Alamo City Comic Con 2017
While searching for more comic and anime conventions to attend, I came across Alamo City Comic Con located in… you guessed it, San Antonio (for those of you who guessed “Alamo City” no marks!), but if you’re from Texas, you should of guessed correctly. Unfortunately it was over a holiday weekend and I already had other plans for the majority of it. For many, that extra day on a holiday weekend would have made the travel just a little easier. However, since I had plans for Saturday and Monday already, I decided to make the three hour journey (each way!) and squeeze in attendance at the con on Sunday. I know, I’m crazy like that.
My daughter found out I was going and decided to tag along for the adventure. We woke up early Sunday morning to make the drive and once we arrived to town, we made a quick pit stop to fuel up with food before attempting to tackle the con. After eating, we found parking at a nearby garage by the River Walk and made our way back to the Henry B. Convention Center where the con was being held. I was not in costume this time, but my daughter wore her kangaroo onesie with a pair of my old boxing gloves for her fighting kangaroo costume.
Once we made our way inside, we headed over to the badge pick-up area. We walked up to get our badges, but to our disappointment there were no more badges and they were issuing wristbands instead. It was only an hour after opening but they were already out of badges I guess, so unfortunately we won’t be able to add ACCC badges from this year’s con, into our collection. After checking panel times I was encountered another disappointment, two of the panels I wanted to see that day were cancelled! The only upside of that was that I was able to spend more time looking around the con and not worrying about the time.
We proceeded to make our way to the exhibit hall to see the special guest, vendors, and of course, all the cosplayers that were attending. To start off, we walked through the guest area to see the actors and other guests that were present, and they had a great line-up here… many of which, my daughter had never seen. She did know a few, including Rob Schneider from ‘Grown Ups’, which is “a-maze-ing” (a little joke from one of her favorite parts, if you have seen the movie you know what I mean!). We continued around the guest area which led me to Val Kilmer, one of the speakers on a panel I wanted to watch. This was one actor I had really wanted to see, but his area was a little more secluded than some of the other guests. Walls with black curtains were put up in his area with a line of fans waiting their turn to see him. A series long-running joke from ‘Psych’ is about none other than Val Kilmer, that one being “I´d also be lying if I said Val Kilmer still looks like Val Kilmer.” Due to the small area, and large line-up, it looked like I wasn’t going to be seeing him this time… I did check on prices, but photos were crossed off the price list along with some other items. There were also signs requesting that “NO cameras or cell phones” be brought into the area. Since I wasn’t going to leave my gear with someone else (along with our phones!) that pretty much ended any plans I had about being able to see Val Kilmer that day. After realizing this, I dropped to the floor and let out a loud dramatic “NNnnnooooOOoooo!” that could be heard for miles…. or at least that’s how I’m telling the story now!
We continued walking around through that area with more signs saying “No Pictures” so I had to keep my camera low to my waist, gunslinger style, (hey, it’s Texas!). Shortly after that, we began walking through the vendor and artist sections to see what new goodies we wanted. My daughter ended up finding a few things she really liked so we made a few purchases. With it being a Sunday, the attendance seemed kind of light in my opinion, but this was the first time I have attended this con and my previous experiences were all in much larger venues so my perception could be skewed. I did hear the previous year had a better in attendance, but with the date being different from their usual September or October dates, that might of played into part of it, as well as the holiday weekend giving some of the usual attendees other weekend adventure plans.
I continued walking around the venue snapping photos of various cosplayers as we continued down each row. After a few hours, we made our way to the guest cosplayers area to see who was there, a few of them I already knew. I hung around for a while trying to get photos, but it did take some patience as I wasn’t the only one who wanted photos or a chance to chat with them. In this hall, there was also the live drawing panel set up. We sat and watch the a few parts of the session including ‘(Light Saber Noise) – Star Wars with Dave Dorman!’ And ‘Tell me a story! – Teen Titans and Justice League Unlimited with Shannon Denton!’. After watching the Teen Titans panel and watching some of the sketching going on there, as well as watching some of the artists sketching at their own tables, I had the itch to start drawing again too. It’s been a few years, but maybe I will pick it back up.
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We made a few more rounds of the hall just to make sure we’d seen everything, and then we then made our way upstairs to the gaming room and to see what panels were going on up there. We were not there very long before we decided to head out and do some sightseeing, since this was my daughter’s first time in San Antonio. I heard Saturday’s attendance was much better than what I experienced on Sunday, but overall it was a good con. Hopefully next year’s con is back to it’s regular schedule and I can return to see more!
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