Straight from the pages of my wife’s Star Wars Expanded Universe bookshelves and into the world of Star Wars Rebels, it’s that master planner Grand Admiral Thrawn and an Ysalamir.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The eighth annual Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″) just wrapped another three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, Funko Pops, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking…

…and cosplay. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of cosplay. Of course we took photos, but we missed much impressive handiwork, partly because we spent a lot of time in lines and partly because we hadn’t rested yet from the previous weekend’s Indiana Comic Con and feared overextending ourselves to the point of burnout.

But! These are the costumes we’re glad we didn’t miss from the worlds of animation, gaming, movies, and what I’m being told is one extremely popular webcomic. (Special thanks to my son for naming assistance with a few of these.)

More Star Wars, naturally. I’m assuming everyone can name these action figures by now?

Also from a film everyone’s seen, Drs. Ian Malcolm and Alan Grant from Jurassic Park.

He’s David Pumpkins. Any questions?

Belle, star of the runaway smash Beauty and the Beast, and Snow White, waiting for her live-action upgrade as soon as Disney figures out how to do the “Dwarfs” part without inciting rage-filled thinkpieces.

Newt Scamander representing for the wizarding world of Harry Potter.

I’m so old and odd, I saw Sam Raimi’s Darkman in theaters and liked it. Too bad Liam Neeson couldn’t have done ten of those instead of the Taken series.

Ferris Bueller returns to Chicago, probably up to no good again.

Plotting revenge against the Powerpuff Girls are Mojo Jojo and…yes, that’s HIM. The one at right is…we’re not sure. Harvey Bullock, Mouse Detective?

One-Punch Man from the anime satire One-Punch Man starring One-Punch Man as One-Punch Man. My son tells me I’d like it.

He’s David S. Pumpkins! ANY QUESTIONS?

Skeletor (who was a hoot and on a roll in person) kicks off our gaming section with special guest Blackwatch Reyes from Overwatch.

Two for any gamers past and present, 60 and under: a Starwoman and Coin Block from Super Mario Bros.

An unusually limber Luigi demonstrating circus skills at the Acrobatica Infiniti booth.

From the Department of Games I’ve Played as an Adult: one of the creepy Splicers from Bioshock.

One of the most twisted Bioshock nemeses, the artist Sander Cohen. I lost a trophy because I eliminated him a bit too soon.

Same department, different game: a Psycho from Borderlands. Love the game-accurate thick-lined detailing.

Another, spikier Borderlands Psycho along with (I think?) Commander Shepard or a coworker from Mass Effect.

Ahri from the online game League of Legends, complete with Orb of Deception.

Saber from the Japanese visual novel Fate/stay night.

I’M DAVID PUMPKINS! ANY QUESTIONS?

Last cosplayer we saw on our way back to the car, and one of the finest: Moana!

To be continued! Other chapters in this miniseries:

Part 1: Comics Cosplay!
Part 3: Comics Creators Cavalcade
Part 4: Who We Met and What We Did

Harley Quinn, Spider-Gwen, and Ms. Marvel welcome you to a whole wide world of whimsy and wonder!

It’s that time of year again! Today marked the sixteenth annual Free Comic Book Day, the one official holiday in my lifelong hobby when comic book shops across America lure in fans and curious onlookers with a great big batch of free new comics from all the major publishers and a bevy of smaller competitors deserving shelf space and consideration. It’s easy to remember when to pin it on the calendar because it’s always the first Saturday of every May and virtually always coincidental with a major movie release (in 2017’s case, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2). It’s also easy to notice if you live near a comic shop and the parking spaces are much scarcer than normal.

I’m too late for this entry to be immediately useful, but for future generations who might be considering participating in the joy of reading and/or the rush for freebies, we offer the following ideas for maximizing your graphic storytelling holiday to the fullest extent, whether you’re brand new to comics collecting or a savvy peer who likes nodding along with solid reminders.

1. Find a local comic shop! Most large cities and many medium cities have comic shops available. If you haven’t noticed one in plain sight, the Comic Shop Locator will help sort you out with pointers to viable options in your area.

If you’re among the far too many Americans who live in a comics desert, where no shop is within a fair radius of your home because of the economy or rampant illiteracy or local Footloose-esque laws that oppress comics instead of dancing, I strongly recommend checking with the online comics purveyors who sometimes find ways to deliver the fun directly to you through internet magic. Alternatively: zillions of webcomics are free everyday, so it’s great motivation to go digging. I wish I could better assist with this contingency, but I’m old and addicted to my paper comics. I’m not even crazy about digital music, so I’m the wrong guy to ask for comiXology browsing hints.

2. Plan ahead! The official Free Comic Book Day site posts a list in advance of all FCBD offerings that retailers could choose to carry for the occasion. Not every shop will carry every title, but it’s safe to assume all the major publishers will be represented. At the very least, seeing the potential options should give you hope and stoke your excitement level.

3. Arrive early! Comics are free while they last, but sometimes they don’t last. Sixteen years into this tradition, FCBD has built up decent attendance in most areas, and some titles run out more quickly than others. For the widest selection available, you’ll want to get there while the getting’s good or else there’ll be no more getting to be gotten. What constitutes “early” is up to you — my wife and I usually plan to show up at least 60-90 minutes before the doors are unlocked for the morning. In some states and weather conditions, check the weather forecast and gear up as needed. If the thought of standing in a long line for an hour or more is a turn-off, I do understand. Long lines aren’t for everyone. To us geeks it’s all part of the game.

4. Keep your camera handy! Some shops stage special events the day of. We’ve seen FCBD welcomes and sideshows provided by cosplayers, local fan clubs, actual comics creators, local musicians, charity drives, random Samaritans bearing donuts, face painters, and roller derby teams. One of the many fantastic things about comics is the broad intersection they provide for entertainment lovers from across all media and spheres. You never know what kind of talents will be in the house or interacting with the crowd. If what they do looks cool, you’ll naturally want to commemorate that in picture form for all your friends and followers.

Classic Ms. Marvel and the unbeatable Squirrel Girl are kinda like LeVar Burton hosting Reading Rainbow but times 100.

5. Choose carefully! Once you’re inside the door, walk (don’t run because there’s no space for that) calmly to the assigned tables or racks bearing the specific Free Comic Book Day issues designated for the occasion. If the shop posts rules limiting how many you can take, play nice. If they’re cool with you nabbing whatever, that’s fine, but you don’t have to be greedy. You don’t need one of everything, especially not the kiddie-only fare if you’re over 12. Each comic you leave behind means one more fan at the end of the day won’t leave empty-handed and depressed and ranting through tears about how Free Comic Book Day is just a sham holiday that Hallmark made up to sell more Peanuts greeting cards.

6. There is no number 6. Look, there just isn’t, okay?

7. Shop around! Fun trivia most comics fans already know because we remind each other constantly every year: those free comics aren’t free to the retailers. They’re purchasing them from the distributor same as any other comics on sale. FCBD is entirely a voluntary promotion meant as community outreach, which means they’re bankrolling this splendid event from their own coffers, while the publishers still get paid. Comic shop ownership generally sees razor-thin profit margins and moves less than .01% of its careerists into upper tax brackets. So while you’re there…see all those hundreds of thousands of other objects lying around the store? Maybe look through the other comics, graphic novels, toys, T-shirts, and ephemera and buy a thing or two or ten. Not only do you end up with more new things, it’s a nice way of thanking them for their part in this special day and supporting businesses, in that order.

8. Road trip for more! If you’re extraordinarily blessed to live in a city or town that supports more than one comic shop (Indianapolis has at least six or seven), and if you have the time and funds and gas, why not go drop by other shops and see what they’ve made of it. Say hi to more cosplayers, grab another freebie you didn’t see at the first shop, buy even more stuff, keep FCBD alive, repeat until you’re out of either shops, time, money, or space in your trunk.

9. Make time for reading! Congratulations! You now have a reading pile, if you didn’t when you woke up that morning. At some point you’ll need to dive right in and live vicariously through those varied imaginations and universes and licensed merchandise all-stars. Peruse the pictures, absorb the written word, watch those two sides work together in a loving harmony that encourages art appreciation, vocabulary building, and narrative thrills all at once.

For the record, #9 is the step where I failed this year. We’ve been so nonstop busy today that…well, there’s a reason why I’m writing this entry at 11 p.m. about what fun we had at 11 a.m. As of this moment I’ve read 4½ of the 15 comics my wife and I selected, and will likely be scrounging for quality reading time tomorrow. Don’t be me: read now, read often, read faster, glare menacingly at anyone who tries to stop you mid-page.

10. Spread the love! Once you’ve finished, what do you do next? Tell other readers which ones were amazing. Write reviews, as I’ll be doing here in the next day or two because it’s what I do. Return to the shop in the weeks ahead to spend more money on those publishers or creators who brightened your life. For extra credit, once you’re done with your FCBD stash, consider pass on a few books to other folks that you think might get a kick out of them. If you’re hoarding them only because you dream of selling them on eBay someday, you’re like the Grinch of Free Comic Book Day yanking stories and inspiration out of the little hands of all the Whos down in Whoville.

Free Comic Book Day isn’t about fiduciary investment. It’s about the comics. Honestly: duh. Don’t make us have to send Squirrel Girl to your house to beat some super-hero altruism into your head.

Our Free Comic Book Day 2017 reading pile, less than half the total titles that were in stock. ‘Twas a good year.

Full disclosure: beyond this haul, I also spent money on an issue of Astro City I was missing; the most recent issues of Hawkeye, Angel, and R. L. Stine’s Man-Thing; and Jeff Lemire’s Essex County. Yay comics!

Yondu and Mary Poppins. Um, mild spoiler for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

My wife and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a one-day road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas of Indiana we’ve never experienced before. For my 45th birthday, we decided to expand those parameters.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we’ve ruminated from time to time on the possibility of attending comic book/entertainment conventions in other areas outside our hometown of Indianapolis. While researching other Hoosier sightseeing options we haven’t tried yet for our birthdays (we haven’t quite run out of historical sites, odd museums, or pretty nature), I decided to check into American comic-con schedules for the weekend, assuming I’d find nothing within a thousand miles of home. I was surprised to discover a handful of results, including a rather large one at the top of the list.

This weekend Anne and I had the pleasure of attending the 28th annual Motor City Comic Con in the city of Novi, a safe suburb northwest of Detroit, some 300 miles from home. Well established and catering to fans of comics and media guests alike, MCCC is a shade smaller than our two regular Chicago shows, but proved an excellent reason to return to Michigan for our first time in fifteen years.

But first and foremost, per our standard convention procedures: cosplay! Presenting a showcase of all the costumes we photographed during our hours walking through and around the exhibit hall on Saturday. Longtime readers know the drill; hence, costumes from MCCC here on MCC. Enjoy the gallery!

SECTION 1: MARVEL AND DC!

The sinister foes of Spider-Man: Kraven the Hunter, the Rhino, Mysterio, and the Shocker.

I brake for any and every Moon Knight, even if we’ve already met.

Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Woman.

Mandatory Deadpool variant #1: um, outback Deadpool?

Mandatory Deadpool variant #2: uhhh, killer maid Deadpool?

Moondragon! In the Marvel comics universe she’s technically kindasorta related to Drax, whose origin was a bit different back in the days before he hooked up with the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Aquaman, soon to be a major movie star. He’s a real righteous dude!

Deadshot, the erstwhile Batman villain who beat both Aquaman and Wonder Woman to Hollywood stardom.

Grifter from the WildCATs was dragged into the DC Universe several years ago, though currently seems to be on a separate Earth. The Ringwraith wishes someone would drag him into a paying super-gig.

Also soon to be dragged kicking and screaming into the DC Universe, quite probably: Rorschach from Watchmen.

SECTION 2: STAR WARS!

Teaser image from Star Wars: The Last Jedi in which Kylo Ren introduces his new apprentice Mini-Ren.

Chewbacca ready and willing to harm his way through the dense crowds.

Mara Jade lives! The patron saint of the Star Wars Expanded Universe hangs out with another unidentified Wookiee.

Mandalorians punish a fan for telling them to their faces that Boba Fett sucks.

Over by the 501st Legion booth we caught a brief parade of Muppet-themed Stormtroopers, beginning with Bunsen T. Honeydew, who I guess would be their science officer.

Dr. Teeth, the Trooper most likely to have internet radio piped into his helmet.

Trooper Sweetums, least likely to wear a helmet.

Sam the Eagle, who’s more tired of your nonsense than Vader is.

SECTION 3: AND THE REST!

Buzz Lightyear to the rescue, but of course.

My wife is a massive Twilight Zone fan and will dedicate all available resources to hunting down any related costumes. Case in point: one of the doctors from “Eye of the Beholder”.

One of the Ood, brain in hand, from Doctor Who.

Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie, on hand to meet one of the con’s most special guests.

A Saturday Night Live fan as Norm MacDonald as Burt Reynolds as “Turd Ferguson” from “Celebrity Jeopardy!” I am now all out of prepositions.

The Dread Pirate Roberts: still not left-handed.

Kitana, Mileena, and Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat. FRIENDSHIP!

Rare sighting of the elusive Wilson from Home Improvement.

Predator, wishing someone would put in a good word for him with Ridley Scott.

Strawberry Shortcake hanging out with two of her mortal enemines. At right is Sour Grapes; at left is (my wife quite obviously had to help me with this one) the Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak. Can’t wait for the gritty reboot version.

Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy! From the wacky world of Spongebob Squarepants.

From the bygone era of Ren & Stimpy: Powdered Toast Man returns!

Representing for Toontown: Roger and Jessica Rabbit!

To be concluded!

Spider-Gal, Spider-Gal / Does whatever a spider shall / Spins a web, catches creeps / Strikes a pose, plays for keeps!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: on June 9th and 10th my wife Anne and I attended the 39th annual Superman Celebration in Metropolis, IL, a grand bash in honor of the Man of Steel in particular and all the super-heroes who owe their existence and livelihoods to him in general.

And of course there were costumes! Lots of cosplayers spiffing up the town with their favorite characters from the worlds of comics, film, TV, animation, and toy stores. I’ll shut up now and let the photo gallery roll!

(Special thanks to my son for light naming assistance.)

Of course Superman was there. On Friday he led a kids’ costume parade from the north end of Market Street to the Superman statue, noisemakers at full volume all the way.

The parade’s big finale: a group statue rendezvous.

Of course Supergirl was in town to mark the occasion and say hi to her cousin and whatnot.

Another Supergirl hanging out with Vigilante (Golden Age version), the Wizard (old-time DC villain), and Marlon Brando’s Jor-El.

Wonder Woman representation was increased manifold this year. Her movie’s now in theaters. You might’ve heard of it. It’s a big deal.

Another Wonder Woman tries to see the good inside Bizarro. But him give Wonder Woman film 0/10, call it “not awesome and extra rotten!”

When we’re talking Superman villains, it wouldn’t be a complete lineup without Lex Luthor.

Aquaman bides his time, waiting for his big chance to become America’s Next Top DC Hero. SOON.

Guaranteed not to hassle Aquaman in his film: his evil twin Nuclear Man from Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

It wouldn’t be a gathering of comics fans without at least one Deadpool variant. Filling that critical quota is not-so-mild-mannered Clark Kentpool.

Daily Planet staff meeting! Perry, Jimmy, Lois and Clark hang out by an old-timey car in front of the Super Museum.

Also from the automotive department: Harley Quinn crosses the media to smash Tim Burton’s Batmobile to bits.

Also speaking loudly and carrying a big stick: Casey Jones on patrol, Turtles or no Turtles.

The JLA’s heroic android Red Tornado flanked by new versions of Zatanna and Cheshire from the Young Justice animated series.

A very special Teen Titans/Marvel Family team-up! Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel, Wonder Girl and Superboy.

Saturn Girl, founding member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, brings greetings from the 30th and/or 31st centuries.

Originally the Shade was a straightforward Golden Age DC villain, but fans of the wondrous James Robinson/Tony Harris 1990s Starman series recall his complicated life rather differently.

The most elaborate costume we saw this weekend: John Henry Irons IS Steel.

Fun science fact to keep in mind: whereas your average convention cosplayer spends most of their time indoors and surrounded by air conditioning that helps counter all the body heat milling around them and inside their costumes, all of these fine folks were cosplaying outdoors in summertime in temperatures pushing 90 degrees, some for hours at a time. Their dedication and stamina are impressive and enviable and I hope other fans brought them lots and lots of water.

To be continued! Other chapters in this special MCC miniseries:

Part 1: All-Stars! (photos with our special guests!)
Part 3: Festival Food!
Part 4: Who else we met, what else we did!

The Spectre, DC Comics’ renowned spirit of vengeance, bids you welcome to the land of the vengeful!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: on Saturday my wife Anne and I attended FandomFest in Louisville, KY, the twelfth iteration of this entertainment/”comic” convention that’s quite low on comics, heavy on controversy, improper in its online customer service, saddled with a years-old negative image not really helped by the depressing role call of thirty-one canceled guests, and graded a solid F by the Better Business Bureau. But beyond the mountains of baggage, their volunteers were pretty friendly to us in person despite their upper management, and the fifteen actors in the house seemed like decent folks.

But enough about that. Are you as tired of reading about FandomFest’s issues as I am of typing about them? If not, I totally understand and I hope one day true customer satisfaction will be yours without requiring a nasty blood vendetta against the Lochners. Until then: we got costumes! Lots of costumes! Fans do love the cosplayers and their cosplay. Backroom shenanigans or not, dozens of cosplayers sported their finest duds this weekend and did what they could for the sake of convention quality-of-life and their favorite characters. Enjoy!

Continuing the theme of “characters pointing or aiming things at us” is Savitar, self-styled “god” of speed and mortal enemy of the Flash.

Doctor Doom in his rare Future Foundation variant armor.

The unbeatable Squirrel Girl and Tippy-Toe the squirrel wonder.

Scarecrow, who wants to show Batman something up close…

…HIS SURPRISE EXTENDABLE JAW, which made Anne jump about three feet back.

Jack Skellington getting antsy between holidays.

Miles Morales, your other friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

Robocop thanks you for your cooperation.

In addition to the usual sonic screwdriver, the Tenth Doctor brought his spare hand and a tiny dollop of Adipose.

The Doctor’s extremely good friend River Song, one among many Doctor Who fans really missing Paul McGann and Daphne Ashbrook this weekend. (Check out her official page for more cosplay fun.)

In case you thought I was kidding about Colonel Sanders cosplay in Part One. And he even brought one of Gonzo’s girlfriends for lunch!

Continuing the theme of “fans who insisted on posing with Anne”: Moana!

Mandatory Deadpool. I think the variant-Deadpool cosplay fad is finally dying, judging by its absence here.

Count Orlok from Nosferatu, energetically working the show floor on behalf of The Devil’s Attic, a local Halloween haunted house.

The kindly Lego Batman tabling on behalf of the Ohio River Valley Cosplayers and Prop Builders, a fine cosplay group that participates in local charity events. Their next benefit will be a street painting festival in October on behalf of the Foster Children of New Beginnings Foundation.

Earl Alois Trancy (Black Butler II) and Elizabeth Midford (Black Butler: Book of the Atlantic) meet Belle and Prince Adam, both really missing those five canceled Beauty and the Beast guests.

Nightwing, Killer Croc, and Two-Face.

Star-Lord, Gamora, and li’l Baby Groot.

Director Krennic from Rogue One.

A Jawa in a Sandcrawler that also functions as a wheelchair. Not sure if it fit into the Macy’s elevator.

The Black Knight, limbs intact before the flesh wounds.

Ursula, wondering if the mall food court sells scoops of mermaid on rice.

If you’ve read the great Planet Hulk, then you know this variant. If not, you’ll get to see extracts from it in Thor: Ragnarok.

Margaret Kerry, one of the thirty-one cancellations, was the original voice of Tinkerbell from Peter Pan. A shame she missed this awesome tribute.

The End. Thanks for reading! Hopefully we can find a great non-FandomFest opportunity to return someday to the Kentucky convention scene. If so, see you then!

I’m so old, I remember when the Tick wasn’t an Amazon Prime superstar, and creator Ben Edlund was still writing and drawing his adventures.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time once more! This weekend my wife and I made another journey up to Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we found much enjoyment and new purchases alongside peers and aficionados of comics and genre entertainment. Friday night left us near death by the end of our day, after a few miles’ worth of walking up and down the aisles and hallways, with breaks to go stand in lines of varying lengths and value. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

…and what we nearly always do is lead off a new convention miniseries with the mandatory cosplay galleries. We captured whoever we could while wandering the show floor Friday and Saturday in between the long lines and longer waits. (For a few reasons we skipped Sunday this year.) I have no idea how many chapters this particular experience will run, but the first three will represent a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the costumes that were in the house. Because I always feel the need to divide cosplayers into arbitrary categories, our first set spotlights the stars of screen and page from the world of Marvel, DC Comics, and other publishers out there, as well as from their movie and TV adaptations. Gentle reminder: there are more than two comics publishers out there. Enjoy!

This Joker with a pitch-perfect Mark Hamill voice kept us company when security wouldn’t let anyone pass through the Skybridge before 10:30 a.m. on Friday.

Groot police lineup.

If you thought Thawne, Zoom, or Savitar were creepy speedsters, wait’ll you get a load of this Flash.

Differently creepy but also accurate: Joker from Batman: The Killing Joke.

Jessica Jones and her spunky sidekick Daredevil.

Spawn , for the remaining Todd McFarlane fans out there.

Raven from the Teen Titans.

Doctor Octopus and Bane lead a support group for popular comics villains who’ve only appeared in one movie sequel each.

Lady Deadpool! Somehow, incredibly, the only Deadpool variant we got all weekend.

Batman Beyond, preparing to soar through the Stephens Center lobby. Good luck with that.

According to our limited anecdotal statistics, this year female Negans outnumbered male Negans 2-to-1.

The all-new all-different Vulture from Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Revolutionary War Captain America, guaranteed 100% Nazi-free.

Drax + Mantis! Fun story: we didn’t realized till we got closer that they were familiar folks. Anne first met them in Burt Reynolds’ photo-op line at WWC 2015, where they hung out together and had a blast. And they get jazz hands. Awesome folks, awesome costumes.

To be continued! Other chapters in this special miniseries:

Prologue: Two Notes from Wizard World Chicago 2017

Part 2: Animation Cosplay!

Part 3: Last Call for Cosplay

Part 4: Objects of Affection

Part 5: Who We Met and What We Did

[Edited 9/1/17 to fix one caption error resulting from apparent brain cell loss.]

I understand Disney’s live-action Beauty & the Beast is 2017’s highest-grossing film in America. On a related note, here’s Belle and Prince Adam, waiting for you to tell your 70,000 closest friends to come here and see this photo, please and thank you.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time once more! This weekend my wife and I made another journey up to Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we found much enjoyment and new purchases alongside peers and aficionados of comics and genre entertainment. Friday night left us near death by the end of our day, after a few miles’ worth of walking up and down the aisles and hallways, with breaks to go stand in lines of varying lengths and value. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

…and naturally cosplay photos are all part of the service, otherwise why bother conventioning. Last time we showed you some costumes, and now please enjoy more from myriad animated realms.

Moana from Disney’s Moana starring Moana as Moana.

Her demigod sidekick Maui, who had a heck of a time with this hook while waiting in Billy Boyd’s photo op line.

Sheriff Woody and Little Bo Peep, on a rare furlough from Andy’s room.

Ruby Rose from the Rooster Teeth series RWBY. When I first spotted the scythe, I ignorantly yelled “Soul Eater!” and now I can never go back to Rosemont.

Gumby and Pokey, possibly the only Claymation characters around.

On Friday a group of Simpsons cosplayers ruled the main lobby for a while. Old fans will remember Marge’s sister Patty and the Crazy Cat Lady.

The Devil Flanders from “Treehouse of Horror IV”.

Homer’s forbidden donut, from the same episode. Meanwhile in the background, Mayor Quimby bides his time.

Marge in her Chanel suit from the episode “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield” and — from my second favorite Simpsons episode of all time — Hank Scorpio, Homer’s one-time boss and global terrorist.

The family that cosplays together: the cast of Avatar: The Last Airbender, give or take one.

Bazooka from GI Joe. I like to think if he’d made the transition from Hasbro cartoons to live-action, maybe those two movies would have sucked just a little less.

I have no idea if Thrawn is still Grand Admiral in Star Wars Rebels or if he’s still working his way up to the rank he held in Timothy Zahn’s novels.

Man-at-Arms from the beloved toy ad He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, with special off-topic guest Wild West Batman.

Thought you could escape politics at a comic con? Crysta and Batty from FernGully: The Last Rainforest would like to talk to you about the environment.

To be continued! Other chapters in this special miniseries:

Prologue: Two Notes from Wizard World Chicago 2017
Part 1: Comics Cosplay!
Part 3: Last Call for Cosplay
Part 4: Objects of Affection
Part 5: Who We Met and What We Did

The mysterious Hands of Blue from Firefly, on the hunt for WWC guests River Tam and River Song. Their next target after that: possibly Melissa Rivers.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time once more! This weekend my wife and I made another journey up to Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we found much enjoyment and new purchases alongside peers and aficionados of comics and genre entertainment. Friday night left us near death by the end of our day, after a few miles’ worth of walking up and down the aisles and hallways, with breaks to go stand in lines of varying lengths and value. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

…I know, I know, less typing, more costume photo galleries. While you enjoy I’ll just be sitting over here in a musty corner, waiting to get back to writing paragraphs at some point. ‘sokay, I ain’t jealous.

So: cosplay! From gaming, movies, TV, and cereal!

Princess Daphne swoons for her hero Dirk the Daring from Dragon’s Lair.

Luigi, Waluigi, Mario, Princess Peach, and Bowser from the Donkey Kong Gaming Universe.

The Luigi and Bowser of Earth-2.

Possibly from both earths, a Bob-Omb and a Super Mario gold coin brick.

Auron from Final Fantasy X. I’m annoyed that I overlooked Lightning from FFIII.

Subject Delta from Bioshock 2.

An Umbrella Corporation soldier from the Resident Evil series, standing watch in the lobby. I could easily imagine Wizard World outsourcing their security to them.

It never fails: every con, I take at least one pic of a character I think I recognize but I don’t. Hey, did any bosses out there lose a henchman?

Frank from Donnie Darko.

Predator awaiting prey by the Wizard World souvenir store.

Pennywise, soon to star in a major motion picture suffering from Tim Curry deficiency.

