TYF Goes to the 2015 Rhode Island Comic Con

II. Celebrities and Panels!

Cast members of The CW’s Supernatural participate in a panel (L to R): Travis Wester, A.J. Buckley, Ty Olssen, Curtis Armstrong, Alona Tal, Samantha Ferris, Mitch Pileggi and Jim Beaver.
Photo Credit: Megan Phelps

Alright, enough about me winging on about crowd management, you wanna know who was there, don’t you? They had a pretty good selection of guests this year, even with the cancellation of headliner Carrie Fisher and the Doctor Who panel losing Arthur Darvill. The panels included actors from shows such as The Walking Dead, Sailor Moon, Supernatural and Sons of Anarchy.

I was very impressed by the breadth of fandoms covered by the guests in both panels and in the booths downstairs. Unless you were a die-hard of something obscure like Moonbase 3 (or me, who came out empty handed with Pushing Daisies merch), there was something or someone at the con to cover your fandom or personal interest.

Rosenberg mentioned in his editorial last year that Q&As and talks ended early. The two that we went to – Supernatural and Doctor Who – took up their entire allotted time and plenty of fans were able to ask their favorite actors a gamut of behind-the-scenes questions. I was particularly impressed by Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress Clare Kramer, who moderated most of the weekend’s panels and was excellent when it came to fan interaction and hearing the questions of the fans who couldn’t quite project.

There were also several less formal panels, featuring Homestuck cosplayers and the creators of CinemaSins. Of course, it was the ones with the big names that had the best attendance, with the Doctor Who panel bringing the ballroom to max capacity.

We didn’t spend too long in the part of the Convention Center where the celebs were, but it seemed like fans were able to get their photo ops and stuff signed in an orderly manner. The lines for Ron Perlman and Selma Blair in particular were pretty crazy, and I did hear complaints here and there about line management for Will Friedle, Jason Momoa and Karen Gillan. All around there were considerable queues at the booths, as you might expect from a convention at a medium sized venue in a tiny state.

Meg and I spent a good part of Saturday looking for replicas of the Chevy Impala from Supernatural and the TARDIS from Doctor Who. We never found them; Of course they were in the one place we didn’t look!

Before the con, I interviewed voice actors Peter Cullen and Frank Welker, who also participated in a panel about Transformers – only natural for a convention held across the street from Hasbro’s world headquarters.

III. Stuff

Photo Credit: Megan Phelps

If you followed our adventures on Instagram, you’ll know that I kept my eye out for unusual or quirky items for sale at the con’s many vendors. Of note, we found these soaps that were shaped like d20s. I don’t know how these could logistically be used in any washing capacity (all those edges!), but they seemed like they were very high quality at least.

Wanna wash your body with an awkward icosahedronal chunk of soap? Here’s your chance!
Photo Credit: Ryan Gibbs

There was quite a mix of merchandise this year and it was interesting to see what franchises were the most popular. There seemed to be a waning interest in Firefly, My Little Pony, Dungeons & Dragons and Disney merch, while Rick & Morty, WWE and Attack on Titan were the franchise that I was most surprised to see a large of amount merchandise for. Naturally, the big franchises – Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Marvel, DC and Game of Thrones – were all over the place as they are in any year. Because of the lead-up to The Force Awakens, there was a ton of Star Wars ephemera, but surprisingly little actual merchandise for the new film; Plenty of action figures though, including this box under a table containing Phantom Menace figures complete in box with those silly soundchip things. Whatever they were selling these guys for, it was too much.

Don’t you wanna bring home a Ric Olie figure? No? How about Gasgano?  Aside from Ob-Wan, do you remember any of these characters at all?
Photo Credit: Ryan Gibbs

There was also quite a bit of knock-off and unofficial merch, especially obviously counterfeit DVDs and plushies, Loads of unofficial minifigures too; I suppose LEGO is missing a ton of sales by not expanding out towards Walking Dead and other less kid-friendly franchises.  Meanwhile, pewter figures – which I remember from my youth as being big hits in fandom magazines – were largely absent. For a matter of fact, I saw little to nothing that involved any sort of sit-down game, even Cards Against Humanity.

Oh yeah, for a convention that literally had “comic” in its name, there was actually ton of space devoted to the actual selling of comics. Weird, huh? I wish I knew more about comic books to know what to buy or what I’d personally like, but there were a lot of trade paperbacks and what seemed to be collections of webcomics. The moment we got into the building, we were approached by this dude who was aggressively pitching his book of “monster haiku.” I don’t know why he came on so strong to two folks wearing press badges, but if he wanted a mention in our coverage, I guess I he succeeded.

Check out the next page to see our photo gallery of the cosplay that caught our eye.