DragonCon 2001 – Recap

The past few days are a blurr. I never got home before 1am and was always back the next morning! Maybe next year I will check into splitting a room with someone, definitely would have been nice not to have to remind myself of the drive back up 400. Had the opportunity this year but just didn’t see the utility of it with me living so near by compared to many who came to this year’s DragonCon. Some parts of the Con were the best they had ever been. The Masquerade and Cry for Dawn contests were the best I had attended. Well, Cry for Dawn had more flesh the first year, but we’re still talking a better run show this year. This year, however, the Atlanta Fire Marshall must have decided to make an appearance. We’d never been yelled at through bullhorns so much in the past. Move AWAY from the stairs!! over and over…. Still a disposable camera full of shots that I just have to develop soon! I got to see James Doohan in his first DragonCon appearance. He is not in good health so that may have been my only shot at seeing him. He got several standing ovations and quite a few good laughs. His mind was obviously wandering some of the time, but he was aware of it and made jokes about it. I didn’t know before then that he was a WWII soldier who was the first of his unit to hit the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, so truly a living legend in every way. I also picked up some cheapie comics from the bargain bins. I do collect comics, but my primary aim for comics has always been the stories, so the comics do not have to be in mint condition in plastic baggies to satsify this reader. So, I bought some series I either didn’t read originally or didn’t know about, etc. I also bought a small stack of Superboy comics. This is the Superboy from my pre-teen years not the Superboy of today. To those who are uninformed, DC had a major re-boot in the mid-80’s called CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. This laid the building blocks for Today’s DC Universe. Today’s Man of Steel never had a career in Smallville as Superboy and the Superboy of today is a clone genetically augmented to have powers similar to Superman’s. But before all that, Superboy honed his skills in Smallville under the watchful eyes of Ma and Pa Kent, who all readers knew were destined to die shortly after Clark finished High School. I loved Superboy as a child because I could imagine myself in his place but it was always in the back of my mind that Clark would lose his parents one day. That’s another difference in the modern-day Superman mythos. Superman’s parents are/were still alive. They may have died in the recent Our World’s At War Storyline, but that’s yet to be confirmed. Anyway, I also picked up a sword this year, something I’ve planned to do every since the year I bought my Klingon Bat’leth (SP?) – a klingon weapon, around five years ago at a small con in Columbus, GA. It’s nothing special, but I liked the look and heft of it and it will look cool somewhere in my house.