Make sure to check out the photo galleries for each day of Phoenix Comicon 2015
Thursday and Friday Photos from Phoenix Comicon 2015
Saturday photo gallery from Phoenix Comicon 2015
Sunday Photo Gallery for Phoenix Comicon 2015
Phoenix Comicon is a beast, plain and simple. The convention started in 2002 as the Phoenix Cactus Comicon in Ahwatukee and since grown to where it’s at now: an all encompassing beast. New for 2015 is the heavy use of the third floor, it featured the “hall of heroes”, an entire separate exhibit room featuring all of the costuming groups as well as the photo ops area. This allowed for more spacious aisles and more vendors at the main exhibit floor. The media panels moved to the west building, registration moved back into the north building, and for the most part, it all worked extremely well. Kudos to the organizers for looking to constantly improve how things work at the convention and it was all very smooth (I believe their was a hiccup or two with the photo ops area in regards to the line but I can’t confirm that). I didn’t wait in a single long line all weekend, it was a great experience.
Even though it’s called “Comicon”, don’t let that fool you, Phoenix Comicon is a pop culture event and it has never been more prevalent then this event, comics took a huge backseat to everything else. Yes, the con had a couple heavy hitters such as Jim Steranko, Jae Lee, Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba but I was a bit disappointed with how things played out. Jim Steranko had his booth front and center of the room, a legendary comic artist who has a great library of workm but guess what, he never had a large line, I walked by several times throughout the weekend, never seeing a line more than 5 or so people. The rest of the comic guests? Tucked away in the back of the convention center, while all the comic publishers were on the opposite end. I attended the Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba panel, twin brother comic creators from Brazil, who were a big get for the convention, repeatedly cracked jokes about how their table was in some corner of the convention center near the restroom. On the subject of comic panels, I attended the previously mentioned panel as well as a panel for Art Adams, another comic artist who has a big library of work. Both panels were barely attended, 20 or so attendees in each, it was a bit embarrassing.
Now onto something more attended and that was the media panels. The ones I attended were: Jim Beaver (Supernatural/Deadwood), Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones/Conan), David Morrissey (The Walking Dead/Doctor Who), Alyson Hannigan & Alexis Denisof (How I Met Your Mother/Buffy), Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future/The Addams Family), Ron Perlman (Hellboy/Sons of Anarchy), Danielle Panabaker (The Flash), Karl Urban (Dredd/Star Trek). The thing was media panels is that they rarely start on time but surprisingly almost all of them did. I’m pretty sure you could have walked in to any panel (you might have been sitting in the back) but almost all of them were entertaining and worth sitting through. No marque name like last year helped prevented a scene of chaos outside of the ballroom this year.
To end this on a quick note but when did vendors get so trusting at conventions? I saw two booths with a sign up letting attendees they would return in several minutes with no one manning their table, free for any shady attendee to do what they please. Not a trend I would like to see continue, it will just lead to bad situations. So did I enjoy the show? Indeed I did, I didn’t get to do too much offsite and nightlife stuff, it’s draining being at a convention for 10 plus hours each day. Maybe one year I will stay downtown and enjoy some of that stuff as their is a lot more to experience at Phoenix Comicon. I’m glad someone of the changes happened but they have to figure out a way to keep comics a big part of the convention or they will lose that segment of attendees for more comic focused cons in Phoenix. See you next year!
Legion of Sand 