Since Fanboys Anonymous revolves around the various different aspects of geek culture, any opportunity that we get to embrace our inner nerd is relished. One of the best places to do that, of course, is at a convention, and our latest endeavor in that regard was the Atlantic City Boardwalk Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Unfortunately, scheduling conflicts and last minute booking problems and so forth prevented us from being able to go the full four days, but we were thankfully still able to attend on Friday.
As far as the size of the convention, it's naturally bigger than your normal upstarts as it is held in the Atlantic City Convention Center instead of a small community center or the more warehouse-type buildings. However, don't let that intimidate you. In no way is this anywhere near as big as something like New York Comic Con in comparison. This is the perfect size for a starter convention to attend to get a basic idea of how these go, where you have enough time to visit all of the different attractions and attend several panels as well. To give you a basic rundown of some of the things we were able to do, take a look at the sections below.
Cosplayers
It's always fun to see what people are dressed up as at conventions, since they're celebrating the characters we love. As expected, the top choice seemed to be Harley Quinn, and believe me when I say the three below are just a fraction of the ones that were roaming the floor. Costumes ranged from the more serious and darker ones to silly renditions of cartoon characters and even more than one version of Where's Waldo? which is totally cheating and not fair.
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| Suicide Squad Harley Quinn | "Bitches of Cosplay" |
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| Supergirl | Robin |
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| The Super Mario Bros |
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| The Twins - Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch |
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| Captain America | Deadpool Family |
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| Erza Scarlet Casey Jones | Steven Stone |
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| Garnet | Lex Luthor |
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| Found him! |
Stan Lee Museum
A neat little section is what they refer to as "The Stan Lee Museum," which basically houses all sorts of miscellaneous treasures from over the years that involve the man himself and his creations. There are a dozen or so glass cases filled with special drawings, signed memorabilia, and odd trinkets, but what immediately stands out is the collection of Iron Man statues. You pretty much can't be around that area and not notice Iron Monger and the bright glowing lights of the Arc Reactor chestpieces.
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| Iron Man armor busts | Iron Man Mark V Armor |
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| Different versions of Iron Man armor |
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| Iron Man armor War Machine bust | Marvel Cinematic Universe Props Display Case |
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| Pingo Doce with Guarana Kick | Peter Parker's Diploma | The Orb (Power Stone) |
The Garage
If the Marvel movie props aren't necessarily your thing, but you still enjoy checking out some of the iconic pieces of superhero film history, there is also a section dedicated to automobiles dubbed "The Garage." You could get your picture taken alongside The General Lee from
Dukes of Hazard, the Ecto-1a from
Ghostbusters II, and of course, multiple different Batmobiles!
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| Tumbler Batmobile from Batman Begins | Batpod from The Dark Knight |
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| The Batmobile from Tim Burton's Batman | The DeLorean from Back to the Future |
Panels and Celebrities
We didn't partake in the autograph and photo sessions, but we were able to check out a few names along the way during our rounds.
Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash's secret weapon for finding out what every piece of memorabilia or history is worth—
Rob Bruce from
Comic Book Men—was a really fun chat and is a very down to Earth, cool guy. Here's hoping we'll be able to get him on one of our podcasts soon!
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Head of Fanboys Anonymous Tony Mango (left) and Comic Book Men's Robert Bruce (right)
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Fellow resident Fanboy Sam Lascio is also pictured below, chatting it up with the folks responsible for the documentary
The Death of "Superman Lives": What Happened?—writer and director Jon Schnepp (who you may recognize from
Metalocalypse and
Aqua Teen Hunger Force) and executive producer Robert Pierce. They're also awesome guys in their own right, so don't overlook the tables facing the wall and skip by them!
Definitely a highlight of the day, though, was being able to sit in on Michael Rooker's panel. It was a lighthearted affair filled with tons of jokes. Rooker, of course, was his usual self, prompting the first question of the Q&A session to be: "Are you as big of an asshole as you portray in your movies?"
He filled the audience in on some of the backstage info about filming
Mallrats and
Guardians of the Galaxy as well as his more troubled background that forged him into the badass that he is, including a story of when he walked down a street and saw everyone locking their car doors, which just made him want to become The Hulk and toss their cars around.
Michael then gave out four special figurines that he would sign and number later on, with the final one going to a little kid dressed up as Yondu, showing that despite his rough exterior, the guy's got a soft spot deep down as well.
Merchandise and Vendors
Speaking for myself and myself alone, when I go to conventions, I don't care as much about what's for sale compared to much of the other stuff. This is a force of habit of just being tight with my money, so I don't get as much of a joy of looking around at what I'm not going to purchase. However, as with any convention, there's plenty of different vendors out there for you to find a multitude of things that you would want in your collection. Whether you're a collector of T-shirts, toys, artwork and specialty-made crafts, or pretty much anything else you can name, you'll be able to find it.
Below is an example of one thing that did stand out to me, though. Superhero Jewelry had a wide assortment of very cool looking rings as well as other things, such as below:
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| DC Comics ring replicas |
Of course, there's much more that we weren't able to participate in, such as the Cosplay Ballroom Party, the After Party, and so forth. However, that was due to time constraints on our part.
If you've got the time, head on over to ACBC for the remaining two days this Saturday and Sunday and geek out with your fellow Fanboys, pick up some swag, buy some merchandise of your favorite characters, and take some pictures with the celebrities that you're fond of. For more information, visit
http://www.doacbc.com.
