Convention Fans

One of my friends (and a fellow con-goer) recently attended Leaky Con 2009, a Boston Harry Potter convention that I wrote about back in April. When she told me what a great time she had, and I saw her pictures, I asked her if she’d be willing to write up a formal convention report for all of you, dear readers. Leaky Con sounds like it is off to a really great start as a new convention! As always, if you attended Leaky Con 2009, feel free to add your comments at the end! Did you enjoy it? Does it need improvement? We want to know what you think!

Leaky Con 2009 Convention Report
written exclusively for Convention Fans by Sara Cook

I spent May 21-24th in Boston, Massachusetts at Leaky Con. This was my first all Harry Potter convention and the first convention thrown by the amazing folks from the Harry Potter fansite, http://the-leaky-cauldron.org/. The festivities took place at the historic Boston Park Plaza hotel in downtown Boston. One of the amazing things about having the convention at the Park Plaza was the Castle, which is located across the street and where all the night time festivities took place. The Castle was pretty amazing, when you walked inside there were banners draped on both sized of the huge exhibition hall representing the four Hogwarts houses.

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Happy Saturday con-goers! I have a bunch of links/stories to share with you all today, ranging from Farscape convention announcements, to an interview with well known voice actor (and frequent convention guest) Vic Mignogna! Let’s not waste any more text space:

1. Final BlizzCon tickets on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday - WoW.com: The headline says it all! A second (and final) round of BlizzCon tickets will go on sale at 10 a.m. (Pacific) this Saturday. Tickets sold out pretty quick last time, so gooood luck!

2. Fullmetal Trekkie: Voice Actor Vic Mignogna to Direct Star Trek: Phase II Episode - blogs.laweekly.com: One of my favorite geek bloggers, Liz Ohanesian, has a great interview with anime voice actor Vic Mignogna over at her L. A. Weekly blog. Vic is working on an episode of fan program Star Trek Phase II and in the interview, he talks about going to Star Trek conventions as a kid and now being a guest at anime cons. Definitely a great read!

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I have a great literature convention for those of you in the New England area! Readercon is “the conference on imaginative literature” and it is happening July 9-12, 2009 at the Burlington Marriott in Burlington, Massachusetts. The organizer’s describe the convention as such:

Readercon is, depending on your point of view, either an annual literary conference (except it’s infinitely more fun than that) or an annual science fiction convention (except we’ve stripped away virtually everything except talking about and buying books). In the course of its twenty years, it has become the standard bearer and role model for conventions that focus on the literature. A typical Readercon features well over 100 writers, editors, and critics (attracting prominent figures from Canada, the U.K., and occasionally even Australia) and more than 400 of their readers. Readercon is the only small convention regularly attended by such giants of literary sf as Samuel R. Delany, John Crowley, Barry N. Malzberg, and Jonathan Lethem.

Tickets for this unique convention are just $50 through June 30, 2009. You can make your purchase via mail, or via PayPal. There is no mention of an “at the door” price on the website.

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It’s time for the fifth edition of the Cons from A to Z series! I’ve been collaborating with fellow con goer Nathan Lilly, who operates the Green Tentacles Convention Finder website (that’s his green banner down and to the left) to bring you this fun series of articles.

If you’re interested in finding a convention that’s near you, Nathan’s website offers searches via zip code and content tags (such as “Star Trek”), so it is easy to find a convention nearby, which is why he’s the perfect partner for this series.

Together, Nathan and I will be bringing you “Cons from A to Z” which will go through the entire alphabet and highlight a handful of conventions for each letter. This is a great way to bring some attention to some of the smaller or more unique conventions out there. And the letter for today is “E”!

E is for East Coast Black Age of Comics Con, EerieCon, and El Paso Anime Con
courtesy of the Green Tentacles Convention Finder 

East Coast Black Age of Comics Con: http://ecbacc.com/
May 16th, 2009 - May 16th, 2009 in Philadelphia, PA 19103

The East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention or ECBACC is a groundbreaking comic book convention that features some of the nation’s most accomplished comic book writers, artists, and cartoonists. ECBACC explores comic books, animation, cartoons and other forms of creative expression. ECBACC honors comic book excellence by presenting the Pioneer Awards to those artists and writers who have paved the way for today’s comic book artists and writers. And even though it has already had it’s 2009 con, this is an annual event, so stay tuned for 2010 dates!

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As my regular readers may recall, a few months ago I stumbled upon an article called the Top 20 Sexy Science Fiction Costumes (link no longer works). I disagreed with a lot of the choices. But it occurred to me that it wasn’t really fair to just feature the sexiest sci-fi costumes for the ladies, without doing a list for the men as well! I solicited some feedback and additional opinions (from girls and guys), and I am ready to unveil the list!

Note: The original ladies’ list included live-action comic book costumes. A good argument could be made that they are their own genre and shouldn’t count, but since the original list included them, I will do the same here. As with the other list, I also did not include animated costumes. It had to have been worn by someone in the flesh!

And remember, we’re talking about the costumes here, not the men wearing them!

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