Full disclosure: I feel a little less old whenever I tell people the Blues Brothers were before my time. I’ve never seen the movie, and my first Saturday Night Live episode as a kid aired during the golden age of Eddie Murphy.

Griff Tannen, future idiot son of Biff from Back to the Future Part II. I am eternally relieved none of his alt-timeline fashion trends came to pass.

Possibly Darth Revan. possibly an original Sith Lord or possibly a video game Darth. My wife knows the old Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, but never got into the games.

Lucky the Leprechaun, worried the kids are after his Lucky Charms because they’re slightly more edible than the Convention Center chow.

The Headless Horseman minus horse, which makes him the Headless Walker. Or the Headless Stroller. The Headless Traipser. Whatever.

The Twelfth Doctor steers clear of the Weeping Angel’s line of sight.

Also from the world of Doctor Who: Missy! One of the best parts of the Peter Capaldi era.

“Why, I do daresay I am rather quite Mary Poppins, you all!” (Bert the chimney sweep merely nods and smiles. Good plan, Bert.)

Glinda the Good Witch reminds you that you had the cosplay power in you all along! My work here is done!

McCree, different McCree, Symmetra, Torbjorn, Widowmaker, and D.Va from Overwatch capture that common, awkward convention moment when a cosplay group has been posing for ten minutes straight and don’t know if they’re free to go or if twelve more photographers are running up behind them.

Bellatrix LeStrange and Lucius Malfoy welcome their newest Death Eater, Professor Trelawney. Frankly, they’re desperate and taking anybody who’s too distracted to say no.

…and that’s very nearly it for our 2017 costume photos. Cosplay also factored into one of the panels we attended, but we’ll come back to that. We might’ve had dozens more than these if the autograph and photo-op lines hadn’t kept us trapped away from the action a bit longer than we’d expected, or if we were younger and faster, or if we recognized more anime characters anymore. The older we get, the fewer faces and costumes we’re recognizing, which dampens our graying enthusiasm. I hate hate hate posting unlabeled photos. I enjoy learning about new universes, but the crowded show floor isn’t always the best classroom for that. Regardless, we like to praise and share what we can.

To be continued! Other chapters in this special miniseries:

Prologue: Two Notes from Wizard World Chicago 2017
Part 1: Comics Cosplay!
Part 2: Animation Cosplay!
Part 4: Objects of Affection
Part 5: Who We Met and What We Did

Ain’t no party like a Pippin party ’cause a peppy perky poppin’ Pippin party got pizzazz!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time once more! This weekend my wife and I made another journey up to Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we found much enjoyment and new purchases alongside peers and aficionados of comics and genre entertainment. Friday night left us near death by the end of our day, after a few miles’ worth of walking up and down the aisles and hallways, with breaks to go stand in lines of varying lengths and value. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

Our ninth visit to the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center of course had its share of ups and downs. Some letdowns were beyond our control. Some stresses could have been avoided. Some volunteers could’ve used actual training. But for our entertainment tastes, temperaments, and frequently adjusted expectations, this year’s WWC was an overall success. It helps that we’re Doctor Who fans. If there’s anything we’ve learned from the Doctor, it’s that weird twists are all part of the game, and sometimes you just have to resign yourself to a lot of running.

Usually for WWC we arrive midday Friday, get a lousy parking space, and walk inside after thousands of fans are already cluttering up the place and taking up all the elbow room. Thanks to a combination of more convenient dogsitting arrangements and taking I-294 around downtown Chicago instead of the dreadful I-90 through its perpetually gridlocked heart, for the first time in years we arrived on Friday morning well before the show opened. At 10:10 a.m., with a noon showtime ahead, we learned we couldn’t just walk in anytime on Fridays as we’re used to doing on Saturdays. Security stopped us short at the end of the Skybridge, along with a few hardy cosplayers and a dozen or so retailers, only a few of whom had read their packets all the way through and caught the paragraph about doors opening at 10:30.

The security personnel weren’t even entirely clear on this point. Six of us had gotten through the metal detectors and wands, and were a good 100 feet beyond when a supervisor came at us from the other direction and told us no one was allowed in yet. We all retreated to the unhappy side of the checkpoint and grumbled for a full twenty minutes.

At 10:30 we were ushered through again and sent on our way…only to be stopped a few minutes later at the top of the main escalator that would lead us to the show floor and to registration. Vendors were allowed through at 10:30; fans were not. The official site confirmed we could go in at 11. We resigned ourselves to more waiting. Anne passed the time by striking up conversation with a young lady who resembled someone we kindasorta know online named Holly. She confirmed Anne was mistaken, and so we buried our heads in our bags and couldn’t look anyone in the eye for the next half-hour.

Panic set in when one hall monitor somehow got the impression that none of us would be allowed downstairs till the show began at noon. We considered rioting, but a few minutes after 11 her instructions got sorted out and she let us pass. From there we picked up our badges and the overstuffed tote bag of Doctor Who freebies that came with Anne’s VIP admission. Thankfully some brilliant tactician had invented a bag/coat-check section where we could drop off the Who hoard handbag and lighten our burden for the next several hours.

grieved the news that David Tennant had canceled due to grave circumstances. Another line later, we were all herded inside promptly at noon and…proceeded to yet another line. Sometimes in these con write-ups the frequent mentions of roving from line to line to line to line can get repetitive to type, but — like surprise celebrity cancellations — lines are part of the game.

A handful of actors were scheduled to sign on Friday (a bit uncommon, as most wait for Saturday and Sunday) and to begin at 12:15, including one of the four actors with Doctor Who on their resumé. Catherine Tate was Tennant’s companion Donna Noble in season 4, but some Americans who hung on through all nine seasons of our version of The Office may remember her as Nellie from the series’ post-Steve Carell era. Those were two largely awful post-shark-jump seasons that I refuse to buy on DVD and complete the set, but Anne and I grew used to her by the end, and thought even more highly of her when we subsequently hopped about the Who train.

We were eager to meet Tate, but nearly all celebs were absent from the show floor for the first hour. Wizard had switched their autograph/photo-op ticketing method to a new system entirely dependent upon Wi-Fi. This move was utterly hilarious to anyone who’s ever actually tried to use a phone or laptop in the Stephens Center. Communications are easier via paper airplane than by the hamster-wheel tech that passes for Wi-Fi. The way we heard it — and witnessed supporting evidence thereof over the next 36 hours — they had trouble getting their new system up and running Friday, and consequently told the actors to stay off the show floor till the issues could be resolved. That was the scuttlebutt after the fact, anyway. While we were in line at the time, a volunteer told us (or was told to tell us) that all the actors would be arriving together, hence the collective delay while they all coordinated. Amusingly, this gave us time to realize that the aforementioned Holly was several fans behind us in line. Small world!

Tate arrived at 1:15, greeted the crowd with gusto…and was asked to wait several more minutes till her ticket-taker’s handheld gadget would cooperate. Breezy small talk ensued.

By all means, gentlemen, let’s just totally keep the lady waiting.

Tate was rather a charmer, and one of those more outgoing actors who like to stand in front of the autograph table at shows rather than behind it. (See also: John Barrowman, Khary Payton. I noticed Stranger Things‘ Caleb McLaughlin following their examples on Saturday.) We were second in line and happy to be there and released early. Other lines around us appeared to follow suit.

Next down the line: Loren Lester, best known to my crowd as the voice of Robin from Batman: The Animated Series. I previously met Kevin Conroy (also a guest this year) at WWC 2014, so it only made sense to complete the Dynamic Duo set. We waited mere seconds before the other fan in line was finished. Lester was incredulous at the notion of teenagers watching the series back in the day, but I figured this wasn’t a good time for a ten-page dissertation on how B:tAS appealed to multiple fandom levels at the time. I gather he doesn’t do many of these shows.

I brought a DVD I’d previously had signed at the 2012 Superman Celebration by John Glover, who voiced the Riddler. He and his booth staff seemed in awe. It’s always cool seeing actors be fans of other actors.

Next after that: Charisma Carpenter, a must-meet for my ongoing Buffy/Angel collection. I’m one of those rare weirdos who preferred Angel to Buffy, partly because it was interesting seeing Cordelia come into her own as a leading character, moving well beyond the original Veronica Lodge trappings. A dozen or so folks were in front of us, making hers our longest autograph line of the day. Friday really wasn’t busy for the non-Who guests.

Carpenter insisted on taking all her own selfies, and may truly be the most skillful photographer ever to use my phone.

While we were in her line, TV’s Lou Ferrigno walked up, said hi, hugged her, and kind of fondled her hair in a weird way before moving on. Anne briefly entertained the idea of taking a photo of him just to test the long-standing rumors about how enraged he gets when people take free photos of him. Then she remembered she and I are both fragile, and put her camera away.

One last actor before we moved on from the autograph arena: Loni Anderson! WKRP in Cincinnati was a bit before our time, but Anne loves classic TV and fondly remembers an obscure one-season wonder called Partners in Crime in which she and Lynda Carter (!!!) found themselves ex-wives of the same bigamist and decided to run a detective agency together. Tennant’s cancellation had restored a chunk back to our budget, and her line was just as long as Loren Lester’s, so we figured why not.

Ms. Anderson was impressed that Anne still remembers the Partners in Crime opening narration. Old TV trivia is indeed among her superpowers.

Quick intermission for the annual noticing of Ferrigno’s booth, source of many cautionary tales over the years.

We’ve talked with a few fans who had pleasant encounters with him. They’re outnumbered.

That was enough autographs for the day. We moved onward for Hall F and stopped for bathroom breaks. When I came out, I found Anne had made a new friend.

Yep, that’s who you think it is: Kato Kaelin, unwitting costar of the OJ Simpson story. Wizard World brought him in as emcee for this year’s festivities — introducing musical acts at the lobby stage, engaging the crowd, raising the noise level, that sort of thing. He was nice to her and a bit kidding, basically harmless and ready for game-show hosting.

At long last, a “celebrity” recognizable by our family on Facebook.

Monday morning we saw comments from other fans whose treatment at his mic was a bit less ingratiating, and who were none too impressed later in the weekend when he invited ladies onstage for bouts of twerking. Not sorry we missed that.

At 1:45 we attended a panel about the history of Wonder Woman and the Justice League, a smart idea in this, the year of the amazing colossal Wonder Woman movie. Seated left to right: Danny Fingeroth, a former Marvel editor and frequent WW panel moderator; Maggie Thompson, longtime editor of Comics Buyer’s Guide; geek psychologist Dr. Travis Langley, whom we met last year; and comics writer Alex DeCampi, who had a WW story received much acclaim two years ago for DC’s Sensation Comics, excerpts from which were part of the slideshow. The comics history were a bit dry since I knew a good 85% of that part, but I liked the idea of sharing a room with some of the most interesting names on the comics guest list.

At far right is Kid DeCampi, watching a movie and occasionally interrupted with infectious laughter while Mom tried to cover topics less clichéd than What It’s Like Being A Woman in Super-Heroing.

Discussion topics included the drawbacks of criticisms drawn from small sampling sizes; the woeful inadequacy of comic shop owners and comics companies who fail to capitalize on major movie releases; and that time Maggie Thompson was one of precisely four (4) whole women to attend the first New York City comic convention. For trivia buffs looking to add to their repertoire, the other three were Marvel traffic manager Flo Steinberg; SF author Lee Hoffman; and Pat Lupoff, wife of SF author/fan Dick Lupoff.

From the panel rooms we made a beeline straight to Artists Alley, which was regrettably smaller than ever. This year saw fewer self-published novelists and more handicraft, a dearth of enticing comics and a surplus of prints, prints, prints, prints, prints, prints, prints, more prints, then prints next to prints on the other side of prints and across from prints bookended by prints plus prints of prints about prints. The proliferation of artists selling prints and nothing but prints is presumably a financial boon for the con and the fandoms at large, but generally I don’t buy prints. Like, at all. Virtually never nowadays. We don’t have the wall space to showcase them, and the ones I’ve accumulated from previous years are stacked up and ignored like an Uno discard pile.

On both Friday and Saturday (because I had always have to walk through one more time just to be sure) the following Artists Alley inhabitants were a pleasure to meet and buy from, where applicable:

* The aforementioned Alex DeCampi, whose most recent work of renown was Archie vs. Predator, the crossover that could not possibly exist and yet does. I’ve also been a fan of her Image series No Mercy about a high school field trip to Mexico that turns into disaster. Her crowdfunding campaign for the hardcover double feature Smoke/Ashes was among the last Kickstarters I pledged to before my moratorium. It weighs roughly two hundred pounds and was a bit crippling to carry around the show floor all day, but I considered it worth the fuss.

* Joe Harris! In addition to writing an X-Files series for IDW, his past creator-owned works include the eco-political Great Pacific, the post-apocalyptic Snowfall, the Russian thriller Ghost Projekt, and my personal favorite, Spontaneous. In talking with him, I learned as kids we may both actually have watched the same episode of That’s Incredible! that did a spooky segment on the phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion. Generation X represent!

* Dean Haspiel! I previously met one of my favorite contributors to Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor at WWC 2015, but he had new books for sale I hadn’t seen yet — the 2016 graphic novel Beef with Tomato and the experimental Because of You, a tag-team one-shot with Josh Neufeld.

* Writers Russell Lissau (The Batman Strikes) and Trevor Mueller (Reading with Pictures, Albert the Alien), who we’ve seen at so many previous shows that they’re among those treasured few Artists Alley regulars who recognize us on sight. We’re not used to that happening, so it’s weird but really cool. Lissau continues producing new stories for Omega Comics via comiXology, and Mueller has the third Albert the Alien volume coming very soon.

