Below somewhere is an amazing photo that my pal Phil somehow managed to take — a scene at WonderCon not crowded with people. I'm guessing he got up at sunrise and then created some sort of diversion off-frame to lure the throngs out of this shot. Whenever I tried to machete my way through the area depicted in this photo the last few days, my way was constantly blocked by people in odd costumes plus ten times as many people trying to take photos of the people in odd costumes.
I love cosplayers but I think something about it makes a person — and anyone trying to photograph them — blindly unaware of when they're posing/shooting in a spot through which others have to pass. And if youre wearing a costume with a large weapon or other appendage, you have no awareness whatsoever of when your large weapon or appendage is swatting or poking others.
That said, some of the costumes this year were amazing — some for sheer beauty, some for sheer skill and others for clever and funny concepts. I liked the ladies — I saw more than one of them — brilliantly attired as the real Captain Marvel (i.e., the one who appears at the utterance of "Shazam!")
I am continuing to have a great time here and I'll write more about it when I get home. Right now, I'd like to salute a fine gent named Gary Miereanu who hosts almost as many panels at conventions as I do. Gary does his for Time-Warner and DC Comics and he does a good job of making them interesting and informative. Even more important to me though is that he gets them to start and stop on time. As a hoster of such events, I know that isn't always easy. It also isn't always a goal of those who run panels.
Sometimes, there's incompetence in play but often, it's a power thing: Someone thinks they're so important that they can keep their audiences waiting the way some rock groups do out of sheer contempt for their fans. And/or they think they can slop over into the time of the following panel and deliver some of their sales pitch to the folks arriving for that presentation.
Having done over 300 of these at various cons in various years, I have naturally encountered this at times. I once forgave Cookie Monster for running long (anecdote here) but have not been so forgiving of others.
Gary's adherence to schedules is impressive because I have dealt with folks who felt that if they were representing large companies as he does, the rules did not apply to them. There's a kind of person who loves to believe the rules don't apply to them because they feel so powerful and important when they break them.
I have also dealt with comic book creators with egos the size of the NATO Alliance. Some years back at a non-California con, I was to moderate a panel that followed a solo spot by a noted creator of comics.
Based on the last ten or so minutes of his scheduled stint on stage — which was all I caught — it was mostly talking about his own undisputed greatness. He then carried that theme well into the hour my panel was supposed to occupy. My panelists were standing by, waiting. Many people had swarmed into the room to hear us, not the guy on stage…but the guy on stage kept being reminded of just one more compliment he had to give himself.
A rather frantic room manager was giving him signals and flashing signs to wrap it up but still the World's Greatest Comic Book Creator, at least by his standards, went on and on. Perhaps he felt encouraged by the growing size of the audience before him. Finally, the room manager approached and whispered a polite reminder of the time. I was close enough to hear how polite it was and also to hear the whispered reply, which was along the lines of "I'll wrap it up when I'm good and ready. Now leave me the fuck alone."
He then stayed on stage long enough to prove to someone — maybe only himself — that he was not ending for any reason other than that he was done. Then he stayed in the room for a while, preventing our start by signing autographs which he could just as easily have signed in the hall outside.
When we finally were able to begin, we had thirty minutes instead of the advertised fifty since I was not about to do the same thing to the next panel that he did to us.
Contrast that to Ray Bradbury who, each of the many times I interviewed him on stage, would always say something to me like, "I'm counting on you to keep an eye on the clock so we don't cut into the next panel's time." That may have just been simple manners and playing by the rules…or it may have been because Ray Bradbury didn't have to prove how important he was. He had a whole shelf or two of books that did that for him.