Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This past Friday my wife Anne and I drove two hours southeast of Indianapolis to attend the thirteenth annual Cincinnati Comic Expo in the heart of their downtown that’s not so different from ours. At first it felt odd to return to a “normal” comic-con contained within a single convention center after our recent Dragon Con adventure and its downtown-sized sprawl. By the end of our weekend we’d forgotten any such reservations and were thrilled at how, in at least one respect, Cincy succeeded where Dragon Con had failed us…

And now, the rest of our weekend besides cosplay.

After a stop for a rather large lunch in a charming small town (which we’ll cover in a future entry), we arrived in Cincinnati around 1:15 pm without any accidents or major road construction snafus to slow us down too egregiously. The exhibit hall at Duke Energy Convention Center was scheduled to open at 3:00. We docked on the first floor of a parking garage two blocks away, which I’d scouted in advance via Google Maps, and enjoyed the short, sunny walk…albeit with a double-take as we passed an even closer garage that Google Maps had withheld from me.

We tripped over our first stumbling block at the pre-show check in. First stop for all attendees was the security tables set up outside for bag checks, which staffers conducted using drumsticks to prod through possessions. At this point in the journey, we were informed the Convention Center prohibited all outside food or drink from being brought in. Even plain ol’ bottled water was verboten. Altogether. We’ve never seen that enforced to this extent at any other con, and longtime MCC readers can attest we’ve done a lot of cons. I had to wonder if maybe some resourceful Cincinnati gang had concocted a way to MacGyver bottled waters into explosives powerful enough to rip through bank vault walls.

Later in the day, online comments from the showrunners confirmed this was entirely the Convention Center’s policy and not their idea. In hindsight I’m guessing the motive was greed, not safety. We were not happy. We hadn’t thought to bring snacks along (though we’ve kept granola bars on us at past shows), but we are middle-aged and we are fans of better living through hydration. Between us we’d brought four bottled waters along. I popped one open and chugged nearly the entire thing on the spot. I decided to “forget” about the fourth one in the lower right pocket of my cargo shorts, complete with mental finger-quotes.

Next stop was inside for emptying pockets and holding still while another wave of guards waved metal-detector wands around our persons. An elderly yet no less eagle-eyed guard spotted the illicit life-giving substance I was smuggling in my shorts and denied it entry as well. I took it out and placed it on top of a trash can. If someone else wanted to toss it all the way in and officially waste it, that was their call to make.

Onward to the gauntlet’s more benign home stretch: the line to get into the exhibit hall. We were 19th and 20th in the General Admission line. VIPs had their own early-admission line at the end of the hall. We waited patiently on the soft carpet and tried not to think about thirst. Thankfully the impromptu chug-a-lug kept me for a good while. While I held our spot in line, Anne did some light reconnaissance and found the water fountains for later reference…assuming they hadn’t been turned off or poisoned. She also found a drink vending machine that was out of order and a Starbucks selling water at $4.50 a prepackaged pop. She also confirmed the restroom facilities were not coin-operated.

At 2:00 VIPs were unleashed to go run wild in the exhibit hall. At 2:30 our line was moved down to those same doors, then allowed to follow their head-start at 3 sharp. We wandered a bit till we could figure out where their autograph area was, since it wasn’t clearly marked on the show floor map that they’d finally released to social media exactly 26 hours earlier. A mere few minutes later we founds the gents we sought.

Among their star attractions was a trio of European actors with a common bond: they’d each played villains in the Indiana Jones series. We’d met one of them decades ago at Star Wars Celebration 2002 in Indy: Julian Glover, who was the big-bad Walter Donovan in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Our generation also knows him as General Veers, who led the Imperial forces on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Most recently I saw him as a renowned conductor among the few people venerated by Cate Blanchett’s character in Tár. But Anne already had his autograph.

We began a couple tables down with Paul Freeman, who played the infamously competitive Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Since then he’s also been one of the townspeople in Hot Fuzz and, to our surprise, the most heinous, purple-skinned Ivan Ooze in 1995’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. (Roger Ebert complimented him in his half-star review as “the only character in the movie with any personality or interest”.)

Next door to his table was Wolf Kahler, who played Belloq’s henchman Colonel Dietrich in the same film. (Raiders, I mean, not Power Rangers.) Later gigs have included the first few minutes of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, some split seconds in Wonder Woman, and most memorably in the final episode of HBO’s Band of Brothers (now streaming on Netflix!), where he’s a Nazi general delivering one last speech to his surviving men who’ve just surrendered to the Allies.

Along the same autographing aisle as the Indiana Jones trio was another actor on our to-do list: Bernard Hill! UK viewers have known him from decades of works (a friend of ours highly recommends 1982’s Boys from the Black Stuff), but to us Yanks he’s the captain of James Cameron’s Titanic and King Theoden of Rohan from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings — two of the three most-nominated films in Academy Awards history.

His autograph took us a few minutes more than the other two had. When our turn came, he needed to take a few minutes’ break, which we understood because we aren’t selfish monsters. Then there was the part where another fan interrupted to ask if Hill could rewrite a lower loop in his autograph that had gotten smudged. Hill was cordial toward one and all.

