Denver Comic-Con Day 2: Cosplayers Unite!!
Today was the first full day of Denver Comic Con and it felt very much like what I expected a con to feel like! We woke up early this morning to get suited up for our cosplay, I went as Nightcrawler while Stacey dressed up as Jean Grey/Pheonix. I always said since wanting to go to a Comic-Con that I’d go as Nightcrawler, so I owed it to myself to follow through.
The worst part had to be the spray hair color, that stuff is potent!! Before that, trying to paint my elf ears were the “worst part” because makeup wouldn’t stay on. So last night I tried to spray paint them but that just made them sticky, so I took it off with steel wool and then luckily found some acrylic paint and had just enough to paint them blue….definitely the easiest method and it dried in 20 minutes, I really wish I discovered this sooner! Stacey had very cautiously trusted me to do her hair, but it turned out fine in the end, with the exception of making the back of her neck red (it kept reappearing even with makeup remover!). After getting dressed, I made sure I packed some spare makeup because I had a feeling I’d need it (turned out I did because I “fixed my blue face” no fewer than once an hour.) I’ll only have 6 fingers today, so Stacey’s going to more or less carry everything, so I’m going to be annoyingly useless today.
Upon arriving, we had some time to kill before the panels and spent most of it posing for some people’s photos. I want to say before the day ended we had to be at least stopped about 60 times to take a photo, so that was fun! The first panel we attended was Axe Cop with co-creator Ethan Nicolle! Axe Cop is a fun series written by Nicolle and his 8 year old brother and definitely a favorite of ours. So needless to say, we were looking forward to it quite a bit. Ethan talked a bit about the upcoming Fox mini-series, confirmed that Ken Marino of Children’s Hospital will be voicing Flute Cop/Dinosaur Soldier but stopped short of announcing who will voice Axe Cop but hinted that in his mind it’s the perfect person and has a famous moustache! I’m guessing Burt Reynolds maybe?! He also told some funny stories about the writing process with his little brother and how some storylines came about. After taking a few questions he phoned Malachi and had him answer a few questions about Axe Cop, which was a really funny part of the panel! Later we were able to get our trade paperback signed by Ethan, which was really cool of him to do! He looked like he was moments away from selling out all his graphic novels and prints, so obviously a popular table to visit!
After the Axe Cop panel we immediately hit up the Fringe panel with Jasika Nicole (aka Astrid). Jasika’s panel was fun and she seemed really quirky in person and joked about how she was surprised that so many people came to see her without John Noble being present. Some of the highlights was that she confirmed that we’ll be spending a lot of the final season in the distant observer-controlled future (!!), more or less said we’ll probably not see the alternate universe anymore, and found out she does a good Lance Reddick (aka Phillip Broyles) impersonation! She was really cool in person and was a lot of fun to listen too.
We took a panel break after Fringe, deciding to catch the cartoon voice panel in the morning and having lunch instead. On our way to find out what our options were; we were flagged down every couple of yards for someone to take our pictures! At the lunch table, I finally got to try Breckenridge Brewery’s exclusive “Fantastic Pour”, which was pretty good (kinda a hoppy wheat beer) and then I had to do the first of many trips to the bathroom to touch-up on my makeup. The best Nightcrawler poses need to have teeth! However, cream makeup doesn’t agree…I’m definitely airbrushing it next time!
We spent a good amount of the afternoon roaming the floor posing for and with different people. We found a few fellow X-men such as Wolverine, Rogue, Dark Phoenix, and Magneto (We did see a Jubilee, but she was kinda far away and was eating) . Honestly the cosplay may have been my favorite part today, everyone had such awesome costumes. I can’t begin to narrow down a favorite yet. We decided to take a break in the ABC screening room to watch a little bit of Once Upon a Time and then met up with one of our friends. It was around this point I decided to remove the makeup around my mouth and re-apply it since it seemed to crack and fall off every 15 minutes. After a pro-longed facepaint touch-up we headed to our last panel of the day.
While waiting on the True Blood panel, we realized the Eureka Panel with Colin Ferguson was starting late and people were still out waiting for it, however Mr. Ferguson came out to talk to fans and answer a few questions before they were finally let in. We didn’t attend this panel, but he seemed like a really funny person, so I’m definitely going to start watching episodes of Eureka on Netflix. We hung out in line waiting for the True Blood panel until we were allowed to go in. Most of this time was passed planning out tomorrow’s panels and reading a little bit of Axe Cop.
