I’m home from my first day at Chicago’s Comics and Entertainment Expo 2015 and I am exhausted! I spent most of my time on the floor, I’ve got hopefully a nice little project in the works that I’ll be able to share after the event is over, and I also got a couple panel rundowns to share with you.

First off, to get just a tad personal here, while I am very happy writing here on this site and even talking to people via Skype one-on-one, I have a very difficult time going up to a stranger and starting a conversation with them. Because of that, I did spend most of the first half of the day basically just wandering around the show floor, glancing over the booths and generally feeling a bit lost. Luckily I found my way over to CinemaJaw’s booth and chatted a bit with Ry the Movie Guy. I also saw that Anthony and Julie from SyFy’s Face Off had a booth where they were doing a makeup and promoting Anthony’s FX school. Julie was very sweet and I had a nice time chatting with her for a bit.

Next up I went up to the main stage for a couple of the big panels of the day. First up was the “Unmasking the Hero” panel which made no sense because none of the actors they had on the panel wore masks on any of the shows they were on. The most popular one of the group was David Ramsey who plays Diggle on Arrow, even topping Jewel Staite. It was quite funny that at least three times during the audience questions someone would start off by saying how much they or someone close to them was a huge fan of Firefly… but their question was for David. There was also Raphael Sbarge who plays Jiminy Cricket on Once Upon a Time and Eoin Macken who played Gwaine on Merlin. They were definitely the one-offs compared to Staite and Ramsey, but did get a few fun questions. Macken got to tell about how one of the other actors from Merlin would always manage to be on a Mare who was in heat, and his favorite mishap was when he saw that actor (whose name I forget, sorry) get thrown off the horse into a bush. The funniest story was definitely when Ramsey talked about how John Barrowman claimed that his farts don’t stink, and in return Stephen told him “why don’t you fart in my mouth and prove it!” And so one day John took him up on that offer, it happened to be a very serious scene they were shooting on the show, it was just three or four of them together and it was a very quiet one which only those right around him could hear, and he imitated it for the audience. And who knows what Barrowman eats, but according to David Ramsey, it did not in fact stink.

Right after that panel was one for the upcoming show Wayward Pines on Fox. It has a really amazing cast including Matt Dillon as the lead, Juliette Lewis, Terrence Howard, Toby Jones, Shannyn Sossamon, Mellisa Leo and more. We got to watch the first episode which is also available at Fox.com. It was really bizarre and fascinating. It shares many elements from shows like the Prisoner, Lost, and Twin Peaks. It has a very disjointed narrative flow to it where it jumps from Matt Dillon’s perspective during his time at Wayward Pines as well as his wife, son, and superior officer back in Seattle who are trying to figure out where he is. It’s a bit of a twisted mystery that also reminds me a bit of the village. It’s produced by M. Night Shyamalan and he directed one of the ten episodes, and it does share a bit of his visual style but it’s much more compelling than much of his recent work. The panel itself was led by Shyamalan and Dillon with a local Fox personality as the moderator. He did an alright job but brought up Unbreakable 2 way more often than he needed to. For the record, it’s something that Night is very loosely working on, he has some notes and some ideas but it didn’t appear that he’s actively trying to make it happen at this point in time. The rest of the questions weren’t very insightful, but it was fairly entertaining.

Great looking Frankenberry cosplay. Huge with working lights.

And to wrap up my day I spent some more time on the floor where I did manage to talk to a few more people, got several pictures of nice looking cosplayers, and did have one slightly disappointing experience when I asked Gail Simone for a video appearance where she was nice about it, but had to decline and direct me to her guy she had that approved those sorts of things for her who wasn’t there at the time. Artist Alley was a little bit of a befuddlement for me since I am practically oblivious to anything going on with the comics side of this industry as my focus has always been on the movies and television side of things. I also was very intimidated by the autographs section of the floor, I don’t have the budget for even the cheapest autographs and have no idea what the etiquette is, I know that no pictures can be taken as those are also bought separately, but I didn’t know if even meeting the celebrities was allowed unless an autograph or picture was purchased, and wasn’t sure where to find that information. But all in all it was a worthwhile day. I’m exhausted, ready for bed, and not sure if I’m entirely ready for tomorrow where it will be even more crowded than it was today. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.