So last weekend I attended the London Film and Comic con. This was my first convention in about 4 years and it proved to me two things.
1. I am very out of touch with a lot of geekdom
2. I still don’t get cosplay.
The last few times I went I ended up spending a ton of money on memorabilia and autographs. This year however I was much more restrained about the whole thing, only coming away with a rather cool “Flynn’s Arcade” T Shirt and not not much else. The problem was, now being a married man I kept asking myself do I really need this? and other such grown up nonsense, I blame my wife totally for this, it looks like she has semi-domesticated me.
However aside from the actors and cool stuff, the thing that interested me most this year was people watching. You see having no real agenda and not really wanting autographs I spent a fair bit of time observing the other convention goers, more specifically their costumes.
I found myself breaking these down in sections:
Some of them were really great: There was some awesome Batmen (is that the plural of Batman?) some pretty great old school V costumes (screw the new series anyway) and some very cool Dr Who villains. Of course we also had the obligatory Darth Vader and Stormtroopers, which show up everywhere but that goes without saying.
Then you had what I call the “good effort” category. In this were a myriad of Dr Whos, which incidentally showed me that although the last two Doctors costumes look great on them, on the rest of us they look kinda of dull. Some fun (but clearly bought not made) Superhero costumes and some good attempts at various computer game characters.
Next we have the “should have known better category: For example young teenage girls dressed as baby doll from Sucker Punch or the girl dressed as Silk Spectre who spent half her time hobbling on her high heals and the rest of it pulling her costume back down over her but cheeks. See these costumes seemed like a good idea, but in reality they weren’t. Sweaty nerds and half dressed girls are not a good mix.
Finally we have the I don’t understand category: Here we have the costumes that are nothing short of bizarre. Of course here we have The Furies, but we also have the quartet of Disney Princesses and the amalgam costumes. What do i mean by Amalgam costumes? Well for example there was a zombie Stormtrooper for one, and a girl dressed as Jean Grey but with Deadpool’s mask and gun for another. What the hell was that about? is this the next stage of mash-ups? Have we gone from music to mash-up cosplay? is that the new thing? Like I said it confused the hell out of me but probably on serves to show just how out of touch I am.
Having said all that I really have to take my hat off to the effort they all made, hell the only thing I did was wear my Stark Industries T Shirt so I really can’t talk about people who obviously spent a lot of time (and in most cases) skill on these costumes.
Finally a quick word of the celebs. There was a pretty good crop there but for me the highlights were Jane Balder (who still looks hot) and Ben Browder who was sporting a Wyatt Earp Mustache of epic proportions. Oh and Virgil, poor, poor Virgil. Famous for a few years as the henchman of The Million Dollar Man, now standing alone with his Million Dollar belt and no one to stand in line for him. It was kind of sad really, they sat him next to Mickie James and Magnus (TNA wrestlers) and no one wanted his autograph, I almost got it myself out of pity but then I saw the Flynn’s Arcade T-Shirt and that one out…….
……..Like I said it is a great T-Shirt.