Comic Con

We went to the New York Comic Convention today. It was Jack's third time, I think, and Kate's first. I think I went once on my own back in the day, but now it's a me and the kids thing. The negative is that I don't actually get to search for things for myself like I used to. The positive is that's it's way more fun.

First off, we dressed up. Haven't done that before. The kids got us into this great cartoon show, Gravity Falls, and the primary characters were a cranky old uncle and his niece and nephew. So I was Grunkle Stan and they were the kids, Dipper and Mabel. The costumes -- full credit to Emily for scouring up the proper clothes for the kids, although we did have Jack's hat already -- were perfect. So our day was repeatedly peppered with compliments and requests for pictures, which was cool, and the kids did a great job of posing and smiling appropriately.

I had my doubts about how Kate would do with it, because it's essentially 10 hours straight of walking around crowded, narrow passageways at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, bumping into people, squeezing by people, stopping at booths and then starting up again. Lines are long for food, bathrooms, panels, exhibits. But she did great. Minimal complaining, as long as rested and snacked on occasion. She was suitably awed by all the costumes and exhibit, and the people. She was a trooper. My legs and feet were killing me by the end, and she was probably beat too, but was fine about it all.

Our first stop was a Gravity Falls panel, which was a long line and a few hundred of us in a large theater/conference room where the show creators were going to talk about the show, and a cool tie-in book that Jack had recently bought. Jack ate it up; the creators were funny and there were lots of tidbits and I'd look over and see him just rapt with attention and laughing at their jokes. At the end they gave some words of wisdom/advice, with one of the best ones being, "Don't be afraid to be weird, because you'll find people who love you for it."

After that it was basically 7 hours of walking around the show floor. Highlights:

- We ran into a group of 7 or 8 other people dressed as Gravity Falls characters and got a bunch of pictures. This was only after going to the wrong place for an autograph session, and then finally ending up at the right place. And the timing worked out great, because that picture was a highlight.

- We got big pretzels, a pizza, sprite, and ice cream. Yeah, that was our lunch and snack extravaganza.

- We did a Harry Potter-related "Fantastic Beasts" thing where the kids got to wave a wand and cast a spell, and little video clips were made of them doing it.

- We saw a whole bunch of great costumes, including myriad other Dippers, Mabels and Stans. Lost characters, Game of Thrones characters, and of course tons of superheroes. Lots of photo ops, lots of friendly people.

- Found the publisher of these Zita the Spacegirl graphic novels we'd been buying for Kate. They didn't have those books, but they did have other books by the same author and the writer/artist of a similar type of children's book. We bought a copy, and she autographed it for Kate and drew a little picture of the character on the title page in front of us. Cool, and Kate was impressed, polite, respectful.

- Guy stopped us for a picture. After he took it he said to Jack, "Is this your Dad? You guys are lucky." Nice to hear.

We walked to the Con from the car in a light drizzle but didn't get too wet. Walked back in near-darkness, but felt light.