Checked out of our hotel at 9AM after packing the car. The Marta rides were free today, a Labor Day treat!
Got in line by 9:30 for our only panel for the day: “Karen Gillan”! The panel wasn’t until 11:30, but after seeing the line for her the day before we knew to be there early. About 11:15 a couple of early 20s girls got in line behind us with their friends and said that they’d just come from the photo session with Miss Gillan. Said she was running behind due to showing up a half hour late from getting lost at the hotel!
This didn’t seem like a good sign.
11:20 they began seating. A little after 11:30 they announced the panel room was full and were ready to get started…and Karen leapt from back stage out to the platform. It was a very happy room to be in!
She sat down in a swivel style office chair, which I found to be both funny and a bit sad a panelist had been reduced to sitting in basic office furniture. Questions started immediately.
Was in an upcoming Western with John Travolta and directed by Ti West!
She answered some funny Doctor Who questions, ranging from on set stories, to making up a new episode to entertain a young child who asked her to. All in all, it was a very good hour.
Once over, we decided to get an autographed picture of her for our nephews who all have big crushes on Amy Pond. We knew she’d only be signing autographs for an hour, but once seeing the line we decided to come back closer to the end.
So we headed for the Artist Alley. For Beka is was to kill time, for me it was a mission. As I said, I’m a big Power Girl fan and knowing my favorite PG creative team were there I had to get my Issue #1 signed! Getting to their booth I found Jimmy Palmiotti talking to a web comic creator who’d been at their own booth across from them. They were both waiting for Amanda Conner to return from the potty. They were chatted about Jimmy’s run on Aquaman, which from their talking sounded like a good run. Jimmy didn’t understand why DC replaced him, because the book was doing well.
Amanda returned, I presented my Power Girl comic and got two signatures for free! During the signing I told them their run had made her my favorite character DC published. Amanda said they missed working on her so much, which is why their version of PG made it into the current Harley run!
Before I left there was one question from their panel I had to ask about: STAR WARS 22 TIMES IN THEATERS?!?!
According to Amanda she saved all her babysitting money, allowance and side job money to afford it and spent every dime. However, it was to her, the best summer ever; and it’s hard to disagree with that.
Went back to the autograph section and Karen Gillan’s line had only grown. There was no chance half the people still in line were getting things signed with her remaining time. So we abandoned the Gillan idea. It was fine, we attended her panel and being this close gave us a good look at the Scottish hottie so we were satisfied.
We took a stroll around the other celebrities there.
Saw Barry Bostwick {aka the definitive FDR} packing up to leave.
Peter Mayhew looking depressingly old and feeble.
And Nichelle Nichols looking infinitely better in person than in recent videos and pictures.
After stepping back out into Atlanta we heading back to the Marta station, returned to our car and searched for a pre-drive home lunch. This lunch consisted of Zaxby’s. Made the drive home slow and easy, arriving home that night after a two hour stop to visit the in-laws.
Thus concluded our 2015 DragonCon experience. We, like our geeky brethren would return to our “normal” disguises for another year…or the next Con on our schedule, which ever came first!
{Sorry for the delay on this series of blogs–will be much quicker with the 2016 edition!}
Sunday September 6th, 2015:
After Sunday morning church and lunch of nuggets at Wendy’s, Beka and I made it to the convention at 1:30 for our 2:30 panel: “Ask A Character!” This was a voice actor panel where several actors would take questions from the audience and give answers as their characters. Pretty great!
The voice of Yakko Warner and the voice of Goofy were the best. So funny, and mildly dirty!
There is video of the entire panel, which started late here: (I did not shoot this)
After that bit of fun, we rushed to the next hotel to see comic book writer and artist duo: Jimmy Palmiotti & Amanda Conner. The Husband and Wife team that is doing everything Harley Quinn related for DC Comics, but I know them best for making Power Girl my favorite comic to read Pre-New 52! In fact, their run with her character made Power Girl my favorite super-powered character DC publishes.
They discussed Harley Quinn, and how she’s changed over the years. How because her sales figured are so high for DC they’ve been able to get away with anything they want to in her series. Which sounded like they were having great fun with.
Amanda Conner is crazy. Good crazy, but still crazy. All summed up in the detail of her seeing “STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE (1977)“…in theaters….in Summer 1977….22 TIMES!
