Photos by Justin Stabley
Downtown Phoenix overflowed with costumed fans and pop culture enthusiasts attending the eleventh annual Phoenix Comicon.
From Thursday to Sunday, the Phoenix Convention Center and the surrounding hotels hosted the yearly event crafted for comic geeks, Trekkies, anime buffs and countless other fandoms.
“It’s a convergence of all that is unusual in society,” said Brian Fujino, a local attendee of the event, wearing a unicorn horn on his head. “Typically people don’t gather with such unique, different interests and are able to be a cohesive, social, non-violent unit.”
Once considered a fringe event, Comicon has become the forefront of pop culture when it comes to printed and digital entertainment.
Thursday was considered “preview day,” when the event officially commenced and the exhibition hall opened in the late afternoon. The lower floor of the convention center held hundreds of booths and kiosks selling a variety of items, from toy plushies to samurai swords.
A Phoenix and Mesa organization called Kids Need to Read was the event’s main sponsored charity. The organization hosted the Geek Prom dance on Saturday night.
“We give books to underfunded schools and libraries, usually for disadvantaged kids,” said Denise Gary, one of the group’s organizers.
The Kids Need to Read booth included a drawing area where kids were taught to make book covers for fantasy and science fiction by a local author and illustrator.
The Phoenix Art Museum also used Comicon to advertise their upcoming “Art of Video Games” exhibit opening next month.
“‘The Art of Video Games’ covers the full 40-year history of design and artwork in video games,” said booth exhibitor Evan Roberts.
The show was launched at the Smithsonian Institute by Chris Melissinos to show videogame development of the medium as an art form of social influence.
On Friday, Phoenix Comicon introduced guest stars and panels to talk to fans about various geeky subjects. Science fiction fans rejoiced at this year’s event because of a double-whammy of guest appearances.
Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played Uhura in the original Star Trek series, was signing autographs and answering questions from her fans in the main ballroom. Her stories and the praises of the audience emphasized her role as an African American actress in the 1960s and her influence on the nation’s view on race.
This was also the final cast reunion of the popular “Babylon 5” crew, a landmark for the show’s 10-year anniversary.
In the exhibition hall were many other prominent artists, actors and writers signing autographs and meeting with their fans.
Katie Cook is a writer of many popular comics, most notably the recent “My Little Pony” comics designed specifically for the adult fan base of the show, known as “Bronies“.
“The best part of ‘My Little Pony’ has been the fans so far,” she said. “As long as they keep supporting the books, we get to keep making them.”
The Nerd Poetry Slam was held Friday evening, hosted by a local poet known as The Klute.
The Klute, who has been going to Comicon for about five years, pointed out the difference between today’s culture and the culture when he was growing up.
“Back in my day, it was a very cloistered kind of thing if you were a nerd,” he said.
Saturday is consistently the largest day of the event. According to a Downtown Phoenix Ambassador, attendance was estimated to be between 40,000 and 50,000 guests, most of them from out of town.
That’s approximately the population of Mos Eisley Space Port from the Star Wars franchise.
It is true that geek culture has largely invaded pop culture, considering the fact that some of the biggest box office hits of the last decade include films like “The Avengers” and the Lord of the Rings franchise.
But according to older attendees, this was not always the case.
“If I had worn a Sailor Moon shirt in high school, even as a chick, I would’ve gotten beat up,” said Katie Cook. “Now nerd culture is the norm.”
The biggest guest star of Saturday was voice actress Tara Strong. Strong has over 300 credited voice roles, including Bubbles from Cartoon Network’s “The Powerpuff Girls” and Timmy Turner from Nickelodeon’s “The Fairly OddParents.” For many people, she is an icon of their childhood, and many passionate fans were there to receive her autograph.
A growing pastime of these events is dressing up in intricately detailed costumes, or “cosplaying” as a favorite fictional character or nerd theme.
Some people, like Jessica Nigri, turn it into a career to dress as Harley Quinn from the Batman comic series, or as Juliet Starling from the provocative video game “Lollipop Chainsaw.”
Bill Haughey, an older man from Fountain Hills, came with his wife dressed in gear generally referred to as steampunk, a combination of late-1800s garb and modern technology.
“Costumes are my favorite part,” he said. “Comicon is a big event with lots of different folks.”
On Sunday afternoon, a false fire alarm was pulled during the conference, said Phoenix police spokesman Tommy Thompson.
Haughey’s wife, Claire, was trying on a gauntlet when the alarm sounded. The pair evacuated in their steampunk costumes.
“We steampunkers can take it,” Bill Haughey said of the heat outside the convention center. “We just turned on our steam-powered air conditioning.”
He added that the evacuation had been efficient and everyone seemed to get out quickly.
“But I wanted those gloves,” Claire Huaghey joked.
Sunday evening was the wrap-up of a weekend-long adventure for many. Even after the day events are over, the parties continued to go on in the downtown hotels and part of the convention center. People traveled from all over the country to meet old friends and fellow attendees of what is now one of the biggest events of the year for Arizona.
Kyle Fenner dressed in gray body paint and candy-corn horns like a character from his favorite webcomic, “Homestuck.” He said that what he took from the comic and the fan base is that, “it doesn’t matter who you are, you play a significant role in a bigger event that is much larger than you.”
Contact the reporter at jestable@asu.edu
