Last weekend, my roommate and best friend, Patti and I went to the Wizard World Comic Con, the first one held in Reno.  For those who may not have looked at their web site, it was enough of a success that they’ve scheduled one for 2015 already.  If you missed it this year, it will be back next year.

Friday was a great day to attend because there weren’t as many people there and it made it a snap to get checked in and get our wristbands for the weekend.  There weren’t too many panels scheduled on Friday afternoon that were what I was hoping for and of course, there were a couple that were opposite each other.  That’s a given in these situations.  If they were offering four panels I wanted to see in a collection of twelve panels, at least one of them would be on at the same time as one of the other three.  Murphy’s Law in action.  (Or is there another specific law that governs this situation?

Inspiration in the Universe

One of the panels that turned out to be really interesting and stimulating to a creative mind was the “NASA Conquers the Universe” panel, presented by Mary Louise Davie who is not only an author, but must work for NASA in some capacity because she had some great information on what was in the works and the status of their funding.  They are fully funded now for future space exploration and partly because of their partnerships with private companies.  So, hoorah for NASA’s future.

Where the space program is going is fascinating.  Mars is not the only planet on the radar for future exploration.  Moons are not left out and there are possibilities of outposts on moons other than ours.  Some of the projections on how to build habitats on unfriendly worlds were fascinating and also stimulated that little creative spot that suggest possibilities to writers.  It also makes you think that almost anything you can imagine might be possible at some point.  So long as you don’t totally violate the laws of the Universe, whatever they might be.  With so much being discovered and changing, is anything really exactly what we believe it to be?

Inspiration Around Town

Paranormal Reno was another interesting panel, although not as informative as the NASA one.  Two local paranormal researchers discussed the haunted and other paranormal aspects of Reno and the surrounding areas with the audience.  At some point, it became more like a case of the folks in the audience trying to stump the researchers with stories of paranormal sightings that they may not have investigated or heard about.  But it was interesting and dipped into a little of the history of the Reno area.

Inspiration from People

Saturday was the main day for programming and attendees. We heard there might have been around 30,000 people at the Convention Center that day.  It was packed!  Getting through the exhibitors room was a major effort and I mostly plowed my way though looking for Patti.   There were many great Hall Costumes and the ingenuity of the fans in creating these is always fun to see.    Then, I made my way to the largest exhibitor room and claimed a seat on the sixth row, which was where I spent the next six hours.

First up was William Shatner who  is an absolute delight.  Some people may not realize that he is as intelligent as he is, but he it well-read and up on many recent scientific discoveries . He is an excellent speaker with a wonderful sense of humor.  The format for all the panels was “Question and Answer” sessions, so there were many diverse questions.

Next up was a “Walking Dead” panel with three of the series stars, Scott Wilson, Jon Bernthal and Andrew J. West.  Very amusing and interesting panel.  This continued on with Michael Rooker’s panel and more talk about “Dead” and “Guardians of the Galaxy”.  Great humor and he was joined at the end by Karen Gillan who popped out to greet him.  Karen’s panel was the next after they cleared out the VIP rows so that fans who’d purchased the VIP seats could claim them.  She was a delight, funny and very gracious, not to mention cute as a button!  There was a lot of love for Amy Pond.

The last panel, although it really wasn’t one, was Bruce Campbell.  Along with Ted Raimi, Bruce came out with a “film-a-movie” approach that involved the audience and proved to be very funny.  Basically, they found a writer, two actors and a director from the audience and Bruce, who was the producer, set them up to do a scene based on a story idea the writer pitched to the audience.  There were three pitches and the audience voted on the one to use.  Then the writer went to work writing a one-page scene while Bruce and Ted hunted for the actors.  They found two with experience and “hired” those then looked for a director.  A quick rehearsal, then they filmed the scene and showed it on the big screen for everyone to see – and laugh about. It was not your usual panel.

We did not stay for the Costume Contest, usually a favorite thing I like to do, but by this point, I was hungry and I needed to move around some.  And there was this NaNoWriMo thing in the back of my mind.  Even though I’d already won and completed my novel, I still wanted to add some words to my new WIP before the end of the day.

All in all, Comic Con was fun and it was worth the three-day pass even though we didn’t go all three days.  For inspiration, it was great.  From the intriguing panels to the amazing art, it’s one of those things that opens your mind to many possibilities.