Last week my little sister and mother, from California, came to visit for a few days. My sister found out that Comic Con was in town during their visit and decided to go on Thursday. I wasn’t planning to go with them, because money is tight right now. On Wednesday night, I was in a late church meeting and a friend gave me a free ticket!

April 17th, Thursday morning, I went to the first day of Salt Lake Comic Con with my mom and teenaged sister. When we first came in we were greeted by a large penned off area where a green and purple balloon sculpture was growing. When we entered it was about six feet high, as we left it was the size of a pioneer cabin. Booths lined the wide aisles. Vendors were selling illustrations (fantasy art, comics, movie graphics), jewelry, costumes, swords and daggers. They had a full-sized Star Wars droid, one of R2D2’s cousins, a DeLorean from “Back to the Future” and several blue phone booths scattered throughout the halls.

We sat in on Ioan Gruffudd’s panel. (good luck saying his name, unless you are Welsh or you practice) He’s the star from the Horatio Hornblower PBS series and Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four. The Horatio Hornblower book series, by C. S. Forester is historical fiction set during the early 1800’s and follows the Royal British naval career of Horatio from underling up to Admiral Hornblower. I enjoyed the author’s authenticity and attention to detail. Time after time, Hornblower saves the day through his intelligence and determination.

My sister was excited to catch a glimpse of Adam Baldwin (John Casey from the TV series “Chuck”). Okay, I was excited to see him too. I saw Natasha Yar, Warf, Gates McFadden and others from the Star Trek cast. A telephoto lens would have been nice, they were set back from the walkways by their autograph lines. The actors all looked smaller and slimmer then they do on the screen.

James Marsters, (plays Spike in Buffy) was also there, but his autograph line was packed and so we didn’t actually see him.

Many of the fantasy and Sci-Fi authors were familiar from the Life the Universe and Everything conference that I’ve gone to for many years.

In the Dr. Who panel we saw this great family all dressed up. The oldest boy was the 12th Doctor, the pre-teen girl had on a grey dress with grey wings and the cute five-yr old girl with the short dusty blond curls was dressed as River Song.

I even did some shopping for illustrators and got some business cards. (I have to justify a day of staring at actors somehow. 😉

I’d recommend the Salt Lake Comic Con as a great place to indulge your inner geek! See you next time.