Con Report: Wizard World Philly

By Lisa Fary

Wizard World Philly 2009 featured broken dreams, plenty of empty floor space, and Beaker smoking alone on a street corner in the rain. All for the price of $30 for Saturday admission.

Really, Wizard World? $30 for convention hall that’s only half filled? Many of the con-goers on the floor suspect that this will be the last WW Philly and Wizard was trying to take the geeks for all we’re worth.

Some quick points of contention:

The entry set up sucked. It wasn’t clear where to go to buy tickets or pick up tickets bought online.

Volunteers were way more helpful than Philly Convention Center employees. Due to the crappy entry set up, we wound up in the wrong place and without wristbands. An employee angrily said, “You need to go over there,” and flung his arm to the left. We approach the booth to the left, and present our pre-purchased registration barcodes. The employee has no idea what he’s looking at and says we need to go back downstairs. Where downstairs? Just downstairs. It was like being at the Newark International Airport.  An orange shirted con volunteer finally directed us. “Downstairs, on the right, just past the up escalator.”

It was more of a geeky flea market with wrestlers than a convention. HeroesCon was going on in Charlotte, NC the same weekend and appears to be a bigger draw. That’s where the DC Comics pavilion was. And Marvel. And Boom! Studios. Not to mention a reasonable admission price ($15 for a day compared to Wizard’s $30). There was a lot of emptiness in the Wizard convention hall, as demonstrated by John and our friend, Gary.

And now, the highlights:

A Circus of Bargains!

Everywhere you looked, there was a comic dealer with rows and rows of ten for a buck comics and five dollar trades. You get this at every con, but at WW Philly, it seemed especially prevalent.  Hard cover copies of Neil Gaiman’s run on Eternals were going for five bucks all over the place, as was The Dark Tower hardcover trade. We left one dealer with six trades for twenty bucks.

John McCain is a Choking Hazard, Has Small Parts

“Dirt Cheap McCains! All McCains Must Go!”  The signs behind a mountain of John McCain action figures read. They’re going for a dollar each. I want to buy one and don’t know why. I just love the idea of a big bag o’ dirt cheap McCains. John enables me with a brilliant idea.

“I’d like five dirt cheap McCains, please,” I say, forking over a five dollar bill.

“For five bucks, I’ll give you six!”

“What are you going to do with all those dirt cheap McCains?” he asks.

“I’m going to use them as a$$hole awards.”

No Justice for Cally Tyrol

In Autograph Alley, we pass Erin Gray and John immediately turns beet red at the sight of his first TV crush, shuffling past her as fast as he can. We also see Ray Park, Doug Jones, Kristanna Loken and Emma Caulfield. Ted Raimi is there, too, with a steady geek mob at his table. Also, the ever-present Peter Mayhew and Lou Ferrigno.

Then, inexplicably, a bunch of wrestlers from the 1980s. Obviously, there’s a connection between pro-wrestling and geekdom; I’m just not sure what it is.

Michael Hogan and Edward James Olmos are mobbed at their tables. There’s a line of people waiting to meet Luciana Carro, the actress who played Kat in a few episodes. At the table between, where no one is lined up first thing in the morning, sits Nicki Clyne.

That annoyed me. She is such a nice girl and Cally was my favorite character on BSG. She was strong and tough in a more accessible way than most of the BSG women. She wasn’t a gun toting, Viper flying ass kicker, but she was plucky and, if necessary, would totally bite a thug’s ear off.  I was horrified at what was done to her character in and after death.

“It makes me angry just thinking about it,” I tell Nicki. “It made absolutely no sense.”

“I thought they were joking when I read it!” she exclaimed.

My Boobs in Black Leather

I’m in a cramped dressing cubicle with a really aggressive sales girl, who is hooking up the latches on the front of a black leather corset. Once she has the latches closed, she dramatically throws back the curtain and yanks me out by the corset’s laces.

“I have scoliosis,” I say as she pulls the laces tighter, drawing in my waist and pumping my boobs up higher than any bra ever could. “Be gentle.”

“This is the sexy version of the back brace you wore in high school,” she says. And she’s right. In the mirror, I’m standing up straighter than usual and it’s not a struggle to maintain the posture.

“I’m an acupuncturist,” she says. “I could prescribe this to you!”

An acupuncturist prescribing a costume piece to treat scoliosis. I wonder how my insurance company would respond when presented with that claim.

A sweaty dude pokes John and asks, “Can I take a picture of her?”  John delivers a death stare that says, “No.”

If the corset had been a little longer, came down further in the front instead of cutting off just below the belly button, that could have been a sale. I only wore it for a few minutes, but my usually constant back pain was gone for the rest of the day.

I Keep Running into Colonel Tigh

John, Gary, and I went across the street to Reading Terminal Market for lunch. It’s always tight in there on Saturdays – the only way to get through is to squeeze through the humanity.

That’s how I almost ran head first into Michael Hogan. He was unrecognizable without the scowl and crazy eye and I didn’t realize it was him until a second later.

After fish tacos at 12th St Cantina’s booth, the three of us headed out, passing by the center court seating area where Hogan was having lunch with Edward James Olmos and Nicki Clyne. Clyne says something and all three look over, smile, and wave.

The cast of BSG just waved at me. In public (real public, not con public) I think I waved back; I’m not really sure if I was that cool about it.

Later, John is taking a picture of me with my giant bag of dirt cheap McCains and Hogan walks through the frame, giving me a smile and nod. I nod back.

“Joh, tell me you got him in the picture!” I says after Hogan’s disappeared through the side door.

“Got who?”

So, it’s just me in the expanse of empty floor space.

John and Erin, Sittin’ in a Tree. . .

We made one last sweep of Autograph Alley before leaving. John tries to rush by Erin Gray again, but she makes eye contact, smiles and says hello. He has to talk to her now.  And he has to take a picture with her – Gary and I prodded him into doing it.

“I’m sure you constantly get forty year old guys telling you they had a crush on you when they were thirteen,” he says while I’m framing the shot.

Erin laughs and says, “My son said I should have a t-shirt made that says, ‘Yes, I know I was your first.’”

Beaker’s Bad Habit

On the way out, our last vision of Wizard World Philly was Beaker smoking alone on a street corner, a crumbling building and parking garage behind him, stains on his lab coat.

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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.

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