SLCC15 - Saturday

Okay it took me a couple of months, but here goes the last installment of my ComicCon adventures.  This was on Sept 26th.

What a wild and crazy weekend!  I was sad to think I only had one day left of ComicCon.  Because of all the hype surrounding the Captain America cast in attendance, one of the most highly anticipated events was the Chris Evans and Anthony Mackie panel to be held on Saturday morning.  To combat the inevitable crowds of people willing to wait in line for hours to get a seat, the staff at SLCC made the event a lottery entrance.  Essentially everyone who had purchased a ticket to the con was eligible to put in the lottery for a possible slot.  This made sense, but saddened me since I figured with over 100,000 people in attendance, my chances were a bit low to be drawn out of the lottery.  This is where my excellent VIP ticket really came through.  Apparently having VIP greatly increased your odds, and after checking my email all through Thursday and Friday, I found out Friday night I had been granted entrance!  However, my line-up time for the 10 o'clock even was 7:40am.  Fantastic.

Early morning at the Salt Palace.

To ensure time to drive downtown, find parking, and put together my outfit for the day, it made for a very early morning.  The actual con floor didn't even open till 9:30, so the only people at the Salt Palace were there for the Evans panel, or the Superhero 5k.  Seriously, if everything else wasn't going on, I totally would've been up for the run.  Especially since Sean Austin was in the running!

Recognize him?  This is good old Samwise Gamgee.  Apparently he's good at running as well as walking to Mordor (and crying).

As it was, I was pretty excited I actually got to park in the Salt Palace lot, which had a "lot full" sign in front of it the two previous days.  It was a lot closer, and slightly cheaper than parking at the mall.  With my VIP status, and my lottery ticket to the panel, I went straight in through weapons check, and right to the ballroom.  I got a pretty good seat right in the center seating panel with a straight line of sight to the stage.  Since it was a good two hours before panel start, I got a close-up photo with the Captain motorcycle.

I then settled into my seat with my iPad to watch the new season of Arrow!  It kept me pretty entertained until the empty seat next to me was filled by an exceptionally large woman.  I felt like I was on an airplane, having to give up half my seat for the next three hours.  Even worse, I'd arrived at least 40 minutes prior to this woman.  Super frustrating.  Despite that, we got all kinds of excited as they continued to make fun announcements.  For instance, if it's the sort of thing you care about, #SLCC15 was the number one trending topic on Facebook and Instagram in the world!  That's right, Utah is famous.

Finally around 10:30, the panel got going.  It kicked off with an awesome montage of the films Chris Evans has been in, and finally the man himself!

Chris with the two founders.  I'm somewhere right in the center!

This panel was so high energy, it was insane!  First thing he got talking about was how everyone seemed nervous getting photos and asking for hugs with him.  He then happily announced that anyone who wanted was welcome to hug him!  What a nice guy.  Also, wish I had known that a day earlier when I had my chance to meet him.  The emcee talked with him for a bit, then they got to the fan questions.  A lot of them wanted tidbits from the new Captain America movie, Civil War.  Marvel is keeping that plot pretty close to the chest, so Chris was pretty restricted on what he could answer.  He also talked a little bit about his anxiety and acting process.  However, Chris kept getting interrupted by his costars just wandering in behind him.

Both Anthony Mackie and Hayley Atwell showed up unannounced during Chris' panel.  It was like a fun little reunion!

Hayley didn't say much, leaving most of the talking to Chris.  He actually gave pretty serious, thought-out answers to most of the fan questions.  Because they're on "off season," all three of the Captain guys were lamenting about how small they were, and how excited they were to be off the restricted diet and workout schedule.  Chris even had a nice little beard going because he's currently filming a role as a philosophy professor.  One of the favorite questions had to do with Civil War, and whose side Chris Evans would be on.  Without revealing any spoilers from the movie, and going strictly from the comic book story, we know that Cap and Iron Man will be on opposite sides of an argument having to do with superhero registration.  (Look out guys, I'm getting deep with the comic books!  I still have never read the comics, just have friends that do...)  Chris gave a somewhat convoluted answer, but the upshot is that he saw himself as being more on Iron Man's side of the argument.  I'm pretty intrigued to see the new movie now!

He got a couple more questions in before ending the panel.  We were sad to see him go, but Anthony Mackie more than made up for it.  He stayed for another hour, and was all kinds of entertaining!  As one of the few African American heros in film, he got several questions towards that point.  He told an amusing story about filming a scene where he swoops onto a rooftop as the Falcon.  During the stunt work he basically swung as a pendulum on a rope that was lowered as he swung so he could make contact with the ground.  The stunt man made it through just fine, but when it came time for Anthony, whoever was holding the rope slipped, and he ended up skidding along the ground face-first.  It was a nice face plant, followed by nonchalantly jumping up saying, "what's up Tony?"  At some point the emcee challenged him to a push-up contest, which Anthony won with style.  Apparently he's very accomplished at push-ups, and has even bested Sebastian Stan and Chris on set!

After all the Captain America fun, most of the people cleared out of the Ballroom.  However, I decided to stick around for the next panel for Ian Somerhalder.  I first saw him in Lost, but now love him from Vampire Diaries.  This guy had actually flown in to the Salt Lake Airport just that morning.