Jimmy Palmiotti was enjoyable to listen to. He and I share a bitterness for Power Girl’s low sales numbers before the New 52 happened, as well as the changes made to her in the New 52. Luckily, they’d brought their PG back to Harley’s comic, just because they love her so much and DC will let their top sellers get away from anything!
From here I made a terrible mistake. I assumed a 5:30 panel titled: “Big Story with Tiny Budget” would be a helpful filmmaking panel. Boy was I wrong!
Sitting in what could have been the SMALLEST room in the entire convention, Beka and I listened to advice ranging from: “That’s-Super-Obvious-Beginners-Advice” to “Well-I-Don’t-Have-A-Million-Dollar-Budget-So-This-Is-Worthless-Advice”. I always forget: “Low Budget” means $10,000-$1,000,000. Not the several hundred I work with. That’s Micro Budget/No Budget.
To make matters worse, we stayed the entire panel waiting for something useful that we missed our last panel for the day!
During the Ask A Character panel we were told about: “The Music Of Animaniacs And Other Silly Songs” happening that night, where Yakko was going to preform ALL of the Animaniacs songs, including updated versions of the U.S. Presidents and Capitals songs! We got in line after the abysmal filmmaking panel and after the half hour wait and moving line, the room reached capacity just ten people ahead of us!
It was my fault and I’ve regretted it since….
This crushing disappointment made us call it a day and head back for the hotel. We passed the line for Karen Gillan’s panel and were surprised to see the line leading two corners of the hotel it was in! We’d be seeing her the next day, so this was a sign to get to her early.
A train ride later Beka and I found ourselves at Krystal once again enjoying a feast of corn dogs, tired, but excited for our last day of DragonCon only a few hours away…
Convention Saturday had arrived! It began at 8:15 with a McDonald’s breakfast: sausage McGriddle for me, and sausage biscuit for Beka. The breakfast of champions!
Arrived at the convention by 9:00am ready for the Vendor Rooms! After waiting in a steady moving line for an hour we made it into the rooms. DragonCon’s Vendor section is truly a paradise for nerdy collectors like me and my wife. Every interest imaginable has at least one booth, with all manner of trinket and nick-nack one could desire! Needless to say…we spent too much money.
Took an hour and a half, but we managed to make it through one entire floor and half of the remaining floor before needing to leave.
Noon found us in line at the Hyatt International for something I’d been excited for since it was announced: S.T.E.R.A.N.K.O.: Declassified, an hour panel with legendary comic artist: Jim Steranko! About fine minutes before the panel started, we were still unseated and a sizeable line had formed behind Beka and I. An elevator opened and out stepped the Man himself! I was taken aback a bit by the sudden celebrity appearance. There was Jim Steranko, no taller than 5’3″ dressed in grey: suit coat, pants, turtle neck with black shoes and sunglasses. And I’ll say it here: if I make it to 77 years old, I wish to have hair as awe inspiring as Steranko’s! He explained later that the shades were for an eye condition he has making his eyes sensitive to light, but allowing him to see in the dark like a cat! Cool!
Mr. Steranko made his way to the front of the line, stood beside the entrance and struck the same pose as his Wikipedia page…you know this one:
I aspire to be this cool!
At this point they began letting us inside, allowing Mr. Steranko to shake hands with EVERY person who entered thanking them for attending. Class! Once we all had seats {Beka and I lucky enough to be front row again}, the moderator introduced Mr. Steranko, drawing a standing ovation. Steranko walked into the room waving to us, not slowing down as he neared the three foot off the ground stage. Without breaking stride Mr. Steranko put one foot on the stage and leaped onto it with ease…77 years old people! Don’t believe me? I took pictures! Had to be seen to believe!
Nearing…
And He’s UP!
Once on stage this became the most interesting panel at DragonCon! He talked about his career in comics, magic, film and life in general. Was nice to hear his biggest inspiration for his art was film. He referenced one of my favorite film noir titles as an inspiration which made me smile! {It was “CROSSFIRE (1947)” by the way}. I had no idea he was involved with both “RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)” and “FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA’S DRACULA (1992)“! He talked about how Stan Lee is just the sweetest man in the world and what you see from him in interviews and Marvel cameos is exactly who he is. Glad to know.
He ended his panel with a story about an old motorcycle he owned back in the day. He’d modified it to fire gasoline from the exhaust, which mixed with the steel heeled boots he had made would spark making flames erupt from his motorcycle!…making him the inspiration for Ghost Rider!