The True Blood panel with Kristen Bauer, famously known as Pam in the aforementioned series and “Man-Hands” on Seinfeld, was a really fun panel. She didn’t really divulge into the new season much other than saying (spoiler alert) that she sees Pam being like a “mother crocodile” with the newly created vampire Tara and that we’ll see some of her back-story this season. Although she didn’t hint much about the new season, we did hear some funny stories about her co-stars, her thoughts on Twilight and found out that in person she’s not that much of a far cry from her True Blood character! She even said the word “Fucktarded” in one instance haha!! Probably one of my favorite things with today’s panels is that all the celebrities we got to see seemed like genuinely awesome people that love to interact with fans! It was really cool to see that personally.
The final event of the evening was the Costume contest; we assumed we could get in line and be able to attend it, but after leaving True Blood, we saw a line going all the way out of the building. So we didn’t get to quite go inside to watch the show. However we did see most of the contestants hanging outside of the Green Room, most of them we had seen throughout the day and even had photos taken with them. To my delight, I did see a man in a familiar robot costume, it wasn’t until I saw he had a washing machine with him that I realized he was the Humping Robot from Robot Chicken haha!! I hope that guy places high!
Since we were pretty much at the end of the day, we decided to head on home. Outside the convention center I was called “Blue Boy” by a group of teenagers leaving the Pridefest from a few blocks away…at least at the con everyone knew I was freakin Nightcrawler! I was a bit disappointed in them honestly. Once we came home, we took a very, very disgusting shower to remove our hair coloring and makeup. It took a few repeat shampoo steps to get it all out. Honestly I’m pretty sure I still have blue inside my ears as I type this!
Tomorrow is the last day of the Con and we decided that we’ll be cosplaying again. Despite how much I loved the Nightcrawler costume and the attention I was getting in it, we’re going to resurrect our Dharma Initiative costumes instead. Prior to today, we’re the only people in Denver that I’ve seen to have such a costume, but we did find one guy outside of a panel today. With us dressing up in Dharma jumpsuits for Halloween two years ago and last year’s zombie crawl, we may have inspired him..or our paths didn’t cross prior to today. Either way, it’ll be a bit nicer not having to constantly re-apply makeup! I’ll also have more than 6 fingers to help Stacey carry things, so I’m sure she’ll be happy about that!
Saturday’s “Stats”
Most Used Costume: “Girl Loki”: I only saw one male Loki and at least 7 different female Lokis, not a bad costume at all for a girl; it seems a lot had the same idea. There were just as many Black Widows, perhaps more. For Guys, there was a large number of Doctor Who and Wolverine.
Favorite Costume(s) (Male): Another good Iron Man was spotted with a moving face mask complete with light up eyes! Besides that, we found an Observer from Fringe; a great middle-aged long bearded Thor, a really good Edward Scissorhands, and Shredder as well.
Favorite Costume(s) (Female): Even though there were a lot of them, Girl Loki isn’t bad! Neither was female Iron Man (armor, not dress). Cross-play is actually a great idea when they don’t have to make it a “sexy version” of your favorite male superheroes! In addition there was an R2-D2 dress, a Luna Lovegood with a Gryfindor lion head-hat, a Red Sonya, and a Mrs. Marvel.
Favorite Costumed Entourage: There was a pretty awesome “Tick TV show” group! Love me some Batmanuel!
Celebrity Sightings: Pretty much the ones we’ve seen in the panels. Chandler Riggs (aka Carl from Walking Dead, in person he looks like such a very nice young kid; I didn’t want to yell at him for not staying in the house or accidently causing Dale to get killed by a walker.) Other than that, I did spot Bruce Boxleitner along with his Tron co-star Cindy Morgan.
Line of the Night: “He’d be President of Karate!!! He’ll have a Tiger Belt too because he got the black belt in 3 days!!” –Malachi Nicolle 8-year-old Co-Creater of “Axe Cop” (When asked what Axe Cop’s next step would be after becoming President of the World)
Runner up Line of the Night: “What does Leonard Nimoy smell like? I’m thinking he smells like oak..” – Very weird question asked during the Fringe Panel