Special shout-out to two purveyors of fan-made merchandise based on one of our favorite 21st-century shows, Parks & Recreation: Hand Painted Nerd (one of whose reps was stalled with us at the morning security checkpoint) and Drew Blank, whose distinctive van we previously met at C2E2 in McCormick Place’s Lot B.

One of several Blank art objects. Left to right: Henry Winkler, Ben Schwartz, and Zootopia costar Jenny Slate.

Lunch at 3 p.m. was a pair of lukewarm sausage pizzas. Chicago, home of Chicago pizza, should have laws against such effronteries to their good culinary name.

Immediately after choking those down, we had one last appointment: a photo op with Catherine Tate. The Friday lines weren’t bad and were managed as they should’ve been, so that was nice while they lasted.

Once more, with feeling!

Final stop of the day: the faraway second floor, where all the fun geek vehicles were on display. We heard from numerous fans who never had time to get up there, and/or who had no idea WWC was using the second floor, much to the detriment of exhibitors squirreled up there far away from the main thoroughfare and from everyone’s money. Having wrapped up that section, we called it a day and were halfway to the Skybridge when I remembered Anne’s Doctor Who crap was still at the bag-check station on the first floor. One about-face and one pickup later, we were on our way. The ladies running the bag-check were most gracious and appreciated, though I thought it was odd how many fans had all bought and checked the same 24-inch Hulk Hogan doll. I wouldn’t want to lug that around the halls either.

After dinner down the street at MB Financial Park to take advantage of a 15% VIP discount and to get our parking validated, we retreated to our favorite Rosemont hideaway — the other Hyatt, the one that’s a mile down the road and not connected to the Convention Center. We get invited to exactly zero parties and see no con-related excitement there, but we’re old prudes who don’t drink and that Hyatt’s parking is free, so it’s kindasorta win/win as long as I don’t obsess on the part where sometimes living as an upright outcast isn’t my favorite thing.

* * * * *

Saturday morning we showed up shortly after 7 a.m. because our bodies were still on Indiana time and we ran out of things to do beyond our basic Dunkin Donuts breakfast. Our path once again brought us face-to-face with security. This time instead of the Skybridge we opted for the main entrance outside. As opposed to the singular narrow funnel upstairs, the front doors were divided into four checkpoints in order from least invasive searching to most intense scrutiny: VIP ENTRY; GENERAL ADMISSION WITHOUT BAGS; GENERAL ADMISSION WITH BAGS; and WEAPONS CHECK to help catch any errant homicidal cosplayers, potentially the most criminal lot of all in Wizard World’s eyes. Don’t get me wrong — I appreciate what they’re doing, especially in light of far too many tragedies happening worldwide at ostensibly happy public events, but putting hard brakes on fans armed with even the most garishly unrealistic props seems like overkill.

I mean, I guess it’s safe to assume the terrorists would never shell out $500 for a David Tennant Gold VIP badge. In that way they’re just like us.

We were admitted shortly after 8 a.m., progressed to the next line, waited some more, were escorted once more into the fray at 9:30…and realized we had no major appointments up front. Plan A had been “run like mad to Tennant’s early photo-op line”, but without him around our schedule was much more open. So we did what few fans do with early admission: we wandered around the dealers and got to see which ones were on time and which ones had slept in with hangovers.

Our first real appointment bore the fruit you saw in our lead picture: a photo op with Billy Boyd, a.k.a. the hobbit Peregrin “Pippin” Took from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Nowadays he has his own band called Beecake, who performed a concert the night before at a local venue where several fans were treated to their cover of Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball”.

Boyd’s 10:45 photo op ran a good 20-25 minutes late. I gathered he wasn’t the only one, though at one point I did spot Agents of SHIELD costar Elizabeth Henstridge walking with handlers toward some faraway point, so we know they weren’t hiding all the guests in a back room this time. But as you can tell from the pic, Boyd was in rare form, hyper and game for whatever. Super nice fellow.

From there we walked directly over to his autograph line, where things got a bit awkward. WWC officials had announced in advance that fans in all lines would be grouped together and sent through in the following order:

1st: VIPs for that particular star
2nd: any other VIPs
3rd: general admission fans

With Catherine Tate’s line the day before, the volunteers had smartly kept each of the three groups separate in their own taped-off squares. With Boyd, an underage lad had simply let everyone line up as one, but tried keeping the groups in order. Since the line wasn’t magically getting bigger on the inside, that meant everyone had to kept squeezing together as more VIPs were squished into the one line at the end of their particular section. Considering most of Boyd’s own VIPs were in his photo-op line and largely planning to head straight for autographs same as we did…this line plan was poorly executed. Elbow room was the first to be lost, soon followed by any and all personal space. We spent an extremely cozy time gabbing with a lady who works for Chicago TARDIS, the premier Doctor Who convention in the area. It’s often fun to get to know other fans, albeit occasionally awkward, but it’s even more awkward when everyone has to keep their arms pinned to their sides lest we all accidentally keep unwittingly slapping or harassing each other.

Eventually Boyd switched from posing to signing…only to be delayed still more minutes while the volunteers once again struggled to wrangle the Wi-Fi ticketing system into usable form. To pass the time until he was officially allowed to take our money, Boyd took one of his autograph pens and engaged the first fan in line at a game of tic-tac-toe, followed by several games of Dots and Boxes.

We tried sharing these photos in a few places in hopes of getting copies to her, but so far haven’t had any luck.

I have no idea if writing on the tables was allowed, but who cares. This man was PIPPIN, the George Harrison of the world-famous hobbit quartet. Don’t bring him in and tell him not to do what he does best.

From there we briefly joined the ridiculous lines at the autograph/photo-op pre-sales booth because we had a question about a thing. In another small-world moment, behind us was Not-Holly, our accidental new acquaintance from the day before. We weren’t there long because a volunteer, graciously trying to shorten the lines by any means necessary, wandered past and answered our easy question for us. The day was saved!

Much wandering and attempted shopping ensued until our next optional engagement, a 12:45 panel called “J. Jonah Jameson vs. the Audience”. The lone star, a cosplayer venturing under the name Captain K, showed up as the titular newsman and invited the audience to debate him on the complete lack of merits in that accursed wall-crawling Spider-Man.

He had the look, he had the voice, he had the his improv material prepared.

This is not normally our kind of panel, but the guy was an absolute hoot, and I’m not just saying that because the room was a good place to charge our phones. He ranted enjoyably and in a pretty accurate JJJ voice about the sinister threats of guys who prance around in anonymous masks and about how “With great power comes great accountability!”

JJJ tried fitting in with the con crowd at first (“Let’s get the nerd talk out of the way. Star Wars vs Star Trek? Star Wars! Because it shows that people who wear masks are villains!”) before the raging and the back-and-forth began in earnest. He affirmed his approval for internet journalists (“what I like about it best is you can’t get paid”). One lone youngster in the front kept siding with his vehement anti-Spidey stance, possibly because he wants to intern for free at his fake Daily Bugle someday or whatever.

Meanwhile in the back, one defender of justice wasn’t having it. The Tick, proud super-hero without a mask in the old TV version, brought his own spirited retorts in defense of all heroes, not just the maskless ones like himself. Perfect Patrick Warburton voice and all, the Tick and JJJ were perfectly matched opponents.

When the odd contrarian kid chimed again, the Tick shouted him down 100% in the character’s pompous cadence: “HOW DARE YOU, NERD IN THE FRONT ROW.”

Jameson was so proud of a job well done, he even offered to pose with a few aberrant Spider-Men after the panel. All the better to get them on film as evidence for the police, probably.

Remember that time when I said, “that’s very nearly it for our 2017 costume photos”? Here’s me making good on that adverbial foreshadowing.

Lunch after that was from the one of two specialty stands offering walking tacos (I had mine with pulled pork) and baked potatoes (Anne had one topped with taco beef). Possibly the least worst food on the premises. We took our nominal sustenance to the “VIP Lounge”, a cordoned area offering the perks of separate tables, a phone charging station, a cash bar we didn’t care about, and — best of all — a thickly carpeted floor. Old feet appreciate easily overlooked benefits like that.

We had more time for walking and walking and walking and more walking before our last appointment. Outside Artists Alley, my money didn’t change hands with too many salespeople. To that extent maybe I’m what’s wrong with today’s comic conventions, but here we are. I’ve largely lost my will to flip through back-issue bins, my reading pile is already beyond enormous from the busy con life we keep indulging throughout 2017, and Anne and I are agreed that we absolutely, positively do not want to decorate our entire house in geek furnishings or accessories from roof to floor. Sorry, con. We did browse, at least.

Meanwhile out of our line of sight, we understand the entire celebrity area had turned into a madhouse. Numerous volunteers unaware of the VIP “SpeedPass” triage system were failing at sorting and kept sticking fans into lines willy-nilly, effectively giving advantages to general-admission attendees that VIPs had paid for, while they fumed and fussed to no avail and with no accessible authority figures to field their complaints. Meanwhile, the lateness of Boyd’s op and others’ had created a domino effect that saw all subsequent ops running behind throughout the day, which in turn affected autographing times and leaving lots of aimless fans scattered around Hall A in disarray and disgust. When we ambled over at 4:00, we had to get in line behind a couple hundred other fans waiting to get into their photo-op line(s), while still more fans waited off to one side in clusters that may or may not have had any objectives in common. Also, instead of limiting the number of fans who showed up for each photo-op appointment, everyone was allowed in Saturday if they so desired, so everyone did try all at once instead of waiting for a Sunday appointment, which exacerbated the fiasco. Maybe all of this made sense in someone’s head in A Beautiful Mind sort of way, but the place looked wrecked.

After our line led to the next line (late), we had plenty of time for gandering at other booths around us, including the healthy turnout for Paul Bettany. You might remember him from such films as Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Da Vinci Code, that Unabomber miniseries that recently aired, or A Beautiful Mind. I pride myself as one of seven Americans nationwide who paid to see him reteam with Russell Crowe in Master and Commander, but his Tennant-level prices weren’t for us.

On the upside, he’s approximately eight feet tall and really sticks out from a crowd.

Several lifetimes later, our final line of the day reached its end goal: one last photo op with Alex Kingston. She’s best known today as recurring associate River Song from Doctor Who, but I’m old enough to recall when she joined the cast of NBC’s ER during the end of the George Clooney heyday. I suspect River Song’s Memento-esque reverse-arc has reached its concluding beginning, so I’m sorry we’ve seen the first of her and therefore won’t see her again in any earlier debut. (Look, it makes sense in context.)

We saw complaints elsewhere about photographers with composition issues, but we dig the bizarre ramping effect here.

By the time we were done with Ms. Kingston, we were done with Wizard World Chicago 2017. We were exhausted. We were weighed down with more pleasing Artists Alley purchases. We’d completed our complete actor checklist, apart from one “maybe” on my list that we weren’t sure would get jazz hands. We also couldn’t attend Sunday due to family obligations.

Admittedly we missed out on some incidents around the show floor. The aforementioned Kato Kaelin issues. The controversy of the faux-topless Pyramid Head cosplayer. The alleged pervert who was called out, tracked down, and arrested outside the convention center after allegedly trying to take upskirt photos and after allegedly assaulting at least one attendee who called him on it. Also, we missed out on thousands of super awesome cosplayers who aren’t included in our first three chapters but who thankfully popped up in other galleries online.

The exhausted march back to the parking garage felt five times longer. But from where we stood and limped, we were satisfied with our two-day extravaganza.

For some reason an active R2-D2 was greeting folks at the garage on their way out. Nice of him.

Those approved shopping results, not including autographed materials or that metric ton of Doctor Who freebies.

After dinner down the street at MB Financial Park to take advantage of a 15% VIP discount and to get our parking validated, whereupon a light rain pelted us on the way out, we retreated to the other Hyatt, strangely not as tired as we were the evening before. Sunday morning and one breakfast later, we were homeward bound and hoping one day we’ll set eyes on that elusive David Tennant, perhaps under much more favorable circumstances, with or without freebies.

I-90! through downtown Chicago is 1000 times easier to navigate at 9 a.m. Sunday.

The End. Thanks for reading! Lord willing and guest list pending, we’ll see you next year.

Previous chapters in this special miniseries:

Prologue: Two Notes from Wizard World Chicago 2017
Part 1: Comics Cosplay!
Part 2: Animation Cosplay!
Part 3: Last Call for Cosplay
Part 4: Objects of Affection

“Next time you show your face around me, I want MORE PICTURES OF SPIDER-MAN!”

After the destruction of the One Ring, Samwise Gamgee enjoyed an extravagant victory tour and vaudeville revue.

Saturday marked our fourth trip to HorrorHound Indy, an annual Indianapolis convention in honor of the scary, bloody, icky, haunting, stabbing, disturbing, black-garbed aspects of pop culture. The folks at HorrorHound Magazine orchestrate the festivities so loyal fans of the murderous and the macabre can enjoy a themed geek space of their own apart from Star Wars and Star Trek and whatnot. (Well, mostly.) As we’ve gotten older and more puritanical, our touchpoints with horror, terror, and gross-outs have dwindled in number compared to the average attendee, but the intersections between their guest list and our favorite worlds continue to delight and surprise and draw us back into their waiting wings.