Ian actually plays a pretty major role in several environmental endeavors, explaining why he is so busy between that and filming.  It was neat to hear a bit about what he and his wife were doing to promote caring for the environment.  On to the questions.  He was asked what his favorite scene to film was, and he brought up a scene where Damon is drunk in the bathtub, and apparently while filming he was just straight up naked.  I guess at the end of the scene he jumped up and just started wandering around set naked.  He joked about how quickly he cleared the room full of male support staff.  He then went on to talk about how filming a TV series really generates a feeling of family between everyone, simply because you're working together for years at a time.  Besides, they had all seen him naked.  Haha!

While exiting this panel I somehow managed to drop my phone.  In a huge semi-dark room with hundreds of people, I was kinda freaking out about trying to locate it.  After no luck re-tracing my steps, I found a nice guy who let me try to call my phone.  Luckily some nice person had already picked it up and turned it in (instead of stealing it!), so I was back in business.  Seriously, I've got insurance on my phone if it vanished, so the worst part about loosing it was loosing my camera for the day!  Taking photos is one of my favorite activities at the con!

Captain Picard taken over by the Borg!  I thought that was pretty creative.

After that I wandered around and found some awesome cosplayers.  I'm going to ramble about these guys for just a minute.

This is a group called the Rebel Legion, and they are composed of Star Wars costumers who attend charity events dressed as movie accurate Star Wars characters.  This is a group I'm actually interested in joining, and they have a fairly rigorous set of requirements for their outfits.  That Saturday I wore my Jedi outfit, and took a moment to check with these guys on my accuracy.  You are actually required - down to some specific measurements - to have a certain number of accessories, etc to qualify.  Hence the new lightsaber attached to my screen-accurate belt.  I even made "Jedi food capsules" which you can see attached to my belt.  Yeah, I never really noticed those things on the movies...  Anyway, aside from one more accessory, I'm basically qualified!  Hooray.  I hope you guys wanted to know all of this stuff.

Forgive the poor quality.  I didn't get a digital copy of this one.

My next scheduled event was a photo op with Hayley Atwell, or Captain Carter.  Due to the high-profile celebrities present, the lines for the photo ops were a bit of a zoo.  Seriously, I waited in line forever, even with a VIP pass.  While waiting in line we saw Ian Somerhalder make a run for the restroom.  It was actually pretty funny!  It was fun to meet Hayley.  Afterward I spent some time on the vendor floor checking out cosplays, booths, and slowly adding stuff to my photo scavenger hunt.  Because there are often a lot of people cosplaying for particular fandoms (Avengers, Lord of the Rings, etc), they created something called Cosplay Photo meetups.  I met up with a whole bunch of Star Wars people for a whole mess of pictures!

My new friend, Biker scout in a kilt!

I found Han Solo in carbonite.  He actually is a pretty awesome bit of wall decor!

My fellow Jedi and some other members of the Alliance.

This is from one of my very favorite scenes in the movies!  Chewbacca stealing an AT-ST on Endor.  There was a guy on stilts, and he'd occasionally pop Chewie out the hatch.

The 501st having a little photo op with the actor for C-3P0.

We had a fabulous time taking up the entire staircase getting pictures done.  Before we even knew what was happening a bunch of people started showing up for the Star Trek photo meet up.  All of a sudden we were having some crazy competition, and decided we needed a Star Wars versus Star Trek photo.  It was awesome!  Pretty soon we were trying to encourage people dressed as Wars characters to come join us, just so we could win.  It was awesome.

Some members of the Borg collective.

Trouble with tribbles!  At least he's not wearing a red shirt...

Star Wars versus Star Trek.  I'm somewhere in that mess of things.

The whole collection of us.  I'm right behind the lady in orange.

After this sweet meet-up I wandered around for a bit, then started queuing up to meet Ian Somerhalder.  Besides Chris Evans, this was one of the people I was most excited to meet!  Mock me if you must, but this guys is just plain dreamy.  Seriously, check out Vampire Diaries if you don't believe me.  He was also on Lost for a season or so before *spoiler* getting killed off.  I couldn't believe how stinkin' friendly he was!  He was putting his arms around everyone.  I also managed to tell him thanks for coming, and he promptly responded "thank you for having me!"  Honestly, what a nice guy.  Now I've officially met both my favorite men from Vampire Diaries.

Apparently my enthusiasm for Ian was shared by everyone else, because it took forever to get through the line for my photo op.  By the time I made it through the line, the con was shutting down, and the entire vendor floor was closed.  It was the first time I had stayed for the entire event.  What a ridiculously long, exhausting, exhilarating day!
Here's a few more pictures of random people I ran into, or pictures posted by people on Facebook.  Seriously, after the con you experience this kinda let-down of having to go back to real life.  That makes it a lot of fun to follow the ComicCon Facebook group and check out everyone's pictures.

I found some freakin' sharks with freakin' laser beams on their freakin' heads.  Hilarious!

Loki sitting on the Iron Throne.  That's pretty intense.

Deadpool is always very popular, especially this year it seemed.

A Jedi needs their accessories!  That's the symbol for the Rebel Alliance.

After driving home, I picked up some ridiculously unhealthy comfort food, and died on the couch.  It was pretty awesome!  I'm already looking forward to the next Con!