After the awesome hour with Steranko, Beka and I made our way back to the Vendor room to spend more money. Once we’d cleared every booth to buy from we realized we were close to Artist Alley, which not only housed cool own-able art, but the talented artist who made them!
There was so much beautiful art in that room it was breathtaking. One artist we bought from did posters of famous characters done in old comic/old magazine covers. The two best examples of what I got from him was a detective magazine cover featuring the original Robocop, and a trashy romance cover featuring Power Girl.
However, I came to Artist Alley with a purpose: to meet Yale Stewart, creator of the amazing web comic: “JL8“! For those who don’t know JL8 is a web comic about the entire DC Comics Universe as 8 year old children. Still in costume with powers, but children. It’s amazing, you need to check it out.
His booth was smaller than I’d expected. And the fact nobody was stopping by surprised me more! This just made my mission more important. I stopped and bought every item he was selling: a 7 flair button set with the faces of his 7 main characters, and a 7 picture set of the same main characters. Got the pictures signed too! As he was signing, I thanked him for his comic, and creating a moment so powerful to the Batman Mythos that it brought me to tears. He was glad to hear his work made that kind of an impact and asked what the moment was. After I told him he said that moment had gotten a lot of praise recently from other fans, which made him as well as I very happy. We shook hands and I left him smiling.
Walking away from Yale Stewart I saw Jim Steranko’s booth, so I made my way over. So much amazing art on that table, but one piece caught my eye:
Cover Art for The Shadow!
This piece is one of my favorite pictures of The Shadow ever captured; and there is was in a frame-able format!
“And what can I do for you?” came the voice of Jim Steranko, now directly in front of me. I hadn’t noticed that he’d finished telling another amazing story to another fan a few feet away from me, leaving just Steranko and I at the booth.
I asked him if he’d be willing to sign the art I was about to purchase, and he said: “I think I can make that happen. Want your name on it too?”
“Sure, my name’s Hunter!”
Steranko stopped and looked at me with a smile. “Really? I like that!”
Steranko studied the picture for several moments, still smiling. “You know Hunter, the model for this picture was based on my girlfriend at the time.”
I answered with the most honest thing I could: “You were a very lucky man, Sir.”
“That’s one word for it!” Steranko said with a wink.
Steranko signed the picture in the upper left-hand corner, so not to disrupt the beauty of the classic piece of pulp art. I paid him for his time and art, and held out my hand. I told him: “thank you Mr. Steranko, it’s been an honor to meet and speak to you.”
Steranko grabbed my hand with one of those old, mobster-style double hand handshakes. I felt like I was shaking hands with Sinatra! Shaking my hand, Steranko smiled at me, pulled me closer and told me: “Give her a good home, Hunter!” I told him I would and he let go of my hand.
Coolest meeting of my life! In fact: Coolest. Man. Alive!
Walking away from the Steranko booth I found Beka looking at me. She said I was grinning like a fool. I told her about the best experience I’d had at the convention as we made our way back to the Marta Station.
After a short train ride we arrived back to our uncleaned hotel room. We laughed at the mess and complete lack of towels! We closed out our evening with bacon cheese burgers at Crackle Barrel after I’d retrieved fresh towels from the hotel management.
The first full day of the convention started…later than last year for us. Left the hotel at 10:20am in search of breakfast. Tried Krystal Burger first, but left after close to ten minutes in line after discovering the five people in front of us were all wanting refunds and that none of the people already seated had food yet!
Heading for our Marta station we found a: “Dwarf House Chick-Fil-A” to eat at. True, it was now past breakfast time, but that wasn’t going to stop us! I had a chicken sandwich and Beka had nuggets. Chicken really does make a tasty breakfast!
Arrived at DragonCon at 11:15 and headed to the Hyatt for a 1pm event: “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Death Star” which was a Star Wars Puppet Musical! The line had already started by the time we arrived, which took us outside to wait for over an hour. We had fun company though: a Jim Henson cosplayer complete with Kermit The Frog Muppet! Some of the best commitment to character I’ve ever see from a cosplayer.
Finally saw the puppet show and it was amazing! Very well done and only “A New Hope”, despite the entire Original Trilogy being scripted. Super funny and very inside jokey towards the making of Star Wars.
Walked for a bit to the Sheraton for a 4pm panel we’d been looking forward to all year: “Sylvester McCoy: The Seventh Doctor”! We saw Colin Baker (Sixth Doctor) last year so this wasn’t to be missed by us Whovians.
