Wizard World 2017 - Bit of a let down

I’ve attended Wizard World for 5 years now. I’m more than just an attendee – I’m a rather overenthusiastic one. For those that read my writing, or know me personally, you know how much stories and movies mean to me. They have changed my life, several times over, and have affected the way I behave in everyday situations, helped me when I struggled, and pointed me overall in a positive direction in life. So, it may come as no shock that not only do I attend conventions, I try to meet celebrities, as well as spend my money on cool things. In fact, that picture of me to our right is me meeting Milo Ventimiglia (who is now on This is Us, but will always be in my mind from Heros).

Oh, ya – I forgot to mention – I cosplay them too.

2016: I'm on the right - but the dude on the left is my friend Kurt - part of my yearly Comic Con Crew. He built that suit. If you want his information as far as making something for you, let me know.

Amongst the myriad of Negan’s (this year’s second most popular cosplay) and Harley Quinn’s (never seen as many as I did this year), I walked around as the Devil from Hell’s kitchen – Matthew Murdock, aka Daredevil. My interpretation was the one that was from the terrific Netflix show. It’s always a good time. To date, each year I have dressed as someone different, so I’m not a one trick pony. 2017 – Daredevil. 2016 – Arrow. 2015 – Jedi. 2014 – Wolverine. 2013 – Superman. It’s always been a good time, but increasingly my costumes have gone up in complexity, and despite the fact my costume wasn’t perfect, I enjoyed my time in the leather nonetheless.

Me fighting Kingpin.

However, I must say that this was the year that the cost of the convention, (79 dollars, plus the amusement fees) and the cost of the autographs and photo ops (ranging from 40 dollars to over 120), did not meet the fun that I had at the convention. I’m not usually a fan of bullet points, as I like words too much, but I’ll detail a bit more about it here using them.

• Layout – The layout was very different from years past. I liked the initial idea to set everything up and change things around. However, they created a giant cluster in the center where the celebrities now were. This created nearly impassable areas and giant lines that were completely unnecessary. Along with this, the idea to have the stages around I really liked, but I also really missed all the booths that were around as well. There were a ton of open areas, which was cool for pictures, but meant that there was that many fewer things to check out. Speaking to vendors, they stated that prices had gone up several years in a row, so that may have contributed.
  
• Celebrity guests – It’s unfortunate when you have to say that some celebrities are more famous than others, but it’s usually the truth. I don’t have anything against Gene Simmons, the Weasley twins, or the kid from Stranger Things, but it’s not Stephen Amell, it’s not Charlie Cox, and it’s not the line-up that many of the other Wizard World cities have had lately.
  
• Comic selection – There is a reason that this is called Wizard World instead of a traditional “Comic Con” – the emphasis in recent years is away from the paper books. That being said, this is the first year that finding a booth that sold comics was particularly difficult. With the exception of one booth, most of the booths only featured higher priced rare comics, and there was very little for the common man (ahem, myself).
  
• Open area after the check in – Okay, okay, I know that I’m talking about layout again. But it was a big deal guys. Literally the only thing you saw once you got past the check point was open grey concrete. If I didn’t know any better, I would have been find with it. But where there had been cars and cosplay communities in the past years, I now found a bunch of grey stone, and it upset me.
  

Overall, I am not really sure what happened. But it wasn’t the convention that I remembered from past years.  There was one particular moment worth mentioning. I got to talk to Mike Curtis, who worked for MindsEyeRadio, which is a radio station for the blind. He was grabbing Cosplayers, and allowing them to describe their own costume for the visually impaired. I thought that was really cool, so I will link to the soundcloud here.

Anyways, here are some of my favorite cosplays for this year. Thanks for reading!

Agent Carter and Cinderella

Thought Baymax was pretty inventive.

Um, yes that is a K2S0 sighting!

One of the best Batman galleries I've seen. Great Harley bomb hammer too.

The guy who does the Joker I have met before, and he always is terrific.

This really took some time. Kudos.

I don't love the interpretation, but it's spot on from the movie.

I knew there would be at least one!

He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and Bellatrix

That must have been really, really tough.

Really nice Red Hood from Josh here. Shout out to Kurt again for the guns.

I've never seen a Ripley so I was really impressed by this young woman.

Not a Cosplay but it was cool.

Me and the voice of Batman from Batman: The Animated Series - Kevin Conroy.

Look at those handsome devils. Ha. Ha. Ha.

And yes, I couldn't escape a convention without at least one Harley Quinn photo. Here she is.

If you made it to the end of the page! Congratulations! It was a long, long post with a lot of photos, but I look forward to detailing more conventions in the future and telling you more about them. Hopefully ones in the future will go a bit better! Thanks for reading DoubleFeaturePreachers.com!