Exhibit A: this year’s reunion of three cast members from The Goonies, which they’ve ruled is sufficiently spooky and/or contains enough human skeletons to be on-topic. You might remember Mikey, the asthmatic yet fearless leader who guided our heroes through convoluted clues, deadly booby traps, and the clutches of the wicked Fratelli family to find hidden pirate treasure and give someone in Hollywood the idea to go make National Treasure someday. I saw The Goonies in theaters when I was 13, a year younger than Mikey. Little did I know he would grow up to be Sean Astin — underdog football winner, savior of Middle-Earth, and sidekick to Encino Man. Bonus points to the esteemed Mr. Astin for very nearly guessing my age, and not just because I look it more than ever.

Also in the house: Ke Huy Quan! Best known to our generation as Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, he later became the Goonies’ gadgetry expert Data as well as the costar of a short-lived sitcom called Together We Stand, later retitled Nothing Is Easy after their dad Elliott Gould died offscreen under circumstances that were never conclusively proven to be not Data’s fault.

He was so surprised we remembered the sitcom that we ended up in a two-minute conversation that segued into an appraisal of Steven Spielberg’s ’80s heyday.

The third cast member had the longest line of any actor in the house today: Corey Feldman, star or costar of eighty-three thousand movies from 1980 to 1989, half of them costarring the late Corey Haim and several of them watchable. Feldman technically double-majored today as part of a reunion of Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys that brought in his vampire-hunting partner from the movie, two of the vampires, and two guys with a song apiece on the soundtrack, including the internet-famous Greased-Up Sax Guy.

Feldman was the last to arrive, and his entrance was hard to miss if you were in the same ballroom. He entered wearing sunglasses and a gilded boxing robe, and was escorted by a pair of angel cosplayers who sat next to him while he signed and accompanied him on breaks.

We were tempted to take photos with him, but his line stretched beyond the ballroom, down the hallway, and into the hotel courtyard outside. Lovely weather for it, though.

I’m 90% certain the angel on the left is his wife Courtney. We know nothing about her understudy.

Goonies and Lost Boys weren’t the weekend’s only guest themes. Also on hand were four veterans from the Buffy/Angel universe. I’d already met Clare Kramer (big bad Glory from Buffy season 5, last seen as stage host at C2E2) and Juliet Landau (a.k.a. Drusilla, met at Wizard World Chicago 2012), but two were new to me. First up: Mercedes McNab, a.k.a. Harmony. Once upon a time she was snobby friend to snobby Cordelia, until the season three finale saw her go down as a vampire casualty, only to arise in later seasons as a casual vampire. Her final line at the end of the Angel season 5 premiere “Conviction” remains my all-time favorite Angel moment.

She remembers the scene vividly because Joss Whedon made her say “Blondie bear!” about 200 times before letting her move on with her life.

Down the way was James C. Leary, best known to Buffy fans as Clem, the loose-skinned demon who hung out with Our Heroes in the later seasons till the going got rough. Clem was proof that not all demons were giant-sized Big Bads. Some were just, y’know, dudes who wanted to go their own way and just so happened to be demons.

Appearing in makeup would’ve delayed him several hours, though.

Last actor we met for the day: character actor Clint Howard! You might remember him from any of the hundreds of films he’s done (with or without his big brother Ronny), but Anne zeroed in on his child-actor years, in particular the classic Star Trek episode “The Corbomite Maneuver”. As the alien Balok, he just wanted to find some friends and drink some tranya.

The scuttlebutt is he’ll have a part in the upcoming Han Solo film, so here’s us getting in on the ground floor with him ahead of the paparazzi.

As always, HorrorHound is more than just actors signing, though they had plenty more of those. We didn’t avail ourselves of the eight (!) cast members from Friday The 13th Part 2, but they seemed to share a healthy line of fans waiting to collect the set. If and when you ran out of money for autographs and photo ops, another ballroom featured their usual Mask Fest, a collection of vendors and craftspeople dedicated to the fine art of monstrous disguises.

We didn’t take as many pics in there as usual. Cool stuff. occasionally sickening and therefore right on target.

All told, the show went smoothly despite the dense crowds. The HorrorHound guys have their system down and know how to maximize the available space at that storied Marriott location. Granted, the vendors’ room once again felt filled beyond capacity and threatened to crush us all against each other, but we’re almost used to that by now, setting apart the one major logjam we encountered involving a double-wide stroller. At one point the photo-op printers hit a technical snag that delayed photo processing for several of us, but they were back up and running within five minutes.

Our most annoying part of the day wasn’t HorrorHound’s fault. Restaurants in the area apparently had no idea HorrorHound was this weekend…or if they did, they failed miserably at preparing for it. We thought it would be convenient and luxurious to grab lunch at the Marriott’s own Skyline Bistro, but we waited in line at least twenty minutes for anyone resembling a host to greet any of us, let alone mention when or even if actual seating would be possible. Eventually we gave up and walked across the street to Arby’s, whose workers struggled to keep up with the influx of customers with blood-spattered T-shirts and other forms of baroque outerwear. Our total time from entry to food receipt was slightly under twenty minutes. Arby’s 1, Skylight 0. And I guess I can’t complain about the money we saved.

Because this is a convention experience entry, of course we have costume photos. We did the best we could within our increasingly limited working knowledge of the fans’ favorite splatter-fests. A few familiar faces wormed their way into the cosplay proceedings, some more at-home than others. Enjoy!

This year saw a 200% increase in Pennywise cosplayers and a 17,000% increase in Pennywise merchandise for sale.

The Grady twins from The Shining.

Jigsaw, the creepy puppet from the Saw Infinite Cinematic Universe.

A very different marionette and puppeteer.

Count Orlok from Nosferatu, appropriately silent.

It’s always convenient at a horror con to have a plague doctor in the house.

Beetlejuice and Lydia hanging out with a variation on those Claymation sandworms, complete with retractable head-within-a-head.

John Hammond from the giant monster movie Jurassic Park, which costarred Samuel L. Jackson’s severed arm, qualifies for inclusion here.

Somewhat debatable: the star of the horror film Spider-Man 3. Wait, no, I’m just misspelling “horrible”.

If there’s a fan film out there in which R2-D2 becomes a deranged serial killer, we haven’t seen it.

Realizing we’re on to the little metal poser, Artoo quickly wheels over to the nearest Jason Voorhees and tries to blend in.

Jason actually blending in with a trio of scream queens.

Our largest group shot of the day. Left to right: Leatherface (star of an upcoming prequel), Jason, Jason, Daryl Dixon, Sexy Ghostbuster, Jason, Leatherface, Michael Myers, and Teen Wolf.

We’re used to seeing the 501st Legion and other Star Wars fan groups at cons, but in Cincinnati they really come out in full Force.

It’s convention time yet again! Yes, AGAIN.

Saturday morning my wife Anne and I drove two hours southeast of Indianapolis to attend the eighth annual Cincinnati Comic Expo in the heart of their downtown that’s not so different from ours. The guest list seemed a little thinner, particularly in the comics department, but we had such a great time last year that we agreed an encore was in order.

But first, as usual: cosplay! Presenting a showcase of the costumes we photographed during our hours walking through and around the exhibit hall. We weren’t there all day, and spent much of our time in lines plus one panel, but we managed to capture a selection of folks who caught our eyes during our limited windows of opportunity. Sorry we don’t have dozens more, but…enjoy!

This year’s show featured four actors from the cinematic world of Harry Potter. We consequently saw a 500% increase in wizard robes at CCE over all other cons we’ve attended this year combined, along with other characters familiar to fans of The Boy Who Lived.

Sirius Black, fresh out of Azkaban.

The living painting that guards the entrance to Hogwart’s Gryffindor House, known only as the Fat Lady until and unless JK Rowling is prepared to divulge her backstory at last.

Potterpool! We expected no less.

We also spent a few minutes trying an assortment of angles on that large Star Wars gathering, who changed positions a few times for variety.

Imperial officers move in for their closeup.

Mara Jade and Director Krennic hang out with the Stormtroopers at the other end.

Jawas walking in like they’re the life of the party.

A lone Tusken Raider who strayed from the herd.

And the rest…

HALO-ish soldier exiting the VR machine, or giant video game booth, or working teleporter, or hair dryer for all I know.

Employees from Los Pollos Hermanos on strike until and unless Breaking Bad returns but with less meth and more chicken.

The Thing, checking his phone every five minutes in case Fox calls to tell him they’re greenlighting a sequel. Poor, poor thing.

Thor and Iron Fist, plus a bonus Daredevil I cruelly overlooked at the time. Sorry, hero dude!

One of the 800+ Jurassic World T-Rexes we’ve seen stalking show floors so far this year.

I totally brake for any and all splicers from Bioshock, whether they’re preying on victims as a couple…

…or single-file but doubly armed.

Nooo ooone goofs on Gaston! No one spoofs our Gaston! No one drops mad rhymes that are bombproof like Gaston’s!

To be concluded!

Ellen Ripley’s Caterpillar P-5000 Work Loader from Aliens. Sure enough, she does have a Class 2 rating.

As it worked out, our last out-of-state foray for 2017 took us to the longest-named event of our year. Since 2012 Fanboy Expo has been a staple of the scene in Knoxville, Tennessee. After a presumably successful show in June, this year they branched out to a second show in October, the Fanboy Expo Totally Awesome Weekend. We’ve never been to a basic Fanboy Expo, but we gathered the Totally Awesome Weekend spinoff was built to focus more on the actor guests than on the “comic” in “comic con”. I deduced this not from any public statements on their part, but on the fact that the guest list on their official website listed five (5) comics/animation artists and six tattoo artists. This is abnormal compared to the events held in our usual bailiwicks.

That disparity doesn’t have to be a terrible thing. My wife Anne and I are more satisfied when a show finds a fair balance comics and entertainment guests. This time, however, we saw FBTAW as a companion piece of sort, the flip side of the previous weekend’s Cartoon Crossroads Columbus. There, I’d had the opportunity to overdose on comics; this weekend it was Anne’s turn for a whirlwind reunion tour with familiar faces from the classic TV of her childhood. It was only fair, especially since her birthday’s this coming week.

The ultimate destination for our 5½-hour drive: the Knoxville Convention Center, opened for business in 2001 at the foot of the world-famous Sunsphere, super-sized souvenir of the 1982 World’s Fair.

If you’re parked downtown, you can enter the handy skybridge opening at Locust Street and Clinch Avenue, and walk directly into the convention center’s upper levels.

The Knoxville Convention Center isn’t the smallest we’ve seen, but was smaller than we expected. It has just two exhibit halls. FBTAW occupied the larger one, while the smaller was devoted to Food City Fest, a big foodie show held by a local supermarket chain. For a second we considered double-majoring, but decided to focus.

FBTAW had everything we’ve come to expect from the cons back home, but on smaller scales. A security checkpoint at the front door kept things safe, and looked more deeply into my bag than any other security guard ever has. At best our bags normally warrant fleeting glances under the assumption that neither of us would be caught dead with a .22 made from 3-D printer parts and wedged at the bottom. The Will Call roster was printed on paper instead of stored in digital devices, and didn’t include the names of anyone who’d bought tickets online within the past week (including us). The show naturally had a line of fans waiting before showtime, but less than a hundred by my count. You can always judge a show’s performance by the first line, whether it’s the village-sized masses of the gargantuan C2E2 or the handful of us who tried to get excited about the flop-tastic Awesome Con Indy three years ago. FBTAW’s entry line wasn’t colossal, but it was a manageable size for a modest affair.

As long as we have cosplay, we know it’s some kind of comic con. And so there was:

Jason Voorhees welcomes you to your doom. I mean, um, to the show.

The amazing spectacular sensational friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

Deadpool (X-Force variant), Harley Quinn, and of cource their li’l daughter Harleypool.

The eponymous Phantasm from the animated Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.

From the world of Bioshock, a splicer and a Little Sister, complete with EVE hypo and creepy dolly.

From their website alone, I honestly couldn’t tell if FBTAW would have any comics dealers, toy salesclerks, craftspeople, printmakers, or even self-published novelists in attendance. At all. They never posted an exhibitor list or a map of the show floor. That’s generally a sign that a given show won’t be large enough for anyone to need those amenities. A few dozen businesses and creative types did indeed show up and ply their wares, but many of them looked like this:

To be fair, Funko Pop peddlers are now a majority space-holder at nearly 75% of all comic-con-shaped shindigs today.

I did find one (1) proprietor at a table selling comics: Storme Smith, publisher and co-founder of Buño Books, who previously exhibited at Baltimore’s SPX in September before coming to Knoxville. Pictured below are the wares they offered: Smith’s own jazz bio-comic Rhythm Man: The Legend of Chick Webb, illustrated by Derick Jones; the all-ages adventure Cloudia & Rex from Ulises Farina and Erick Freitas, collaborators on IDW’s American-ized Judge Dredd series; and the mini-hardcover Light by Rob Cham, an artist/editor/teacher in the Phillippines overtly influenced by Jeff Smith’s Bone. I was so happy to detect a comics presence, I bought one of everything.

Their output is effectively the star of my standard “photo of every comic I bought” that I include in every convention write-up.

