Aaron Douglas kidnaps small children, or: Emerald City ComiCon
Pictures: My Flickr photostream
This is not meant to be a “review” or an article about ECCC. It’s just what I experienced while I was there, as I can remember it after a four hour drive. I attended three panels out of the 20 or so panels, so I can’t speak for any of the other programming.
Let’s just say that after spending four days at Dragon*Con, I was dreading two days of ComiCon. These fears were apparently unfounded. ECCC is not D*C, or even a “mini-D*C”, it’s a convention for comic books. Despite some last minute hiccups involving my lodging (which were resolved by making a phone call to the Hilton and reserving a room), I got into Seattle pretty early on Saturday (noon-ish), then wandered over to the convention. Stood in line for maybe 15 minutes, got a pass, found Liz (well, she found me…creepy stalker time), wandered the show floor for a while. D*C seemed…like a madhouse compared to ECCC. Sorry, but it’s true.
Tried to go to the Jewel Staite panel, totally revealed how much of a moron I am by pronouncing her last name wrong (I know, totally fired… >_>;), ended up not getting into that panel, so instead we sat in line for the DC Nation panel. Now, I’ll admit that I’m not a comic book guy. I can identify the “big” stars, but I couldn’t tell you plot lines, identify supporting characters, or anything, but I was entertained by DC Nation. Of course, they had a lot of “So this one character that appeared as a supporting character on page five of a co-feature last year, he’s been gone for twenty years, are you going to bring him back and give him his own weekly serial?” questions where the panel was like, “Wait, what?”, and a lot of “So what happens in the next issue?” questions where the panel was like, “Uh, find out next week…you know we can’t answer that…o_O;”
After the convention stuff on Saturday, grabbed stuff to eat (I think Liz is scared of my truck now -_-;) wandered downtown Seattle to take some pictures, ended up throwing away a lot of them, then went back and crashed at the Hilton. Got up Sunday morning, stopped at Starbucks (so many, srsly…had Wil Wheaton walk by me in Starbucks, though), wandered back over to the convention and plopped ourselves in line for the BSG panel. Promptly got told we should go ahead and go sit in the panel beforehand because they weren’t going to clear the room (something of a con foul, in my book, but I can see their point), so we sat through a panel on how to make webcomics, which was actually pretty good. I’m sure they realized that a lot of us were just in there for the BSG panel, but we were engaged, at least.
BSG panel was awesome. Well, it wasn’t so much a panel as Aaron, Tahmoh, Michael, and (I’m sorry random guy whose name I couldn’t remember and I couldn’t place you) going, “We know how awesome we are, there’s no need for us to tell you about ourselves for 40 minutes then ten minutes of Q&A, let’s just go with the frakking questions!” Lots of good questions (No, Michael Hogan’s character (Paul Tigh) did not know that Kate Vernon’s character (Ellen Tigh) would be coming back in 4.5 as one of the “Final Five” after she had been poisoned; Aaron Douglas would pay money to see Tahmoh in spandex and singing in a Joss Whedon musical à la Dr Horrible; Lee should have been a Cylon; Tahmoh will beat you to a pulp if you attack Grace Park, even if it is a scene in a show), some random Dawlhaus questions (Tahmoh sez to give it a chance…apparently Joss Whedon had to make some pretty serious changes at the request of the network and that seems to have jostled things a little). I really wanted to ask how far out the final five knew they were the final five, but we were limited to one question for time’s sake. That panel could have been two hours long and still had everyone’s rapt attention. They’re all class acts, but Aaron Douglas is outright hilarious. He probably could handle a 50-minute panel all by himself and have a total riot at it. At one point, he grabbed a little kid who had been sort of wandering towards the stage with a camera, set her on the table and helped her take pictures of the crowd (that’s your “D’awwwwwwwwwwwwww….” moment, ladies and gentlemen). But apparently he’s always on his Blackberry on set (maybe someone will post a video of the panel?)
One thing I will note that’s different from D*C is that ECCC is pretty “family friendly”. I don’t remember seeing a lot of family units at D*C, and I saw a lot at ECCC. Also a lot less costumes, and those that were there were pretty good. Also seemed like if you weren’t “in the convention”, you weren’t “at a convention”…I didn’t see quite the wandering masses of people that I saw at D*C (probably a scaling issue), but ECCC didn’t follow you back to the hotel. Of course, I stayed at a Hilton that wasn’t one of the “con hotels”, so this may have had something to do with it.
I don’t remember a lot of D*C. None of it really stuck…but I will remember Wil Wheaton walking by me, I will remember asking Michael Hogan a question (Mr Hogan and fellow panel attendees: sorry if I seemed a little rude with the “Since you haven’t answered a question…” opener, but it seemed like all of the questions were for Tahmoh and Aaron), and I will remember not wanting to run screaming back to my room in the middle of the day because I was tired of being trapped by the masses. ECCC 2010, we are so there, dude.
Side note: crepes are a delicious thing. Crepes with nutella and strawberries, doubly so, but hard to justify at $7.00 a pop, plus $2.00 for a cane sugar Coca-cola (but so worth it). Subway workers: you’re at work, act like it and pay attention to your orders, not what’s on the radio. You stay classy, Seattle.
