Two days of gaming, comics, and everything geek related. We here at Geek News Network had a chance to join in this year’s festivities and without further adieu, here is our wrap up of the Tucson Comic Con 2014.
I arrived in Tucson around 10am after my hour and thirty minute trip through the desert to Tucson. I was greeted with a line that stretched up the length of the convention center and half way back. With my press-pass in hand I travel down the stairs to enter into the spacious exhibit hall. Nothing but 205,000 square feet of geeks, gamers and costumes. The variety of vendors was quite impressive; everything from local costume groups, gaming retailers, to various artists doing signings and taking photos with fans. There were booths for you to get zombie make up, booths to have photos taken with a highly detailed Yoda statue, and a booth to get dressed up in authentic steam punk outfits.
This year there were several great discussion panels ranging from cosplay tips, a voice actor from “The Walking Dead” Tell-Tale game, and several comic creators from Image Comics. I had the pleasure of sitting in on a few panels, namely the “Being More Than Human! A beginner’s guide to cosplaying the galaxy!” panel hosted by Amber and Matthew Hunt of Firelight Cosplay along with Sarah Wilkinson of Red Nebula Cosplay. The cosplay panel was particularly helpful to first time costume makers. I learned quite a few tricks from the 2 panelists hosting the presentation. Another panel that stood out was the “Kick starting your Kickstarter” panel hosted by Travis Hanson ( The Bean) Jessica Feinberg (Dragons!) Suzana Harcum & Owen White (Tripping Over You). There was more than a handful of knowledge to be gleaned from the hosts the panel.
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No comic convention would be complete without costumers and cosplayers. Tucson had quite a surprising variety of cosplayers this year with the classic standbys being Spider-Man, a few Judge Dredds, and of course with Marvel’s release of “Guardians of the Galaxy” over the summer there were many impressive Star-Lord costumes as well as the other costumes as the rest of the cast of the film. This year I had the pleasure of meeting Mike Syfritt (Mad Propps on Facebook), the owner of one of Arizona’s best prop and costume design shops. He was a guest of the convention and held an excellent panel about cosplay etiquette.
I can go on for days about the great experiences that were had by all attendees including myself but no wrap-up review would be complete without some constructive criticism. This year I myself decided to get up early and head down to Tucson early. This was not early enough and many people and even more locals were there already. My first point is that tickets were only being sold at the door. There was no way to buy them online or even in advance. This factor created a very congested atmosphere and by 1130 made the line to get tickets the length of the convention center and 3/4 of the way back. With a line that long this also created an issue with parking and by 2 o’ clock the parking lot was full. All in all those two things are the only thing I can really fault the convention with and those are the typical problems associated with any convention. I’d say the organizers did an excellent job of keeping everything running smoothly and an even better job of bring quality content to the South-west. For those in the area it’s an extremely inexpensive event to attend and I’m looking forward to seeing next year’s Tucson Comic Con.