Longtime MCC readers have heard me protest in the past that, with extremely few exceptions (Hi, Brian! Hi, Luther!), I don’t buy novels or art prints at conventions. At some shows where prints ‘n’ prose comprise 80% of their Artists Alley, that doesn’t leave much shopping for me to do. It’s kind of a good thing that I also don’t buy back issues anymore because I don’t think I saw more than three comics dealers on site at FBTAW. However, we do owe another shout-out to the folks at Sassy Pants Sweets & Treats, the snack artisans we just saw two weeks ago at Cincinnati Comic Expo. Like us, they seem to be getting around a lot this year and found parts of Knoxville to enjoy.

Note the new faces in their iced sugar cookie lineup!

Beyond the dealers’ area in the center of the exhibit hall, that left the couple dozen actors, musicians, and other talents lining its perimeter for autographing and photo-op purposes. A handful of them became Anne’s best reasons for making Fanboy Expo Totally Awesome Weekend her birthday outing for this year.

The biggest group in the house was an Aliens reunion featuring Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein, the two masterminds behind the creature effects, and a handful of the Colonial Marines who, all combined, had fewer lines than Newt. I love the film but opted out of that entire section, which is just as well because Biehn and Henriksen had the longest lines of the day. (I’d already met Henriksen previously.)

Rather, Anne was there for Sesame Street. The quintessential kids’ educational series began in 1969, the year before Anne was born. She spent many years watching its cast of ethnically diverse humans and Muppets living and laughing and singing together in an urban setting, an altogether exotic locale for a white suburban family like hers that needed to know the entire world was more than what she saw around her every day. On hand were four of the actors from her Sesame Street heyday. Of those, she’d already had the mind-blowing chance to meet puppet master Carroll Spinney (Big Bird! Oscar the Grouch!) at the first and so far last Wizard World Indianapolis. The others played live human characters, friendly neighbors integral to the world she knew.

First on her wish list: Bob McGrath, who’d been on the show since the beginning. Bob played the character “Bob”, one of the few white characters. (Though Anne believes the Sesame Street characters had last names, she doesn’t recall ever hearing them on the show.) Bob did much of the singing on the show, continued to do so for a good 45+ years, and has recorded multiple children’s albums.

The kids these days deserve to know Mister Rogers didn’t have a total monopoly on the PBS ultra-benevolent-mentor field.

During Anne’s encounter, Bob pointed out that his wife’s name is Ann, but that she wishes it had an E at the end like hers. When she hugged him, he kissed her on the cheek and thanked her for being a “Sesame Seed” — what they call the kids who grew up watching.

Next table over: Emilio Delgado — a.k.a. Luis, who ran a fix-it shop. He was one of two Hispanic characters she remembers, the other being Maria played by Sonia Manzano. Each of them taught viewers Spanish words; in 1988 they fell in love and got married. Anne made sure to watch even though she was a teenager by then. Bob was best man, while Elmo was ring bearer who fretted about dropping the rings. (Direct quote: “DON’T DROP THE RINGS!”)

He’s also appeared in episodes of House of Cards and the Law & Order franchises, which simply do not compute.

Third table for the hat trick: Roscoe Orman, who played Gordon — the third actor to play Gordon, in fact, but he’s the first one Anne remembers. Gordon was married to another character named Susan. In the late ’80s, Gordon and Susan adopted a son named Miles, who was played by Orman’s real-life son Miles. Roscoe told Anne that Miles now has two kids of his own. Cheers, Grandpa Gordon!

But what’s more important is that Orman also appeared as Detective Freamon’s ex-partner in two episodes of The Wire, which I wish I’d known at the time. In my book this makes him the Greatest Sesame Street Actor of All Time.

(Extra special thanks to Anne for writing 90% of the preceding section. Full disclosure: I seldom got to see Sesame Street as a kid because for whatever reason my grandma never turned our TV to PBS. By the time I earned any real voting authority on our viewing schedule apart from Saturday morning cartoons, I was too old and missed out.)

Aliens and Sesame Street weren’t the only reunions going on. Other classic-TV viewers should recall Norman Lear’s Good Times — the first African-American sitcom, the one that paved the way for everyone from The Cosby Show to Black-ish. I missed the original 1974-1979 run but caught dozens of reruns in syndication, where their take on a loving family in the Chicago high-rise projects was the first show to come anywhere near resembling the section-8 apartment complex of my own lower-class upbringing.

Sadly, momma Esther Rolle passed away in 1998 and stern father-figure John Amos doesn’t do conventions, but their three kids were in the house, beginning with comedian Jimmie “JJ” Walker, he of the catchphrase “DY-NO-MITE!” which was America’s favorite thing for about fifteen minutes back in the 1970s.

He refused to let Anne call him “Mister Walker”, but seemed nice.

Bern Nadette Stanis was middle sister Thelma, who had the displeasure of suffering two brothers but proved a role model for girls like her everywhere that needed to know they did not have to put up with that kind of nonsense. Today she’s an author with four books to her name.

Ms. Stanis was extremely gracious in letting Anne babble on and on (Anne’s words, not mine).

Ralph Carter was Michael, the youngest of the Evans clan. Anne and I both vividly remember the episodes after John Amos’ character was killed off, which left the surviving cast to mark his passing (read: Amos’ firing) in their own ways. Michael was the most devastated of all, lashing out and provoking candid conversations about faith and grief that left a mark on us younger viewers. According to the kindly Mr. Carter, that young boy’s tears weren’t entirely acting.

I’m not sure what he does for a living, but based on the heartfelt depth of our conversation, my guess would be devout pastor — a man of God and a fantastic pleasure to meet.

But wait! The reunions didn’t stop there! Once upon a time five years ago, in a story I have yet to retell online (I promise it’s on the to-do list), Anne got to meet three of the six kids from The Brady Bunch at a special Kings Island event while my son and I went on rides and totally missed out. One of the three remaining Brady kids was on the guest list for FBTAW and neatly crossed his name off her bucket list: Mike Lookinland, known in a former life as li’l Bobby Brady. Anne brought the Kings Island group 8×10 that the other three had signed — a rare photo of the entire cast doing needlepoint together between takes — which Lookinland asked if he could snap a copy on his phone to show his mom. Apparently needlepoint was one of the many activities that kept the kids busy on set while the grown-ups were taking their sweet time with the really boring aspects of making a TV series.

It was his idea to sneak Susan Olsen into the shot for free. Cindy Brady was one of the kids Anne already met at KI.

Anne had also already met the third Brady in their autograph row, but I hadn’t. In addition to his good ol’ days as TV’s Greg Brady, we had fun watching Barry Williams in a recent season of the Food Network’s Worst Cooks in America, in which he and several other stars of lesser stature than The Greg Brady had to compete in a goofy Cooking 101 contest. Williams was denied victory and basically robbed, but the Worst Cooks celebrity editions aren’t exactly the fairest of game shows.

Despite that stinging loss, Williams was more than happy to help me fill my jazz-hands quota for the day.

Look closely and you’ll notice he let me borrow his tiki idol! But then he made me give it back before a piano could fall on my head.

Longtime MCC readers know jazz hands are our thing when it comes to actor photos. To date we’ve met exactly two celebrities (Rosario Dawson and Brenda Strong) who responded with the phrase “Fosse Fingers”. Williams topped them both: not only did he work with the legendary Broadway choreographer Bob Fosse in his youth, Fosse gave him his first post-Brady gig as the lead role in Pippen. To bask in the presence of a performer who’d actually, literally been paid to master the fine art of jazz hands…let’s be honest: no other convention has ever given us that before. Frankly, I was floored.

Nevertheless, I composed myself and prepared for our final encounter of the day: John Wesley Shipp! Comic book fans of my generation fondly remember him as Barry Allen, our hero from the original 1990 TV version of The Flash. Younger fans today have seen him in the CW’s current take on the DC Comics mythos, in which Shipp has played both Barry’s beleaguered dad and the elder Flash of another Earth who’s been a mentor to the promising upstart speedster. The new show’s gotten a number of things right and impressed me at turns (and, okay, sometimes frustrated me), but one of its cleverest moves to date was letting the original Flash shine as he passes on the legacy of heroism.

Beyond just dropping by and putting the “awesome” in “Totally Awesome Weekend”, Shipp was also plugging his audio drama Powder Burns, an ongoing Western series about a blind sheriff.

Extremely nice guy, worth the 5½-hour drive.

…and that was just about it for our Fanboy Expo Totally Awesome Weekend 2017. None of these tremendous folks had long lines early in the day, though I certainly hope that changed later for the better. Between the lack of crowds and the small dealer turnout, we considered ourselves wrapped up before noon. Admission was cheaper than the average con, leaving us satisfied and guiltless at our early departure. They had Q&As scheduled for later in the afternoon, but we can take or leave those, and we had some ideas on local tourism, which we’ll cover in future entries.

For the size of show and breadth of guest list, FBTAW suited us fine and we appreciate the experience. I can’t say for certain whether or not we’ll be back, but our noncommittal response is no fault of theirs. Anne and I keep telling each other we need to do fewer shows in 2018, and preferably keep them closer to home — partly due to burnout, partly because we have new expenses in our immediate future, and mostly because the time expenditure is complicating some things for us. But if we can keep finding the right mix of suitable guest lists, manageable drives, and worthy comics creators, you’ll hear about them here ASAP on MCC.

Thanks for reading! Lord willing, see you next con…

For our Gen-X pals out there: C. Thomas Howell kicks off our 2018 convention season in style.

This weekend my wife Anne and I attended our first HorrorHound Cincinnati, an annual convention in honor of the spooky, bloody, gross, unsettling, slashing, nightmare-inducing, id-tastical aspects of pop culture. The folks at HorrorHound Magazine orchestrate the festivities so loyal fans of the murderous and the macabre can enjoy a themed geek space of their own apart from Star Wars and Star Trek and whatnot. (Well, mostly.) We’ve attended four of the same company’s last five HorrorHound Indy shows in our own hometoown because, even though we’ve detached from much the genre as we’ve gotten older and finickier, their showrunners have a flair for assembling a top-notch guest list filled with actors we’ve seen in a lot of great works throughout our lives…and who also happened to have one or more scary movies or TV shows on their resumé. Win-win.

First we had to get there. HorrorHound Cincy had the bad luck of falling on a weekend when Old Man Winter decided he wasn’t ready to let the Midwest go just yet. Our complete path from Indianapolis to Cincinnati was under a 24-hour Winter Storm Watch beginning 2 a.m. Saturday. It’s been a good 15-20 years since we had to brave a snowstorm to reach a con, and those incidents were in-state. Normally Cincinnati is a two-hour drive for us, but we left home four hours before showtime to ensure some extra margin in case we had to take it slowly for safety’s sake. As it turned out, visibility was terrible for a while in the morning, but the road surfaces themselves were normal — no accumulation, no black ice, just moisture, therefore no big deal to me.

Your Mileage May Vary, of course.

We arrived with nearly two hours till general-admission fans would be allowed on the show floor at 11. We found two lines of freezing people waiting outside the two main entrancces of the Sharonville Convention Center, snowflakes wafting toward them and temperatures showing no signs of getting comfy. Without any way to discern a difference between lines, of course we incorrectly joined the wrong line, the one for those who’d paid extra for early admission. A few minutes later, a volunteer’s booming voice confirmed we’d chosen poorly, so we switched lines. A few minutes after that, another helpful fan informed us we were supposed to go inside a third entrance on the west end, trade our tickets for wristbands, come back outside, then join the correct line. Guessing a con’s entry procedures always seems to be part of the Game, but not our favorite part.

We dutifully went inside to make the trade. The kind young ladies at the desk informed us that upgrading to early admission would only cost us $5 apiece. Base admission had only been $25 each, a pittance compared to the large-scale comic-cons we do every year. If it meant one less hour spent waiting in the blizzard, and thereby reducing our chances of returning to work Monday with a terrible cold, to us the ten bucks was worth it. Anne smacked a tenner on the counter, we completed the transaction, we switched to the early-admission line, and we still froze for a while, but for a shorter while than originally planned.

The happy middle-aged couple enduring the elements as a team.

Special shout-out here to the stern volunteer walking up and down the crowd, encouraging us in our survival modes and threatening to eject anyone who tried cutting in line. This is the best kind of volunteer. Another special shout-out to the guy sharing the raised walkway with us who saw a Futurama button fall off my con bag, got out of line, worked his way backward to where the banister ended, came around below our position, grabbed my pin from amid the rock garden below, returned to our level, walked back up the line, and returned the pin to me. He was graciously allowed back in his spot and I was thankful to him, and to fandoms in general for often being cool like that.

As a show of mercy that you wouldn’t expect from a company with the world “horror” in their name, the volunteers let us in a few minutes early. We warmed up, we doffed our accessories, and we prepared to go a-connin’. One problem: if you’re at a con hoping to meet actors, it’s extremely rare for the actors to be at their table, in position, pumped and ready for autographing at the exact moment the doors are unlocked. Most fans will go form lines for the most popular stars and prepare to wait an hour or three till they’re on the clock. We saw dozens doing so for Stranger Things‘ Gaten Matarazzo, the only guest to have his own separate room reserved for signing. All other actors’ tables were split between three different halls, most of whom weren’t there yet. Neither a surprise nor a problem to us.

Among those few exceptions, ready and set from the get-go: James Remar! You may have seen him as a stern villain or mean businessman across dozens of films throughout the decades. These days he’s among the main cast of The CW’s new series Black Lightning. As Peter Gambi, he’s a scientist/inventor who lends his skill set to keeping Our Hero’s super-suit functioning as well as trying to be the voice of reason behind the scenes, when he’s not being forced to confront his murky past and some deals with the devil that have come back to haunt him in recent episodes. Far as I know, he’s the first Black Lightning cast member to hit the convention circuit since the show’s premiere in January. Also, he’s a kind gentleman.

