By Mike McCarthy
Another summer and another comic convention invaded Boston this past weekend. Over the first weekend of August the northeast’s biggest comic convention – one of the largest ever in the region – was held at the Boston Seaport. From the media guests that attended to the attendance and the cosplay, all of which rose to a higher rung on the perennial ladder of conventions.
When you think of comic conventions you think of nerdy, geeky kids that don’t get a lot of sun, but I’ve gotta tell you that this is a serious misconception. Looking back 20 to 30 years, then yes you would be more on the right track with those thoughts, but now with the “mainstreaming” of many comic book titles in film and television we see the ages of convention attendees ranging from 5 to 100, male and female. We all have our nerdy and geeky sides that come out, and people that attend the comic conventions let everything they love show thru by showing their respect and love for the media that they have enjoyed since childhood. Looking at television shows like The Walking Dead, Arrow, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Dr. Who, you couldn’t find a more diverse group of attendees in one place, but it’s all for the love of books.
The living legend Stan Lee blessed the fans of Boston with his presence in the form of a panel and a meet and greet if you were lucky enough to be one of the first VIP members to get the coveted tickets. While we were not able to attend the panel, we were able to meet Stan for a minute and get his autograph. To a comic book fan, meeting the creator of so many beloved characters like Spiderman, Iron Man, The Fantastic Four and hundreds more is like a basketball fan meeting Michael Jordan, the greatest of all time. Stan even went on to say to the Boston Herald this past weekend that Superman would win a fight between Batman and Superman “Oh, Superman. He’s indestructible, he can do anything. And Batman relies on a few weapons. If this is real, a fight between Superman and Batman, there’s no way you’d bet on Batman.”
While attending Boston Comic Con this year, I had the honor and privilege of interviewing Brett Dalton, star of the television show, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Dalton was a very down to earth guy that made the interview feel like it was just two guys catching up and talking about their childhoods. If you are a fan of the show like I am, you wouldn’t expect anything else, but he wore a Hydra shirt to the interview, which was just plain awesome. Not only is Dalton one of the stars of S.H.I.E.L.D but one of his first jobs as a professional actor after graduate school was as a voice actor in a Sony Playstation game that is being released on August 25th called Until Dawn. The game was originally set to be released a few years back for the Playstation 3, but Sony loved the game so much they wanted it to be redone for the Playstation 4. Dalton was one of the only actors, if not THE only actor that was held over from the original cast, which now includes Rami Malek (Mr. Robot) and Hayden Panettiere (Heroes). You can read our entire interview with Brett here.
I was able to attend a few other panels that really interested me, but the one that I thoroughly enjoyed was the Manu Bennett Q&A. Bennett is one of the stars of past shows such as Spartacus, Arrow and was also Azog the impaler in The Hobbit films. Bennett is truly one of the most thankful actors towards his fans and shows love to them wherever he goes. At all of the conventions that he attends you will see him stopping in the hallways on his way to interviews to take photos with fans. Now, I have a lot of respect for Bennett and am a big fan, but after listening to what he had endured earlier in life during his panel, I gained so much more respect for the man himself. When he was fifteen he was in a major car accident and was thrown from the car and was in a coma for a week. He lost his mother and his brother in that same accident. Now imagine waking up from a coma and finding out that you have lost two immediate family members. That is very hard to fathom and to see him prosper and grow from it and become the man that he is, really shows what kind of person he is on the inside.
Bennett who is known as Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke on the CW’s Arrow television show hinted at a little something for fans to look forward to. When asked if he would ever return to the show, he said “ well I had a phone call with the producers just last week, and it was a great phone call. A GREAT phone call” Obviously he is obligated to keep things quiet, but I would love to see Slade return to Starling City or back on the island of Lian Yu.
Another big part of the conventions is cosplay aka costume play. If you aren’t aware of what cosplay is, think halloween night for adults. There are costumes that are so elaborate that you think that people paid thousands of dollars for someone else to make them, when it is actually that person who has spent months making their costume. With Boston being the biggest convention in the northeast it draws people from Maine to Pennsylvania and beyond to show their work. This year Boston drew in Leanna Vamp and Ivydoomkitty, two of the bigger names in the cosplay world to judge competitions and sign autographs for their fans. These two are both incredibly beautiful women that said they were both introverts before they got into cosplaying, which really brought them out of their shells. At any convention you will see everything from Harry Potter fans to Walking Dead to Marvel or DC superheroes. The worlds are so vast and expansive that you could literally see a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle walking around with a Stormtrooper from Star Wars and not even blink an eye.
Overall this year’s convention was a huge success in every aspect. I may have missed a couple of the panels that I really wanted to see, especially the one with actress Hayley Atwell, but I loved every second of the convention. I know a lot of people go to these events to buy comic books and complete their collections, but personally I go for the media personalities and panels. These conventions were built on comics, and look how far they have come over the past 10 years, from tiny conventions in rooms no bigger than closets, to huge convention centers with multiple floors. This just shows that you can’t judge a person by what they look like or what they may be into, because you have no idea. This year’s San Diego Comic Con sold over 100,000 tickets in under an hour for their 4 day event. That is the fastest it has sold out, and I don’t think it’s going to be any easier to get tickets to these conventions. San Diego and New York are the two biggest and are known for movie trailers, big name actors and actresses and television premieres, all of which are what attendees covet and drool over. The next convention that we will be attending is New York Comic Con and we can’t wait to see what NYCC has in store for us this October.