Review: Rhode Island Comic Con 2013

Like any two-year old, Rhode Island Comic Con is experiencing growing pains. But this past weekend it proved itself to be a beautiful baby comic convention, with a broad appeal to attendees outside the comic book world.

Mind you, the con took place despite the best attempts by fate to disrupt it. On Friday, the day most of the West Coast celebrities were supposed to fly in to T.F. Green Airport just south of Providence, a gunman opened fire on Transportation Security agents and a crowd in Los Angeles International Airport, and the airport was shut down for most of the rest of the day.

Amazingly enough, only a few celebrities cancelled outright, mostly due to the valiant efforts of the RICC staff, according to Steven Perry of Altered Reality Entertainment and the organizer of RICC.

“We unfortunately lost Nichelle Nichols, David Anders, Raphael Sbarge and Jett Lucas from the show due to the LAX shooting,” Perry said in an interview via email. “But we would have lost almost all of them if it wasn’t for our staff, travel booker and my diligent work at hectically rebooking all the cancelled flights and rerouting over 50+ guests and making sure that they all still arrived at the show for the fans.”

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Our thoughts go out to the people and families affected by this senseless act. Even with this tragic event the guests were determined to make it to the show as to not disappoint their fans and we commend them for their dedication in this chaotic time.

— Steven Perry

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And make no mistake about it — while there were comic book and collectibles vendors galore on the show floor, it was the guests that the massive crowds showed up to see. How massive? In its second year of operations RICC “presold approximately 14,000” tickets, according to Perry, who noted that overall the “final numbers are still being processed, but we sold in the ball park of 35,000.”

That puts it somewhere around the fifth or sixth largest convention for nerds on the East Coast, behind New York Comic Con at 115,000, PAX East at 75,000, Dragon Con at around 50,000, and MegaCon at about 45,000. RICC is basically tied with Otakon, which in 2012 reported 33,000 attendees and was likely at 35,000 this year.

The panels put on by the guests were for the most part very well attended by enthusiastic crowds. Before I took on the task of your Editor in Chief here at Nerd Caliber, I had committed to being a staff photographer for RICC, and got to sit in on a couple of panels on Saturday and on Sunday. The Billy Dee Williams panel was very enlightening, and showed him to be a genuinely pleasant man, who is very deliberate and thoughtful with his words. He also may have let slip a bit of rumor about a possible new Star Wars universe series (see Lando Drops Hint About Possible New Star Wars Series).

But about those growing pains — Williams was supposed to have a screen behind the speaker’s table to show a short video that explained just how many movies he had been in both before and after Star Wars (“Nighthawks,” anybody?) Alas, no screen had been procured, possibly because of some confusion about what resources the Rhode Island Convention Center was going to supply and what ones RICC had to drag in.

I can personally attest to having to go through approximately one dozen volunteers before I found one that had some pretty basic information I was looking for. But that is not a surprise when you go from needing enough volunteers to handle the 7,500 people you expect on your first year (and getting more than 20,000) to a volunteer staff large enough to handle a con anticipated at more than 30,000 attendees. The fact that RICC was such a smooth experience for most says a lot about how well the organizers and staff ramped up in such a short time.

Divas! Divas Everywhere!
Not all of the guests were worth the extra effort to get them to RICC, however. The convention had a rare 1966 Batman TV series reunion with Adam West, Burt Ward and Julie Newmar. It presold a special Batman VIP badge that included autographs — or so everyone, including RICC, thought until West and the gang insisted on nothing but cash for all signatures. To its credit, RICC promised to refund all of the badges, but they were all paid for online via credit cards or Paypal, so many Batman fans didn’t bring the extra $150 or more that they would need, and the refund from the con wouldn’t hit their accounts for a few days.

Further cementing West’s awful reputation this past weekend, at the Batman panel, signs were placed around the room with an image of a camera surrounded by the famous red circle with a red slash through it. West allowed no pictures, even to the point of banning con staff photography. (Yes, I know it was likely a decision by the managers of these celebrities, but if you are the face, you wear the shame.)

At the polar opposite of the diva spectrum was the reunion of the bounty hunters from the first Star Wars trilogy, including Greedo himself, Paul Blake (who had the crowd roaring in support when he said he proudly wears a “Han Shot First” t-shirt regularly). The big coup for RICC for the Star Wars fans was the first public appearance at a convention in the U.S. by Cathy Munroe, who played the bounty hunter eventually known as Zuckuss in “The Empire Strikes Back.”

All of the bounty hunters, including Allan Harris who played Bossk, Chris Parsons who played Forlom and John Morton who played Boba Fett in some scenes on Bespin, were as pleasant as they could be, and had the audience eating out of their hands with their British wit and sheer enjoyment of being adored by fans.

Every other celebrity I encountered, or who my friends encountered, was fun and pleasant, from Gil Gerard of “Buck Rogers” fame who returned from last year, to Ernie Hudson of the Ghostbuster movies having a good time with the Ghostbusters of New Hampshire charity costuming group. Even RICC’s Perry found the guests to be the highlight of the show. When asked that question, Perry said, “I am going to have to say meeting all the bounty hunters from Star Wars, and having lunch with Danny Glover and Billy Dee Williams was a treat.”

Cosplayers and Costumes – or Lack Thereof
Another area in which RICC really stepped up its game is the costume contest. The con recruited well-known New England convention stalwart Pat Covey to manage the contest. He is one of the organizers of Granite State Comic Con in New Hampshire, and has run contests, organized celebrity handlers and managed game programs for cons all over New England. Covey recruited local cosplayers including HaruVamp (Miriam Hintz), Abby Fellows of multi-award winning Human Sushi Cosplay, Nicole Marie Jean, and craftsmanship expert Jonny Ruckus of the Ghostbusters of New Hampshire to serve as judges, along with famous Atlanta-based cosplayer Ridd1e (Riki LeCotey).

Serving as MCs were New Hampshire-based Booster Gold Cosplay (Aaron Wahl) and Boston’s Deadpool (James Ryan Jwanowski), who were both hilarious – usually intentionally and in the case of Booster’s difficulty with names, often unintentionally. The contest ran like a top, the costumes were amazing (including an eight-foot tall Optimus Prime and a nine-foot tall Hulk) and it was one of the first contests I have ever seen that ended on time.

Not all costumes at RICC were as well received as the giant Hulk (made from seat cushion foam, the creator told me, after he won Best in Show.) Two women were escorted out, I heard from a top-level con staffer, in unrelated incidents of inappropriate attire. One was cosplaying as Mystique, but apparently a blue string bikini bottom and body paint doesn’t meet the local cover-up standards. Maybe she just didn’t have the skill to make the latex prosthetics that covered Mystique’s nipples in the X-Men movies. The other woman allegedly came into the con in a trench coat and soon doffed it to reveal a costume that was essentially three strategically place strips of black electrical tape.

Future Growth
Last year RICC had less than one third of the convention center space and had to share it with a literacy convention and a beer fest. This year it had the entire show floor and almost all of the convention space to itself. I had heard that the convention center and the city of Providence were both so impressed by the turnout last year that RICC had the center booked through 2015. Perry corrected my error.

“Actually the next 10+ years minimum, with an exclusive deal,” he said. “We are not going anywhere; we are here for the long run my friend, to make fans happy and to make memories that will last a lifetime with many more shows to come.”

While RICC still has some kinks to work out, they are easily fixed and all caused by its insanely fast growth. I will be back for as many of the 10+ years as I can, and I encourage you to do so as well.