We agreed that if I had access to a more dapper wardrobe, with a few touch-ups I’d nearly be ready to cosplay as Gambi myself.

While we waited for the other big names to filter into the convention center, we wandered the show floor and noted the various booths and displays and whatnot, roughly 98% horror-based. All told, HorrorHound Cincy has more dealers than HorrorHound Indy, but also has much wider aisles for freer walking and more breathing space. Nevertheless, much of the merch on hand wasn’t our thing, though a few items were fun eyeball fodder.

Life-size E.T. statue looms over one corner in honor of the four guests who costarred in the original and were having their own reunion panel on Sunday. Not a horror movie by any definition, but they’ve all performed in other qualifying gigs.

Brief intermission for cosplay! Due to inclement weather, cosplay presence was at critically low levels on Saturday. A few hardy souls brought their A-game anyway for the sake of art and ambiance.

Every horror con must have at least two classic slashers in the house or else why even bother.

An evil scarecrow from, uh, Sons of the Children of the Corn or The Mirror Universe of Oz or whatever.

The proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Frank N. Furter, with unexpected cameos by Negan and Carl from The Walking Dead.

A pumpkin pimp. Or “pimpkin”, more like.

By 11 a.m. the rest of the guest list that we’d hoped to meet had arrived and were all pleasures to meet. Among them was the gentleman in our lead photo, C. Thomas Howell. My wife tells me he’s extremely well known as Ponyboy from The Outsiders, which everyone in my generation saw except me. Ditto Red Dawn, which had its place and time. Instead I remember seeing Tank at the drive-in as a wee lad, I saw Soul Man on cable TV because I couldn’t look away, I endured most of The Hitcher until the part where Rutger Hauer threatened to do ghastly things to Jennifer Jason Leigh, and whatever other films back in the day that my memory has lost. More recently, he was in three episodes of Netflix’s Marvel’s The Punisher, in which he did an outstanding job of holding his own against Jon Bernthal for as long as he could. (Alas, a chance to work on Ray Donovan cut his Punisher stint short.)

We didn’t join the lengthy line for major guest Gaten Matarazzo because there’s something about meeting actors younger than my son that seems like too weird a notion to wrap my brain around, but we did say hi to another key player from Stranger Things — Randy Havens, a.k.a. Mr. Clarke, the best TV science teacher since Mr. Wizard, a lot less evil than that sinister Walter White. Because whenever our young heroes need deep science knowledge to move an episode forward, Mr. Clarke is always there to unknowingly explain plot points and provide solutions to problems they couldn’t possibly reveal to him, all without asking probing questions or reporting them to the authorities. Mr. Clarke is like a distant cousin to my real-life high school chemistry teacher. He’s one of my favorite parts of the show and I remain bitter than he seemed to have less screen time in season 2.

Promo pic for our new science-adventure dramedy “Randy & Randy”.

Anne didn’t watch many horror movies in her youth, and won’t go within 500 yards of them today (I bear some guilt for this, having insisted in the early days of our relationship that she simply “had to” watch Scream), but she remembers one time sitting through Psycho IV: The Beginning costarring Henry Thomas, better known to her as Elliott from the afore-referenced E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. She had planned to hang back and watch me have most of the fun, but she couldn’t resist a moment with Elliott.

Hopefully we weren’t the only attendees who resisted the urge to greet him with “E.T. phone home!” Poor guy has probably heard that seventeen times a day for the last 35 years, which would work out to 217,175 times he’s had to suppress a rising urge to kill.

Our next guest should need no introduction, but maybe he does. I know he was in The Goonies as Ma Fratelli’s younger bumbling idiot son, but I first recall looking up the name of Joe Pantoliano after seeing him yelling a lot at Robert DeNiro in Midnight Run. Since that time I’ve seen him in such films as Memento, The Matrix, The Fugitive, Daredevil, the Bad Boys cinematic universe, and even the TV-movie Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct: Ice, in which I thought he was perfect as bald policeman Meyer Meyer from the original novels. I was one of six viewers who taped that on VHS when it first aired. He’s always been the kind of character actor who makes any scene better and makes you wish the other actors would work harder to keep up with him.

He brought copies of one of his memoirs to sell, which was an awesome surprise. Longtime MCC readers know I love buying new reading matter from con guests.

Our last line of the day was our longest, but not too much of a wait. At the end: Julie Benz! Fans may know her from Dexter, Syfy’s Defiance, and more recently Hawaii Five-O, but to me she’s Darla from TV’s Angel, the vampire responsible for “siring” Angel himself and giving birth to their terrible son, among other evil acts. I also recall the short-lived series No Ordinary Family, in which she and Michael Chiklis presided over their own sort of Fantastic Four, but saw it canceled after one season because ABC wasn’t really equipped for super-hero shows back then.

Another keeper for our jazz-hands gallery.

…

…and that was about the size of our day at our first HorrorHound Cincinnati. These were merely a fraction of the prodigious guest list. A few others we’d already met; most were very much entrenched in horror and splatter and whatnot, a bit beyond our normal scope. All the best panels were scheduled for Sunday, but we couldn’t stick around quite that long.

Rather than loiter in a vain effort to prolong the magic, we took our leave for they day, satisfied with the great experience, starving for lunch, and really not excited about how the snowfall was thickening. More about that in a future entry…

Kylo Ren and friends were the last cosplayers we met at the end of the day, but they’re first in line for our two cosplay galleries.

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fifth annual Indiana Comic Con at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis. It was another opportunity to dive into comic boxes, meet people who make comics, boggle at toy displays, make way for the youngsters who can’t get enough of anime merchandise, and find space to breathe in those cheerfully ever-growing crowds. To be honest, we were surprised how many of the actors on hand were folks we’d met at previous cons, but Anne and I found a few new intriguing names on the guest list and decided to drop by once more.

While we recuperate and wait for our feet to forgive us for their punishment, please enjoy this collection of cosplayers who brightened the day around the show floor. The actors and comics creators will be shared at the end of this special miniseries because everyone loves costumes. In all we took over three dozen pics of varying degrees of tailoring talent and photo quality. We’re dividing the stack into arbitrary halves and letting Part 1 focus on the superstars of the Marvel, DC, and Star Wars universes. We regret we can only represent a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the total cosplay wonderment that was on display this weekend. We’re just an aging couple doing what we can for happy sharing fun. Enjoy!

Darth Revan, one more Sith for good measure.

One of the tallest Wookiees ever to cross our paths.

Thor didn’t need to buy much in the exhibit hall because he already commands one of the coolest toys of all.

Black Panther, Hollywood’s newest A-lister.

Iron Man in classic armor hanging out with a heavily armed understudy.

The American Spider. Or Spider-America. Or American Arachnid. Or Patriot Parker. Whichever.

Star-Lord, Squirrel Girl, and — because J. Jonah Jameson demanded it — MORE PICTURES OF SPIDER-MAN!

Star-Lord rejoins his fellow Guardians of the Galaxy, Yondu and Gamora.

Yondu Poppins, y’all!

He is Groot, but Jack Skellington is not Groot.

Mandatory Deadpool variant department presents a little old Grannypool and her caretaker villain the Joker.

Captain America and Peggy Carter, Marvel’s ultimate star-crossed lovers.

Joker and Harley, DC’s ultimate stark raving mad lovers.

Scarecrow and the Riddler, the couple you never saw coming. Plot twist!

Black Mask. an early-80s Batman villain who later graduated to the Arkham video games.

Mr. Freeze in front of artist Terry Huddleston’s distinctive booth, which we’ve used as a landmark for mapping purposes at several other cons.

Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel (a.k.a. SHAZAM!), and Liberty Belle from the All-Star Squadron. All three are fellow veterans of the annual Superman Celebration in Metropolis, Illinois.

To be continued! Other chapters in this special MCC miniseries:

Part 2: More Cosplay!
Part 3: Who We Met and What We Did [coming soon]

Happy Easter from MCC and from Bunny Fett the Easter Blaster!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fifth annual Indiana Comic Con at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis. It was another opportunity to dive into comic boxes, meet people who make comics, boggle at toy displays, make way for the youngsters who can’t get enough of anime merchandise, and find space to breathe in those cheerfully ever-growing crowds. To be honest, we were surprised how many of the actors on hand were folks we’d met at previous cons, but Anne and I found a few new intriguing names on the guest list and decided to drop by once more.

While we recuperate and wait for our feet to forgive us for their punishment, please enjoy this collection of cosplayers who brightened the day around the show floor. The actors and comics creators will be shared at the end of this special miniseries because everyone loves costumes. In all we took over three dozen pics of varying degrees of tailoring talent and photo quality. We regret we can only represent a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the total cosplay wonderment that was on display this weekend. We’re just an aging couple doing what we can for happy sharing fun…

…and in Part Two, it’s time for all the remaining cosplay that’s fit to print from the worlds of TV, animation, gaming, Netflix, and more. Enjoy! Again!

Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hanging out with old pal Usagi Yojimbo, another bunny who thought to bring a basket for the holiday weekend.

Princess Fiona, who can handle herself just fine without Shrek, thank you very much.

Mario’s pal Princess Peach, and the heroic Mermaid Man from Spongebob Squarepants.

The cast of Bob’s Burgers!

Leela, Fry, Bender, and Nibbler from Futurama.

A frightening Bender/Leela mash-up.

Beast and Belle, a tale as old as time.

Maleficent and the Queen of Hearts, disappointed to be surrounded by so many smiling faces who shall RUE THE DAY.

Sirius Black and the Fat Lady, fellow veterans of Cincinnati Comic Expo and two among the thousands of Harry Potter fans in the house this weekend.

Eleven and Chief Hopper, two of the eleventy billion fellow fans of Stranger Things that convened on the scene.

Georgie’s worstest of worst nightmares: two Pennywises.

We don’t photograph a lot of anime costumes because I’m familiar with maybe 0.003% of them, but this time I gambled on the possibility that my son might recognize them, as he often does. This time, he’s stumped. Little help, anyone?

One my son did help identify this time: Star Guardian Ahru from League of Legends.

Another stumper. To me it looks like Lobo murdered a Dragon Age character and stole his armor, but I’m sure I’m wrong.

She’s David Pumpkins! ANY QUESTIONS?

Speaking of monsters: Reptar from Rugrats.

Pyramid Head from Silent Hill.

Raiden from Mortal Kombat with electrically charged accessories.

Lawn gnome wizard, possibly an addition to later editions of Dungeons & Dragons.

“HEY, I’M GUY FIERI AND I’M LOOKING FOR SOME AWESOME GRUB RIGHT HERE IN THIS CONVENTION CENTER BECAUSE I’VE LOST MY MIND! TODAY ON TRIPLE-D!”

To be concluded! Other chapters in this special MCC miniseries:

Part 1: Cosplay!
Part 3: Who We Met and What We Did [coming soon]

Kate Bishop a.k.a. Hawkeye, and Samurai Iron Man!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The ninth annual Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″) just wrapped another three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, Funko Pops, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. Each year C2E2 keeps inching ever closer to its goal of becoming the Midwest’s answer to the legendary San Diego Comic Con and other famous cons in larger, more popular states. My wife Anne and I missed the first year, but have attended every year since 2011 as a team.

In this special miniseries I’ll be sharing memories and photos from our own C2E2 experience and its plethora of pizzazz…

If it’s a convention, that means it’s time for more cosplay photos! Anne and I are fans of costumes and try to keep an eye out for heroes, villains, antiheroes, supporting casts, and various oddities that look impressive and/or we haven’t seen at other cons. First up: a great big batch of characters from assorted iterations of the Marvel Universe, movies as well as comics. These aren’t even all the Marvel characters we saw, but I had to draw my arbitrary dividing lines through our nearly five dozen costume photos where I could. Caveats for first-time visitors to Midlife Crisis Crossover:

1. My wife and I are not professional photographers, nor do we believe ourselves worthy of press passes. These were taken as best as possible with the intent to share with fellow fans out of a sincere appreciation for the works inspired by the heroes, hobbies, artistic expressions, and/or intellectual properties that brought us geeks together under one vaulted roof for the weekend. We did what we could with the tools and circumstances at hand. We don’t use selfie sticks, tripods, or cameras that cost more than a month’s worth of groceries.

2. It’s impossible for any human or organization to capture every costume on hand. What’s presented in this series will be a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the sum total costume experience. Other corners of the internet will represent those other fractions that we missed, which is the cool part of having so many people doing this sort of thing.

3. We didn’t attend Sunday. As previously explained at excessive length, we also nearly never do costume contests anymore. Sincere apologies to anyone we missed as a result.

4. Corrections and comments are always welcome, especially when we get to Part 4, which will include at least two characters we young geezers didn’t recognize. I do like learning new names and universes even if you’re more immersed in them than I am.

5. Enjoy!

Loki and Hela, who probably get along better in another timeline.

Another Hela and Dr. Strange.

Future movie star Captain Marvel and USAgent, a sort of alt-Captain America from the ’90s who hasn’t made it to the big screen yet.

Thor modeling the Infinity Gauntlet in front of the Avengers: Infinity War poster at the Marvel booth.

Ghost Rider, the very first cosplayer we encountered this weekend.