Got pretty close to the front of the line at 2:45 due to a previous panel getting cancelled. Had an amazing 7th Doctor cosplayer join us in line. Wonderful man, who I sadly didn’t get his name. He was from England, but lives in Texas. We were joined by an older woman dressed as a Minion who’s husband was at another panel. We all had a lovely time talking about Old Who vs New Who, Anime, and dubbing vs subs for foreign media. It pleased me that the Doctor cosplayer was a Big-O fan! An R. Dorthy fan to boot!
Beka and I managed to get front row seating once inside which ended up being the best seats in the room. Turns out Sylvester McCoy doesn’t like to sit on a stage and answer questions, he likes to wander the room (and in between the rows) to look you in the eye as you ask your question! This was a fun surprise.
McCoy was amazing! His entire panel was funny, insightful and just a joy to be apart of. Beka and I agreed that anytime he’s at a con we attend we HAVE to see him.
I still can’t believe how short he is! HIs appearance was very Doctor-ish: Kaki porkpie, black silk shirt, dark grey sport coat with red flower scarf, dark dress pants, tan crocs and holding a dragon’s head cane! Like Tom Baker, I believe Sylvester really just IS the Doctor!
Talked about his very first convention was in 1987 before he’d even filmed for Doctor Who. It was part of a press tour he was sent on mere weeks after being cast. The location: Atlanta, Georgia! It was pre-DragonCon, but he enjoyed himself, despite thinking the man who’d been sent to retrieve him from the plane was dressed in full Tom Baker Doctor garb…in the summer. McCoy said he thought this man was crazy, but his lady friend dressed as Leela was worth it!
Spoke about his friendship with Sophie Aldred who played his companion Ace. It’s said their pairing was one of the best Doctor/Companion pairings because from the get-go they seemed like old friends. His explanation was that they agreed politically and she laughed at all his stupid jokes! He joked about not remembering Colin Baker’s name because he “didn’t show up to regenerate.”
Things turned a bit sour when the subject of the “DOCTOR WHO: THE MOVIE (1996)” arose. Sylvester gave the impression he wasn’t happy about having to give up the role to Paul McGann in 1996. To top it off, he told us he’d wanted a Steampunk-style TARDIS console for the bulk of his run, finally getting it for the TV Movie, but everyone thinks of it as the McGann TARDIS! Seemed a bit petty to me.
His panel ended amazingly too! His Doctor was known for a talent Sylvester has: playing the spoons. So when time was almost up {and a interesting story about him playing his spoons on Honor Blackman’s cleavage at a party}, Sylvester picked up a tiny guitar case containing two, metal spoons and asked for a volunteer. He selected a young buy named Tray, handed him the microphone and told him to keep up with the spoons. Seems easy right? Well Sylvester played high, played low, spun several times took a small run, and circled Tray before ending by playing on Tray’s head! Magical stuff!
Post McCoy we got back in line for the same room to see Terry Farrell, Jadzia Dax from season 1-6 of STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE. Got to sit down in the room again pretty quick, but much further back than before.
Let me take a moment to talk about one of the best things at the convention: DragonConTV. Playing in the hotels where the convention is held and in the panel rooms between presentations is a TV channel set up like Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim”. Mostly black screens with text answering questions about the con in funny ways, making silly geek culture jokes all set to groovy music! There are also skits, decently produced by the DragonCon staff for the entertainment of the con goers. It’s a real treat to see, and most of it is available on YouTube!
The reason I mention this was while waiting for Terry, we were treated to a music video/skit/parody of Frozen’s catchiest track “Do You Want To Build A Snowman”. The appropriately done: “Are You Working On Your Costume”! The entire audience got sucked into this little video that a little over halfway though was cut off to start the panel, drawing a heavy and loud “awww!” from everybody in the room! Don’t worry, the full thing is on YouTube so we were able to finish it later…check it out!
Terry started her panel with some news. She’s been signed to play a major part in the “STAR TREK: RENEGADES” web series! This announcement was recorded by a Dax cosplayer from the audience for Terry to use in the upcoming Kickstarter video for the series. She rewarded the cosplayer by being in a selfie before sitting down to answer questions. This is where her panel fell apart.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you as a celebrity of a famous piece of work are invited to do a Q&A at a major Sci-Fi convention ABOUT YOUR WORK, you know like you’ve done several time a year…every year since you were IN THE SHOW how can you justify giving the answer: “I don’t know”, or “I don’t remember”? True, some of the questions were of a nerdy caliber I have no desire to achieve, but these are your fans, if you don’t know/remember MAKE SOMETHING UP! They’ll eat it up and if it’s about the on-set time (most of the questions) there’s no way to fact check you!
