I had relatively low expectations for the final day of SDCC when I woke up this morning. Without a ton of ambition to see a bunch of things, I planned to mostly wander aimlessly around the convention floor for a bit, attend one last panel, and call it quits. Fortunately, SDCC still had a few of surprises in store, starting with this:
Yes, that's Stephen Amell (Arrow). (And under the circumstances, I think I'm doing a pretty good job of playing it cool... No, you're a dork!) I happened to stumble into Nerd HQ just in time to participate in his unscheduled photo op: it was exactly the type of crazy random happenstance that makes attending Comic Con so thrilling. Stephen Amell put me in a really good mood.
Even the reappearance of the Comic Con-servatives, after a curious absence throughout weekend, could not dampen my rising spirits. The evangelicals' idiotic proselytizing at the trolley crossing area / choke point was a Comic Con tradition that I didn't know I missed, so their return made it finally feel like the experience was gratifyingly complete.
Returning to the main convention floor was a little overwhelming, as Sunday of SDCC is the last gasp of desperate collectors in their competition for depleted inventories of convention-exclusive action figures and other collectibles. But then I ran into a number of really fun cosplays, and everything was great again:
The day continued to get better as I wandered into the John Barrowman (Doctor Who, Torchwood, Arrow) panel, appropriately titled "Anything Goes." Barrowman appeared in the Zapp Brannigan / Futurama costume he wore to last night's Eisner Awards, plus a rainbow tutu and white pumps.
And it just got gayer from there. It was an hour of Barrowman, the gayest superfan in all of gay fandom, telling stories and answering audience questions, and it was energetic, entertaining, and definitely worth seeing.
From Barrowman's show, I raced over to the "Bisexuality and Beyond: New Frontiers in Popular Culture" panel. The presentation was coordinated with BiNet USA's announcement this weekend of the Bi Stories Project and addressed the erasure of bisexual people in popular culture. In particular, Steve Orlando was on the panel, and I loved his Midnighter series, which ended earlier this year. Seeing him in person was a big fanboy moment for me.
Unfortunately, I couldn't stay to the end of the panel because it ran over into one of my favorite traditions of Comic Con, the singalong screening of the musical episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer,"Once More With Feeling."
"Once More With Feeling" is one of the strongest episodes of the entire show and is a terrific way to join in song with a few hundred other Buffy geeks in the waning hours of SDCC. The crowd was definitely bigger than years' past, and the audience participation was excellent.
To top it all off, in the final minutes before the convention entirely closed down, I won a little collectible swag prize in a drawing at the table for Robotech, one of my oldest and most cherished fandoms.
All in all, today's SDCC denouement was far more satisfying than I ever expected it would be. As I reflected upon the day and the entire weekend with my SDCC pal Dan over dinner and drinks, I recalled all the little conversations and interactions I had with strangers, which ordinarily would have been unusual for me to initiate in any other circumstances. And they reminded me that, although SDCC can be frustrating at times, I mostly feel like an optimized version of my geekiest self at a comic convention: happy, thankful, supported, and proud.
I am definitely basking in an afterglow of SDCC 2016, and I am extremely grateful to have had the chance to attend and share it with you. Thanks! And until next time: Excelsior!