The 4th was with us – Comic-Con Revolution Ontario

It’s that time of year again, folks. Dennis is busy making an incredible and fattening dinner for me. We ran out of time, which included stopping quickly to vote in the California primaries – which we were not going to miss for anything – and after all of our errands today, I needed to step in and do a guest blog to keep Dennis’s sterling reputation of never missing a Sunday’s post.

After a relaxing day spent with my niece and her family as well as settling into Chateau Layton, we were off to the convention. Each day was so jam-packed with sights, cosplay, merch and panels, we decided to split the blog into two, reviewing each day separately.

We get that excited feeling when we get off the freeway and see the convention center – until we see the line to get into the parking lot, that is. It took us 25 minutes to cross the front of the convention center, make the u-turn around the center divider and actually park. But then, with an historic attendance of 10,000 – 20,000 attendees each year so far, I guess we really can’t complain. We did get one of literally the LAST TWO parking spaces in the overflow lot opposite the convention center, after all!

Dennis was immediately attracted to a table with HUGE banners. They turned out to be the media banners that are behind the attendees in the autograph area. Tara Strong, for example, is a HUGE draw, having worked in the industry for 39 years (since she was 13). She was the original English voice actress to do “Hello Kitty” when the cartoon came to America. She probably holds the world’s record for doing separate VA characters in the industry, having done over 600 to date!

I was on a mission the first day to find an artist in Artist Alley we had seen the year before. Jessica had found her first and brought me over to see a Helluva Boss charm bracelet, which took me all of approximately five seconds to decide to buy. Being a jewelry maker, I modified it when I got home to better fit my wrist, spaced out the character charms better and removed some excess links.

This time I wanted to see if the vendor had extra charms I could purchase because the charms keep flipping to the backside on my wrist. We did eventually find her and I bought the charms she had with her. She was so nice, she tore apart 3 pairs of earrings to get me the charms I wanted and only charged be $1.00 for each charm, bless her heart! She even gave me her phone number to contact her to get the others I had missed. I can’t recommend her enough and though I didn’t get the name of her booth, she is pretty typical of how nice sellers are in our fandom community when they are into the media themselves.

Something, however, we were surprised to see there outside of Gallifrey One…this guy!

He was a strange one…never saw a PURPLE Dalek before. But he was perfectly built, as well as sporting the typical, hellish Dalek glow under his casing. Kudos to the creator!

Daleks weren’t the only thing roaming the hallways. We caught this amazing cosplay of One Piece’s Admiral Garth from the insanely popular animation and Netflix’s live action show.

His snail phone was absolutely ADORABLE…well, as adorable as a snail can be. But I say it was adorable because it was EMBROIDERED AND STUFFED and was a fabric piece of art that was very clearly made by an incredibly talented individual.

Can’t make calls on it, sadly, they tell us, though.

My favorite Star Wars author, Timothy Zahn, was back again with more interesting tales of getting into writing – a sharp departure from his PhD in, of all things, physics! It’s hard to read from here, but he carried this little stuffed Porg all over the convention with him with a sign that read, “Very Important Porg”.

It was a rare opportunity to get into the mind of the man who created a compelling Star Wars villain that carried us through the Star Wars: Zahn Trilogy of books during the dark times of the 1990s when there were no movies to keep us nerds happy and fed. His bad guy of those books, Grand Admiral Thrawn, is one of the very few characters who has made the leap from the published medium of books to comics to Star Wars animation (Star Wars: Rebels) and on to live action (Star Wars: Ahsoka). So few have captured the imaginations of the lords of Lucasfilm with such an enduring character!

Yet another bad guy in the dealer’s room. Who remembers Aku from the Cartoon Network show Samurai Jack? How do these guys get in here?

There was even a giant Pikachu roaming the hallways. I think it was there to take over the convention, but there was no spire at the top of the convention center to swing from, so it decided to terrorize everyone at ground level instead.

I think these people need better security!

Finally, to close out the review of the first day of the convention, I leave you with a slideshow of some other interesting sights;