By this point i was glad i had decided not to ask about her time making HELLRAISER III…I could guess her answer!
Up to this point, this has been the most disappointing panel.
She did have one topic of expertise and she enjoyed speaking about it: her chemistry with actor Michael Dorn, who played the Klingon character: Worf. And at first it was very charming, but by the end of the panel, after the many references to it, she began to come off as an creepy obsessed stalker. Like a “I-want-to-ruin-his-marriage-and-make-him-mine” sort of way!
She talked about how hard it was to learn all the Trek Tech Talk, and how pleased she was that her girl-on-girl kiss in DS9 wasn’t sensationalized. Funny at times, a bit too flirty which wasn’t helped by the pink with flowers dress she wore that a tad too short and tight for her age.
Once her panel was over at 6:30, Beka and I made our way back to find food. Unlike the morning Krystal Burger was empty upon our arrival! We feasted on chicken sandwiches, cheese burgers and fires until we had our fill before returning to our room for the night. A great day overall, ready for more fun tomorrow!
At last after a long year of waiting DragonCon 2015 had arrived! My wife and I were only able to experience one day of last year’s convention, and that just wasn’t enough! As soon as tickets for this year were available we signed up for the entire convention; now the time had arrived!
Left work at 1pm and grabbed Checker’s on the way home to pack the car and feed our army of cats. Packing the car was quick and easy, feeding the cats…not so much. After everyone was calm, fed and behind proper doors, we were off to the same Red Roof Inn we stayed in last year. The four hour dive up was nice, despite the fact half the new music I tried to take with us didn’t load/play. The big disturbance was traffic slowing to a near crawl. After two miles of slow we saw the cause: a new, “use to be” white VW Beetle had plowed through a guard rail and caught fire; rendering it useless as a mode of transportation, and a grim reminder of why we buy Honda.
6:30pm: we arrived at the Red Roof Inn and spent the next 15 minutes in line. New management had taken over and wasn’t the most organized institution. Once we made it to the counter everything went smooth. Room 141 was to be our lodging until Monday. Now last year when we arrived we judged the motel’s exterior and deemed it to be a mistake, but were surprised by the comfort and quality of our room’s interior. This year the inside matched the outside. The safe was locked and inoperable, the funny looking “loop lock” motels/hotels have in addition to the deadbolt was broken in half, but the real kicker: mold growing on the office chair a the desk. The bathroom was in no better shape. The paint was pealing badly and the shower itself was detaching from the wall almost if it were attempting an escape!
It didn’t matter we told ourselves as we un-loaded the car, avoiding the holes in the carpet. The bed was king size memory foam, the water pressure was amazing, but most importantly: the air condition worked and worked well!
Once un-loaded we were back on the move to the Marta train station. Tonight we had three missions: Number One was accomplished by getting to our room, Number Two was to reload our Marta cards allowing us to use the train, and Number Three was to get our passes for the convention. We used a different Marta station this year: the “East End” station. Much easier to get to and far less crowded.
Reloaded our cards and took the train to “Peachtree Center” right in the middle of DragonCon! After ascending what is without a doubt the longest escalator I’ve ever been on, we walked to the Sheraton Hotel for our badges. Making the decision to get our badges that night was a great call on Beka’s part. The crowd on the street was minimal (something that wouldn’t stay that way for long), and the badge line at the Sheraton was manageable. Once in line it was maybe five minutes before we had our badges as opposed to the fifteen minutes last year.
Badges in possession, we looked at a few cosplayers lurking around the lobby level and entrance. Several Deadpools, several Jedi, and a few Ghostbusters. We headed back to the Marta and back to the hotel.
Before returning to our room we stopped at a nearby IHOP for dinner a little past 9pm. Beka enjoyed a simple supper of eggs, bacon and pancakes, while I enjoyed a more exotic treat: chicken and waffles! We both however drank something we would be getting very little of on this trip: water.
Back in the room we narrowed down the next day’s agenda and prepped our supply bags. After watching a bit of Forensic Files, we readied for bed. Tomorrow would begin our busy weekend…
The Pork-Chop Express 