Archive for the ‘comic con’ Category
Grand Rapids ComicCon!
Posted on: November 28, 2014
- In: comic con | conventions | Cosplay
- 9 Comments
My first Comic Con!
Tickets were quite affordable, Nichelle Nichols was a special guest, the drive was only 45 minutes, and a few of my friends were already planning on going. Heading up to Grand Rapids Michigan on Nov 22nd for the Grand Rapids ComicCon was a no brainer. I’d never been to an actual ComicCon before, so I had no idea what to expect. According to their website, the media guests (including Nichelle Nichols, Alaina Huffman, Justin Kohn, Chad Rood, Peter Shinkoda and Maile Flanagan) would be doing presentations on the main stage, and would have autograph areas. There would be a costume contest, a gaming room, a violin concert, there would be food stands everywhere, there would be a huge dealer room, there would be a car show, the famous Star Wars 501st group, a few Tardis models, a huge Lego display, and of course tons of comics and superhero artwork. Designed to be a very family friendly event, strollers were welcome, and there was a family quiet room for a quiet space for nursing mothers and/or overexcited kids who needed a break.
massive Lego Town
there was a train! two trains!
The Lego/Robotics area was my favorite section of the convention. Designed to be an area attractive to children and adults, much of the space was given over to a car show of famous Batmobiles. The rest of the space included a massive Lego city (complete with trains!), a robotics area that had a singing tesla coil, a TARDIS, the actual shield Captain America used in the movie, an animatronic dinosaur, a guy in a massive transformer suit, a beautiful art gallery, representatives of the 501st, and a few local fandom and science clubs. This was where all the fun was! I was all about the Legos and the Transformer guy. I got to watch him climb into the suit, and once he got the helmet on you couldn’t tell if there was a person in there or if it was remote control. He scared the poop out of a lady who didn’t realize there was a guy in there!
This is a terrible photo, but this is the “singing” tesla coil. I heard it do “Here Comes Halloween” and the Imperial March from Star Wars
There’s a guy in there!
Most of the media guests were TV stars, and since I don’t watch much network TV, I wasn’t familiar with most of them. But everyone knows who Nichelle Nichols is! On Saturday afternoon she took to the main stage along with a local media celebrity who guided the conversation and took questions from the audience. I always knew Nichelle Nichols was incredible, I just didn’t realize how incredible. She talked of her childhood, of growing up in a community outside Chicago that was founded by her grandfather for the purpose of being welcoming to mixed-race families, she talked about her early love for singing andperforming on stage, and she proved that she’s still got an amazing vocal range She told a beautiful and touching story about being star struck meeting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and learning he was a fan of her work on Star Trek. When asked about that famous kiss between her and William Shatner, she said a kiss between a black person and a white person wasn’t anything usual to her, as she’d seen her grandparents kiss each other all the time. When asked if there were any unexpected consequences of the famous midriff baring “Mirror Mirror” costume, she said they got so much fanmail about it that her costume was changed to show off her belly button. When asked what the defining moment of her career was, she said it was when she got involved with NASA to help recruit women and minorities for the space shuttle program. She recruited Sally Ride. During the Q&A time she was incredibly gracious with fans who were invited to line up at the microphone and ask questions until we ran out of time.
Nichelle Nichols is 100% pure amazing.
My day at ComicCon was not without its frustrations, but they were all worth it to be in the same room with Nichelle Nichols.
Hugo nominated novella: The Last Stand of The California Browncoats, by Mira Grant
Posted on: July 9, 2013
- In: comic con | firefly | Hugo Awards | Mira Grant
- 12 Comments
Let’s talk about some Hugo Nominated novellas! click back a day or two to see the whole list, and to click on novellas I’ve already reviewed. Ready for the zombie apocalypse?
San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats, by Mira Grant
What do you get when you mix a Comic-Con with the zombie apocalypse? You get Mira Grant’s San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats. If you’re not familiar with Joss Whedon’s breakout show Firefly, fans often refer to themselves as Browncoats in reference to the long brown coat the main character wears in honor of his military service. If you’re not familiar with what a Comic-Con is, we got bigger problems. But that’s another blog post.
A long brown coat, like that!
It almost sounds like the beginning of a comedy – cosplayers and merchants attend Comic-Con, and give the zombie apocalypse a beat down! But Grant’s novella is anything but a comedy. This is what Mira Grant does: she grabs you by the feels, and does horrible things to you.
San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats is a stand alone novella that can be read as a prequel to her Newsflesh Zombie trilogy (the third book in that series, Blackout, is nominated for best novel this year). You don’t need to have read any of the Newsflesh books to enjoy The Last Stand . . .
The Last Stand . . . is mostly told as a flashback. It’s thirty years after the event that irreparably changed the world, and journalist Mahir Gowda is interviewing an aging Lorelei Tutt, the only survivor of the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con. She doesn’t want to talk about what happened, but he needs her memories. They talk about other footage from the event, other evidence, and what she witnessed. Along with Lorelei’s story in flashback, we get the POVs from an ensemble of characters who are attending San Diego Comic-Con, including a television actress, a blind journalist, some merchants from the dealer room, and a couple on their honeymoon, among others.
No one is the wiser when Lorelei is sulkily helping her parents and their friends unload merchandise for their booth in the dealer room at the Comic-Con. Fed up with her attitude, her parents send her back to the hotel to have a nap, or a bath, or whatever teenagers need to stop being total brats. The rest of the adults continue setting up the booth and trading geek culture quotes back and forth, and generally annoy their less good natured neighbors.
Elsewhere on the Con Floor, actress Elle Riley is desperately trying to get to her panel, with or without the help of her idiotic handler. Fans ask for autographs, squee at celebrities, compliment costumes, shop for fake weapons, whine about the lack of wifi, try to find the bathrooms. Just a regular day at Comic-Con, right?
Until someone starts coughing. And then someone starts screaming, because the biting and chewing has begun. And then the lights go out. Lorelei’s parents are able to contact her via walkie talkie, but it gets harder and harder to insulate her from the worst of what’s happening inside the locked down convention center. Things get bad, and then they get worse, and then they become unimaginably horrific.
Soup du jour: Link Soup
Posted on: August 6, 2011
Guess who at ComicCon?
Eh, I finished one book this morning and am about a third of the way through another one. No reviews even close to be being ready to post, let alone even started. And I got a busy crazy blog-on-fire week coming up (more on that later, I promise).
Here’s some delicious link soup for you. Tastes like Epic.
Wanna join our read-along for Lord of the Rings? starts this coming week, one book per month till we finish. Sign up here.
Awesome article on Jeff Vandermeer’s Ambergris series, focusing on City of Saints and Madmen.
Neat article/video on blood & guts CGI in HBO’s Game of Thrones (no fake blood was harmed in the making of this show).
Love fest for Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series. Tastes like blood and guts. . .
My buddy Jim got me hooked on Mercury Men, a noirish SF alien invasion 7 minutes per episode webshow on Hulu. Go check it out.
Patrick Rothfuss answers your questions at SDCC.
and Patrick Rothfuss’s epic blog post about being epic at SDCC
Vote for your favorite SFF titles on NPR’s top 100 SFF book list. Everyone gets 10 votes, so make ’em count!
the Little Red Reviewer 
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