I brake for the unbeatable Squirrel Girl (and Tippy-Toe!) whenever and wherever possible.

Mandatory Deadpool variants, 1 of 4: Santapool. You better watch out! You’d better not DIE.

Breakfastpool brings his own unicorn cereal and, uh, Infinity Gauntlet.

I like to imagine Sheriff Woodypool yelling, “THERE’S A SNAKE IN MY BOOT!” and then shooting his own foot off, because it’s the only way to be sure.

Lady Deadpool demonstrating how we felt later when we had to settle for convention center cheese pizza for dinner.

The Wasp, one of the original Avengers from back in the day, well before Captain America joined the team and began hogging all the glory.

Say what you will about X-Men: The Last Stand, such as “It was sooooo horrible!” or “Why did you say that name? Uuuuggghh”, but Kelsey Grammer’s performance as the Beast, if not his fur, was eminently salvageable.

The Juggernaut, another scarred X3 survivor.

Hip-hop Hulk out in the lobby Saturday afternoon, kicking it old-school.

Hulk’s dance partner Spider-Man, who also happens to be one of the guys down at my local comic shop.

Punk rock Spider-Man bringing a different vibe.

Marvel Team-Up presents Elektra and X-23.

The Beetle, a classic Marvel villain who’s fought both Spidey and Daredevil, but has yet to be invited onto a live-action Marvel stage. Someday, maybe?

To be continued! Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:

Part 1: Another Jazz Hands Gallery!
Part 3: More Cosplay!
Part 4: Last Call for Cosplay!
Part 5: Comics Creators Cavalcade
Part 6: Who Else We Met and What We Did
Part 7: Random Acts of Pop Culture

Jedi Retiree Luke Skywalker swigging green milk, a nutritious part of every space breakfast.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The ninth annual Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″) just wrapped another three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, Funko Pops, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. Each year C2E2 keeps inching ever closer to its goal of becoming the Midwest’s answer to the legendary San Diego Comic Con and other famous cons in larger, more popular states. My wife Anne and I missed the first year, but have attended every year since 2011 as a team.

In this special miniseries I’ll be sharing memories and photos from our own C2E2 experience and its plethora of pizzazz. If it’s a convention, that means it’s time for more cosplay photos! Anne and I are fans of costumes and try to keep an eye out for heroes, villains, antiheroes, supporting casts, and various oddities that look impressive and/or we haven’t seen at other cons…

Part Two featured the majority of Marvel characters we met. This time around, the arbitrary chapter divisions bring us to the amazing world of DC Comics, including a handful of Marvel/DC team-ups. As a value-added bonus, also on deck are heroes and villains from the Star Wars universe plus a selection of video game personalities, just because. Same disclaimers apply as in Part Two. Enjoy! Again!

Blue Beetle (the Jaime Reyes version) and Okoye from Black Panther.

Batman Beyond and an unlikely partner in the Mole Man, the very first Fantastic Four villain.

Bane and Doctor Octopus, hoping in vain for a future Batman v. Spider-Man film.

We previously hung out with the Joker at Wizard World Chicago 2017 as part of a group stymied at a seriously annoying security checkpoint. His vocal and physical performance are an eerily accurate tribute to Mark Hamill, and lend themselves to some great photos on his Instagram feed.

Vigilante, one of DC’s cowboy heroes from way back when. He also appeared in an episode of Justice League Unlimited with the voice of Nathan Fillion.

Also animated: the Legion of Doom from Super-Friends — Gorilla Grodd, Captain Cold, Bizarro, Catwoman, and Black Manta. Bonus points if you know which one was not a Legion of Doom member.

I’m old enough to remember watching Plastic Man’s show on Saturday mornings. Too bad nobody ever cosplays as Hula-Hula or Baby Plas.

I believe you know Wonder Woman.

Mera, star of the upcoming blockbuster Aquaman, whom you may recall from three of the weirdest minutes of Snyder and Whedon’s Justice League.

Speaking of which: Aquaman alongside Winged Warrior Woody Woodpecker.

Costar of another blockbuster franchise: Supreme Chancellor Snoke, whose backstory will probably be explained some day in a six-part Algerian children’s audiobook, but never ever in an actual Star Wars movie.

Clone Wars star Ahsoka Tano.

Mara Jade Skywalker, proving the Star Wars Expanded Universe will never actually die as long as all the bookshelves of its fans never catch fire simultaneously.

Jawas! Making the world safe for undertall cosplay.

Darth Vader: the original Kenner action figure! Complete with unyielding, awkward, hard plastic cape and lightsaber that retracts inside his arm. This is a painstakingly accurate depiction of why I preferred GI Joe figures.

Also from my childhood, sort of: Super Mario’s big bad King Bowser.

Another Bowser, this one riding in his Koopa clown car from Super Mario World, plus a Princess Peach who’s scandalized that we paparazzi have caught her with him.

A hero from my young-adult arcade years: Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat.

From my old-adult gaming years: 9-Toes, one of the first bosses from the original Borderlands.

To be continued! Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:

Part 1: Another Jazz Hands Gallery!
Part 2: Marvel Cosplay!
Part 4: Last Call for Cosplay!
Part 5: Comics Creators Cavalcade
Part 6: Who Else We Met and What We Did
Part 7: Random Acts of Pop Culture

Princess Lolly from Candy Land, the classic board game that taught us kids all about colors and sugar.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The ninth annual Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″) just wrapped another three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, Funko Pops, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. Each year C2E2 keeps inching ever closer to its goal of becoming the Midwest’s answer to the legendary San Diego Comic Con and other famous cons in larger, more popular states. My wife Anne and I missed the first year, but have attended every year since 2011 as a team.

In this special miniseries I’ll be sharing memories and photos from our own C2E2 experience and its plethora of pizzazz. If it’s a convention, that means it’s time for more cosplay photos! Anne and I are fans of costumes and try to keep an eye out for heroes, villains, antiheroes, supporting casts, and various oddities that look impressive and/or we haven’t seen at other cons…

Part Two featured the majority of Marvel characters we met; Part Three covered more Marvel, DC Comics, Star Wars, and a bit of video games. This time around: all the cosplay that’s fit to print and left to post. Same disclaimers apply as in Part Two. Enjoy! Some more! Still!

G-FORCE! Tiny and Jason from Battle of the Planets. Or Gatchaman, if you’re hardcore.

Ralph Hinkley, the original Greatest American Hero.

Dream a.k.a. Morpheus from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, and Elsa Lanchester, Bride of Frankenstein.

Sophia from The Golden Girls is easily recognizable to us Gen-X-ers, but Anne and I debated quite a bit over which ones the other two were.

The Rocketeer, doing Dave Stevens proud.

Kaylee’ s lovely ball gown (and strawberries) from the Firefly episode “Shindig”.

Quidditch team representing for the world of Harry Potter, along with an accidental Syndrome from The Incredibles. I usually leave unintentional Easter-egg cosplayers unlabeled for readers to discover on their own, but what the hey.

One of our convention traditions is a little game called “Cosplay Stumpers”, in which we photograph a few cool costumes we don’t recognize and see if my son knows them later. He failed to identify this winged warrior and forfeited many points.

Also stumping us: similar to one of Aquaman’s old color schemes, but a design akin to Princess Ariel’s.

My original caption was “Medieval knights from that one thing with the medieval knights in it”, but I just now dug more deeply and confirmed these are Riften guards from Skyrim, which should’ve been included in Part Three with other gaming characters. My bad!

The Egyptian god Anubis.

Dueling Reptars from Nickelodeon’s Rugrats.

Dueling Walter Whites from not-Nickelodeon’s Breaking Bad.

The Queen of Hearts from Tim Burton’s colorful but depressing Alice in Wonderland sequel.

Aang from Avatar: the Last Airbender.

It’s rare to see sports-legend cosplayers, such as Super Bowl XLIX breakout star Left Shark.

Moana and Hei Hei, who thankfully didn’t keep running headlong into dealer displays.

Miguel from Pixar’s Coco, my favorite film of 2017. I still tear up every time I think of “Remember Me”.

To be continued! Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:

Part 1: Another Jazz Hands Gallery!
Part 2: Marvel Cosplay!
Part 3: More Cosplay!
Part 5: Comics Creators Cavalcade
Part 6: Who Else We Met and What We Did
Part 7: Random Acts of Pop Culture

Doctor Octopus is ready for battle, as is the brand new carpeting in the Stephens Center lobby!

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife and I made another journey up to Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we found ample enjoyment and new purchases alongside peers and aficionados of comics and genre entertainment. A few guest cancellations dampened our spirits somewhat, but we persevered and enjoyed our couple’s outing anyway, especially since Anne’s entire weekend admission was free as a consolation prize given to her and a couple thousand other fans after David Tennant’s last-minute cancellation last year.

Once again we lead off a new convention miniseries with the mandatory cosplay galleries. We captured whoever we could while wandering the show floor Friday and Saturday in between the autograph lines, the random bits of shopping, and the nightmarish photo-op area, whose Saturday morning state I previously described on Facebook as “a dumpster fire run over by Pamplona bulls being chased by multiple Sharknados.” Anyway: the first three chapters will represent a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the costumes that were in the house. Because I always feel the need to divide cosplayers into arbitrary categories, our first set spotlights the stars of screen and page from the multimedia worlds of Marvel and DC Comics. As always, keep in mind we’re not paid professionals with $3000 cameras. We’re a pair of geeks all too happy to share photos and give away amateur journalism for free. Enjoy!

An old-school Doc Ock mixing it up with his worst enemy.

Okoye! Black Panther! Ulysses Klaue! Killmonger!

Ant-Man and the Wasp and their new bouncer Drax.

Scarlet Witch and Dr. Strange, who probably could’ve taken Thanos together if CERTAIN HEROES hadn’t SCREWED UP.

Years into it, the Deadpool cosplay craze still hasn’t died. This one brought his own unicorn pool-pal.

Another Deadpool insists that’s not an inflatable unicorn. This is an inflatable unicorn.

Everyone loves Deadpool’s unicorn, from Harley Quinn…

…to Poison Ivy. Well, maybe Rey and Kylo Ren don’t love Deadpool.

Another Deadpool accompanies a classic villain called Taskmaster, who duplicated all the weapons and physical abilities of the Avengers. Sadly for him, none of the Avengers was a unicorn.

Bob Rosspool, all but certain his favorite happy place is in a unicorn painting.

Wolverine was dead for awhile recently, and Deadpool was right there with the tasteless protest at his funeral.

Beverly Goldbergpool is more about ducks than unicorns.

Mandatory Squirrel Girl. I’d post an entire Squirrel Girl cosplay gallery if only we’d met more. Rats.

Starfire and Raven of the Teen Titans, now in theaters! Unlike Squirrel Girl, who is not.

The great Mary Marvel, who probably won’t be in next year’s Shazam movie unless they can find a less litigious name.

A better Green Lantern than Ryan Reynolds. Then again, who hasn’t been.

I didn’t mind Mark Strong as Sinestro, but this one is a contender for that coveted yellow ring.

Special shout-out to Jimmy Olsen, who kept my wife company in Tom Welling’s autograph line while I was off bulldozing my way through a crowd of upset Outlander fans. They agreed Olsen was a far better photographer than Peter Parker, glorified master of super-selfies.

Speaking of which: Spider-Man and his amazing variants!

To be continued! Other chapters in this special MCC miniseries:

Part 2: Movie Cosplay!
Part 3: Last Call for Cosplay!
Part 4: Ghostbusters!
Part 5: Who Else We Met, What Else We Did
Part 6: Objects of Affection

Costume Contest winners, Group/Duo division: various ghosts from the cast of Beetlejuice, including Michael Keaton and Alec Baldwin!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife and I made another journey up to Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we found ample enjoyment and new purchases alongside peers and aficionados of comics and genre entertainment. Once again we lead off a new convention miniseries with the mandatory cosplay galleries. We captured whoever we could while wandering the show floor Friday and Saturday…

Rather than piling 50-60 photos into a single entry that takes weeks to scroll through, our process of arbitrary gallery groupings continues, this time with a batch of characters from assorted movies, both live-action and animated. Some are admittedly movie-adjacent, but the point is costumes. Enjoy!

A different kind of spirit: a pair of Pennywises from Stephen King’s It.

Li’l Georgie Denbrough, floating up here.

Ghostface, leader and sole member of the Occupy Sidney movement.

Cruella DeVil carrying her future hat.

Jack Skellington and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

An awfully chummy Ripley and xenomorph remind viewers that Alien Resurrection is canon whether they like it or not.

I know zilch about Star Wars New Canon outside the movies, so for all I know this Sith could be on the list.

Or they’re both “Bring Back Legends” characters that my wife never mentioned. Or she mentioned them but didn’t show me photos.

From the new hit film, Christopher Robin with pals Pooh and Piglet.

The soon-to-be-rebooted Hellboy hanging out with Mad Moxxi from Borderlands.

You might remember Lady Liberty from such films as Planet of the Apes, Cloverfield, X-Men, and Ghostbusters 2.

Elastigirl gets a helping hand from TV’s the Tick and Bob the Builder,

Also from The Incredibles: Edna Mode and Dash, naturally looking fabulous.

To be continued! Other chapters in this special MCC miniseries:

Part 1: Marvel and DC Cosplay!
Part 3: Last Call for Cosplay!
Part 4: Ghostbusters!
Part 5: Who Else We Met, What Else We Did
Part 6: Objects of Affection