Comic Con Talk (Renamed since LA Comic Con can't get it together)

Just getting back and settled after Louisiana Comic Con. The last one in October was on my son's birthday. This time, it just so happened to be my daughter's birthday. Kinda crazy how that worked out. Anyway, we got there about 12:30 and I headed straight to Kane Hodder's table. There were only a few people ahead of me and I got my Funko autographed in no time. I was absolutely thrilled to meet him and the $60 price for the auto was fine with me. Now, there was an opportunity to have a picture taken with him in costume later in the day, but that was $120 and I just couldn't see spending that. I went about my merry little way and met up with my daughter, who was getting an auto from a My Hero Academia voice actor. About the same time, my son and his buddy find us. My daughter pulls something up on her phone and gets my son's friend to start recording. She asks me if I enjoyed meeting Kane Hodder. I said, "Yes, of course." Then she shows me her phone. Even though it was HER birthday, she decided to buy the photo op for me so that I could get my picture taken with Jason in costume. It took me a few moments to understand what she had done and I got a little dust in eyes.

After the Q&A panel with him, it was time to go line up for the photo op. I was about tenth in line. When I came around the curtain and saw him in costume, I must admit that there was a little part of me that went, "Oh shirt." Even though my brain fully realized it was not real, after watching the Friday movies all my life, there was a tiny part that freaked out because a real life Jason was in front of me. So, after the people in front of me get their picture taken, the photographer said, "We're having a tech issue up front with the printers, so we need to pause and get it fixed." I'm standing there, ten feet away from Jason and he says in a playfully (yet scary) way, "This makes me want to kill someone." I looked at him and made a little shake of my head and said, "Please, not me man, this wasn't my fault." and without missing a beat, he replies, "Yeah, sure, that's what they all say." Hodder has such a great personality and clearly enjoys his fans. So after a few minutes, it's time to take the picture. I step up beside him and get the picture taken with a big ol' smile on my face. After it's done, he gives me a light backhand to the chest and says, "Thanks for hanging in there for this." Needless to say, I was beyond excited.

As for the con itself, they definitely refined things a bit more as to make the flow of everything easier. By moving it to March, we didn't have to fight any football crowds like we did in October, so that was a massive plus. Wristbands were handled differently than in October. If you had already bought online, you just walked up to the tables and got them. In October, you had to go to the ticket windows. A quick metal detector scan at the door and we were in. The main floor was arranged the same as usual, but there was plenty of space because they had moved some of the celeb tables to the second floor (along with a couple vendors). They still had plenty of space to grow. The crowd was good and there were plenty of cool cosplayers. We wrapped up the trip with a little pizza at Dean-O's.

Overall, it was a highly enjoyable con and I'm looking forward to the next one. Well, actually, the next one would be Geek'd Con because I'm for sure going meet Superman, but certainly will return to Lafayette next March.