Recap: Wizard World Austin 2019
A super busy weekend in Austin may have attributed greatly to the turnout for this year’s Comic Con from Wizard World, but it was still a great time for all that attended. The Texas Longhorns were playing a home game (which they won, woot woot) and apparently there were several different festivals around town for the holiday weekend.
So it wasn’t nearly as packed as I had anticipated.
Which was cool by me, big crowds wear on my nerves pretty dang quick these days.
I was a bit disappointed in the amount of vendors, after attending this year’s Bell County Comic Con I really expected a lot more merchandise to choose from. There were only 3 or 4 with Funko Pop collectibles, 1 or 2 with statues, and and grand total of 1 stand that had mainstream comic books for sale.
However, there was a really nice assortment of artists, authors, and fan art distributors (which always seem to hypnotize me into adorning my office walls with even more fanboy material), and around 20 or so celebrities. Unfortunately, there really just weren’t any huge name attractions that would have drawn more people in.
The Celebrities
Kato Kaelin was the energetic MC and greeted me the first night with a fist-bump and a smile, and I saw him interacting with the crowd throughout the entire weekend. Of course I was seriously tempted to ask him about OJ, but I figured that well has been drained dry long ago.
Jason Momoa was originally slated to be there and of course that would have brought in a ton of fans, but he cancelled a few weeks before showtime. There was a lot of the cast from Smallville, which in all fairness ended quite awhile back. Henry Winkler, Cary Elwes, and Barry Williams all mean a lot to older fans like myself, but today’s younger Con crowd really seemed to have little interest in visiting with them.
Just before I spoke with Barry Williams (Greg Brady from The Brady Bunch) on Friday night, we overheard him voice concern that not many were stopping to see him. However, it was kind of slow all the way around that evening but I did see him with a line several times throughout the weekend.
I will share his interview as well as the one I did with Lisa Marie Varon, better known as the diva from WWE, Victoria (who was a fantastic lady), in upcoming articles.
Like a dummy, I didn’t make a list of all the visiting celebs and the page seems to be gone now of course, but there were seriously only a few that stuck out.
While we missed some of the panels and events that we wanted to attend, we did get to catch one with Sean Pertwee, Alfred in Gotham, and got a killer surprise when Drew Powell, Butch Gilzean / Solomon Grundy, joined him on stage.
Pertwee was just a pleasure to listen to and I’d love to have a couple of beers with the man just to hear some of his stories. Powell was an absolute hoot and is really quick-witted, a few drinks with him could be fun as hell.
The panel was really cool and after I transcribe some of the highlights that I want to cover, I’ll be popping out an article on it as well. I really think you’ll enjoy it if you’re a fan of Gotham, Event Horizon, Doctor Who or any of their prior work.
The Cosplay
Admittedly, before Bell County Comic Con, it had been a couple of decades since I’d been to a Con. I used to go quite often, especially around Dallas and Fort Worth, but that was back in the 90’s and those things were really a completely different breed.
However, with Bell County as my only measuring tool, I really expected a little “more” when it came to the cosplay. While there were some great creations, and apparently I missed a killer Predator family, with it being in downtown Austin, Texas, I thought we’d see a lot of mind blowing costumes.
To be fair however, I didn’t make it in to the actual contest, so I’m sure I missed photos of some fantastic creations. Take a look at some of the ones I did grab and stay tuned for the articles discussed above.
