucky or perhaps smart enough to get to Stewart's table in the early going before the regular 10 am opening time. There was one woman ahead of me, and when it came time to get her photo taken with Stewart, I was the one asked to do the honors. I spent a few moments talking with that woman while she made sure the photo came out correctly.

I was able to get a table shot of Ms. Stewart and in between a couple of other fans, got to ask her a couple of questions. I asked if the movie had been made today with the available special effects out there now, if she thought the movie would've done better at the box office in terms of the chances for a sequel.

She responded with "Well, I suppose it depends on when it was released. If it's released in amongst all these other crazy highly sophisticated special effects kinds of movies, kinda think we'd kind of get buried. But who knows. I think that there's always an opening for a sequel and the director Nick Castle and Lance Guest and I met a couple of years ago talking about doing a sequel. So many people have asked for that. And of course it would be so much more sophisticated. But what I liked about The Last Starfighter was that yes it had special effects. And they were sophisticated for the time, they were completely innovative for the time. But it was really about the story more than the effects. So if they did a sequel, I would hope that it would be about the characters, the relationship and have the special effects be part of it but not necessarily what drives the movie. And there's still a chance, you know I'm not TOO old. The thought was doing the next generation, our child would be the next Last Starfighter."

I also asked if there had been a sequel immediately following The Last Starfighter, did she have any ideas what "Maggie" might've been doing on Rylos, whether simply being the wife of the hero, becoming a starfighter herself or something entirely different. I was told, "I have a feeling that Maggie wouldn't have settled to be an intergalactic housewife. I think she might take up the starfighter thing and you know maybe be partners with her husband or something like that. Yeah, you know I think Mags was a pretty independent strong young woman. At least I think part of what her story told was that she kind of came into her own in the end, just by making the decision to go off with Alex. I think she found herself out there in outer space probably."

Later in the day I went back and got my DVD signed by Stewart. I also got a photo of the two of us taken. Of course that wasn't without some technical difficulties as the batteries in the camera decided at that very moment to die. Thankfully I had an extra set of batteries. Of course, in the photo I look goofy as can be. If the guy taking the photo for me had waited just a second longer, the photo would have been shown me with the biggest goofy ass grin on my face.

Yes, it was a moment I'll treasure. Catherine Mary Stewart lived up to any possible expectations I could've had for meeting her. It isn't often that I even come close to being able to be described as "giddy as a schoolgirl". And while I didn't get there this time either, I was doing an Irish jig in my mind getting to meet and chat with her. She made the brief meet and chat special and was just a peach to talk to after being a fan for so long.

You can visit her website at http://www.catherinemarystewart.com

A con is always what you make of it. You don't have to try to cram everything in in order to have a great experience. I try not to go in with many expectations and just let things develop on their own. Obviously, I did have the great expectation of meeting Catherine Mary Stewart. And that went swimmingly, but simply wandering the con floor paid off as I got to meet old friends, and possibly make some new ones as I found some new reading material and mingled amongst the crowd I am undoubtedly a part of now and forever.

The Rhode Island Comic-Con expanded greatly from the first year to the second but they seemed to have a pretty good grasp on the majority of each aspect of the show. A special thank you goes out to the show's media relations point person Jackie Stark.

I had a blast and enjoyed my time at the show. I'll be looking forward to seeing what they do to bring next year's show to even greater heights.

You can check out more on the Rhode Island Comic-Con at their site http://www.ricomiccon.com

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Permalink Reply by Jon on November 9, 2013 at 8:15am

Damn! Should have told me, I would have beged you to get her to sign my copy of "Night Of The Comet". But then again, that would have been stupid with the shipping and all that.