Hello ladies and Gentlemen, JD here and it’s time to talk Supanova.
This may or may not be a little redundant as we’ve recorded a podcast that SHOULD be up soon. That’s on me.
So, as I inevitably have to my day started at 4:30 in the morning. 4:30 in the actual morning…that’s practically the middle of the night before. No that’s not true, it used to be but now I have two kids and a government job 5am is practically a sleep in. I suited up as Green Arrow, as one does. I had three arrows in my quiver on my back and subsequently couldn’t get into the cab as they sat too high.
I made it to the train station and received minimal weird looks, after a three hour train trip and a lovely twitter conversation with SuperFan M’Ress I got to Olympic park. I figured I was in the right place because I spotted a heap of anime cosplayers….unfortunately not being an anime fan I didn’t actually recognise any of the characters. As shamed as I should be to admit it the very first costume I recognised was a McKinley High cheerleading uniform. That’s right boys and girls…..Glee.
So from there I found the media and VIP ticket booth. The guy in there was adamant that we return the media passes at the end of the weekend. At the time it was a mass of conjecture as to why. Our theory was that they wanted to keep a lid on how many of the passes were out there in case people used them at other supanova events. It turned out to be nothing anywhere near that conspiratorial, it was a simple fact that MY MATE Lionel had given out so many media passes they used all the Sydney passes and a vast majority of the Perth allocation. This explained a lot.
While I was waiting the arrival of our special “convention correspondent” aka my friend from childhood who for the purposes of Wilderness nicknames shall hence forth be known as PauPl, I saw the crew from GeekSpeak, another Aussie nerd podcast. BUT the most exciting part was spotting the 1989 batmobile. I lost. My. Shit.
I also managed to run into half a dozen people I know while I spent 35 minutes in the line for the ATM. It wasn’t so bad, gave me a good vantage point to play “spot the cosplayer.” I later found two more ATM locations.
It was at around this time that I peaked for the weekend.
Anyone who knows me knows that my holy grail of comic books has been Detective Comics 359 – The first appearance of Barbara Gordon aka batgirl. I stumbled across a little stall selling vintage comics. They had such gems as XMen 1 from 1963 and the relaunch Giant Size XMen number 1. I then spotted my grail.
It usually goes for substantially more than he was asking for it so I very much had a Futurama “SHUTUP AND TAKE MY MONEY!” moment. That alone made it wokth it.
Eventually Paupl turned up and we asked the guys at the info desk where we had to go and who we had to speak to in order to organise our media shenanigans.
“IF you have one of those passes you already know who you need to talk to!”
And that ended that for the saturday. So we stopped playing media and decided to be fans instead.
We ran into a heap of people The Wilderness knows, Such as the Culture Shock Crew, Robert and his crew from Millennium collectables and Greg from the USS Tydirium. They all say “Hi”
Unlike previous cons, I didn’t go near the actors area and get autographs and such. This time round I spent most of the time hanging out in the artist alley. As an aspiring writer it made more sense than anything else.
I collected more business cards and flyers than I can count, still haven’t looked at most of them.
Then we actually used our media passes and went to see Margot Kidder’s Q&A
That was really cool. For a 64 year old grandmother she is surprisingly spritely. I really enjoyed just sitting and listening to her talk about her life. The bit that annoys me the most about these Q and A sessions is the questions are always inevitably things like “Do you read comics” and “What’s your favourite superhero movie” through to “What was it like working with XYZ” (but more on that in Part 2 when we get to Carrie Fisher.) So when it got to my turn to throw a question at her I asked her about Richard Donner’s departure from Superman 2 halfway through filming.
Her reaction was a very genuine response. When she answered other questions she spoke to the entire audience and directed it into the air. When she answered my question she looked directly at me and answered it to me. That was cool.
After Margot Kidder we went and lined up for Chris Claremont autographs…Chris Claremont being the father of modern XMen. Snce itw as his run of comics that got both of us into XMen and subsequently created nerds of us.
All the while I continue to run into people I know.
After the autograph session he did a seminar so we headed upstairs and listened to that. We talked about it at length in the podcast.
By this point I was absolutely exhausted..but we soldiered on, which was a good thing because as I was looking at one of the stalls I got hit up by the guys from Behind the Panels and had a bit of a chat with them. At which time they told us about the media room.
The media room.
A space where those of us with media passes could chill and get away from the hustle and bustle of the floor.
This was at 3:30 in the afternoon and I had to hear it from another podcast…..unhappy.
So we went to find this nirvana and had to pass through the actor area I glanced across and saw no one in line for Anthony Montgomery and no one in line for tokens.
So I met Anthony montgomery. Here’s a piece of the conversation
JD:You actually spoke to some friends of mine in London last year..
AM:Yeah? Who is that?
JD:They guys from TrekMate
AM: *face lights up* OH I know exactly who you mean. I love those guys!
So there we have it, BISBO is an honourary member of the TrekMate family.
Thus was day one.
Soon.
Day two.
