Comic Cons have fascinated me since Salt Lake City hosted its first two years ago. I was initially skeptical about the whole concept of such an event, but was fascinated nonetheless. My interest was piqued when I got hooked on the BBC TV show, “Doctor Who,” at which point I gave my soul entirely to the sci-fi powers that be. My soul already gone, the decision to offer up my monetary earnings for a glimpse into the Comic Con experience this past weekend was mostly painless.
I was not disappointed. Though being a female comic fan is certainly complicated, with most comic women depicted as scantily clad, I felt quite comfortable throughout the majority of SLC’s Comic Con. Only a few instances reminded me of how far comics have yet to come to be truly inclusive.
Packed to the brim with hundreds of sci-fi and fantasy fans, there was little room for air in the Salt Palace but plenty of room for fan-girling. Many of the attendees were dressed in impeccable cosplay, providing the illusion of actually being surrounded by well-loved characters such as The Doctor (“Doctor Who”), Captain Malcolm Reynolds (“Firefly”), Harry Potter and Sheik (“The Legend of Zelda”), in addition to the more hated characters of The White Witch (C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia), Loki (Marvel) and Missy (“Doctor Who”) among hundreds of others.
This year, Salt Lake Comic Con’s organizers managed to book the likes of Chris Evans (Captain America), John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness in “Doctor Who”), Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee in “The Lord of the Rings”), the surprise appearance of Alan Tudyk (Wash in “Firefly”) and the Phelps twins (Fred and George Weasley in “Harry Potter”) among dozens of others.
Attending the these stars’ panels, in which they talked about their acting experiences, personal lives and the worlds of their characters was mind blowing. It is one thing to watch these stars in their movies and quite another to watch them moving around a real stage in person. I was sadly unable to attend Chris Evans’ panel because seating for it had been assigned based on a lottery system to be as fair as possible given the sheer quantity of people who wanted to see him.
I made up for missing Evans by arriving early for John Barrowman’s panel. Barrowman, an openly gay and recently married actor, presented himself as not so different from the pansexual Doctor Who character I know him as. To make up for the fact that he failed to show up in a dress the way he did to a different Comic Con, Barrowman decided to serenade the audience with Christina Perri’s “A Thousand Years” and “I Am What I Am” from the Broadway musical “La Cage aux Folles.” Of course Barrowman, being the jack of all trades that he seems to be, nailed both. His entire performance was hilariously entertaining except when he went a bit far with his sexual allusions and entered into sexual harassment territory. The audience and the young man and woman he was basically harassing seemed to find it funny; however, I felt uncomfortable.
There is, of course, a lot of female exploitation in the comic worlds. The con tried to maintain a distance from such things everywhere, except in the part of the con set aside for comic artists where multiple depictions of pin-up superhero women were up for sale. Thankfully the rest of Comic Con was nothing like that. An undercurrent of respect permeated the con; few would feel comfortable mocking anyone else for their geekiness when they had paid quite a lot to be at the con themselves. I had a great time, and will certainly be watching out for tickets to next year’s Comic Convention.