Friday turnout was so low that we were finished with all three actors within fifty minutes. We had plenty of time to turn our attentions from Indiana Jones to the world of Star Trek, which was two wide aisles away. As we walked, we passed by none other than John de Lancie, a familiar name to Trek fans in general and MCC readers in particular. He was wandering a bit and on the phone with his manager/handler/whichever, trying to figure out where to go. Moments later they united and made their way to his table, which wasn’t far from our own next destination.

At Indiana Comic Con 2022 we attended a panel costarring TV’s Data himself, Brent Spiner, who mentioned he’d written a novel called Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir. It’s one part jaw-dropping true-life adventures, one part wacky psycho-thriller full of stuff he made up about both himself and his Star Trek: The Next Generation castmates. That Q&A was the first I’d heard of its existence; mere weeks later, it was mine and made for a really fun read. I’d been hoping to have him sign it, but he canceled the last few cons we attended. At long last we’d found him again.

The line wasn’t long, but we were behind a number of characters in line. One podcaster brought takeout dinner for Spiner and his assistant, then whipped out a giant microphone to ask him some questions. Next guy up talks to Spiner at length, which I tuned out as he kept going and going. Next after him was a lady who, when Spiner mentioned how it’d been impossible to find a direct fright from L.A. to Cincinnati, began bickering with him about how she knows the local airline schedules and there are totally flights between the two, and once again I turned up the radio in my head to tune her out.

Finally she leaves and it’s our turn. Spiner looks at us and says in a stern deadpan, “This conversation will not last as long as that one did!” He’s joking. We laugh. But we agree! We try to maintain certain levels of self-awareness, self-control, and decorum. Sometimes we have to hold each other accountable, but for the most part we do try to behave. Though I’d read the novel, he plugged the audiobook version which also has all his friends doing their own voices. He confirmed many of the most outrageous events in the book actually happened, but of course declined to annotate them for us.

And when I mentioned my name was Randy, he said that was also his brother’s name, except he preferred to be called “Rand”. To me that sounds like someone wearing a necktie too tightly. His brother’s an attorney. We agreed that tracks. We didn’t take a photo since we’d already gotten one at ICC. But my fifteen-month Fan Fiction signing side quest was complete.

Anne then begged my indulgence as she aimed to follow one of her biggest comic-con rules: if de Lancie is a guest, she must meet him again. So I went and hung out by a trash can while she gravitated toward TV’s Q once more. In line ahead of her again was the airline-schedule-knower. She’d brought a copy of Days of Our Lives: The Complete Family Scrapbook, a compilation of photos from the famous daytime soap opera on which he performed for much of the ’80s. She made sure to point out the photos of his costar, his character’s inseparable love interest, and his dearest of dear friends — Arleen Sorkin, who just passed away exactly one month ago.

Anne and the next guy in line looked at each other and were like, “Please don’t make him cry before our turn!”

He answered her questions with sadness and talked about how Sorkin had been ill for a long time, and signed a page with a photo of their characters Gene and Calliope (the classic episode where they competed on The Newlywed Game). If the lady touched a raw nerve that required extra studious concentration to keep his composure, he didn’t let on.

Eventually she went away; Anne and the other guy each got their turns. They exchanged pleasantries similar to past encounters, except this time he was asking each fan where they worked. The other guy said he worked at a grocery; de Lancie noted there seemed to be a lot of grocery employees in his line today. Anne answered as well, and bought from him yet again for her collection. If he remembered her from before, he didn’t let on.

(We’re aware of another fan of his who crossed more than one line, was taken aside at the epic annual Trek show in Las Vegas and told in no uncertain terms never to contact him again. Anne tries really hard not to be That Lady.)

With the second round of our to-do list accomplished, we had a few minutes to begin our mandatory march through the exhibit hall. We’ll come back to that in a bit. At 5:25 came our first pro photo op of the weekend: a roundup of all three Indiana Jones villains. The op ran a few minutes late, but commenced shortly after we saw a mini-golf cart zip by us at 60 mph with a terrified Julian Glover sitting on the back.

We were unfamiliar with Pose Photo Ops, the company handing this part of the con. They were all friendly folks, but naturally they charged extra for digital copies of your pics. The digital redemption process also had an aggravating manual step on their end. After you picked up your hard copy, someone then had to scan your QR code again, then get the number at the edge of your photo. At some point after, an employee had to punch some keys so that specific pic would be available for download from their site. Of the companies we normally deal with, one emails your digital copies virtually instantly; the other includes them free with purchase and puts all of them online within minutes. The manual touch added no real efficiency, only some light security on their end.

Thankfully Friday was such a slow day that we didn’t have to wait long and we could share within minutes with our tiny circles of friends, which is fun. We worried how Saturday would go, though.

We had one last appointment for the day, and a small window of free time to pass. We filled it with dinner at a booth called Julia’s Home Cooking, run by a local entrepreneur whose other businesses don’t seem to have an active online footprint at the moment. Most of the center’s usually excellent food booths were closed (the great Tom and Chee’s appeared to have been entirely vaporized) except a lone burger concession stand I couldn’t bring myself to trust. Julia’s was a welcome alternative serving exactly what the name suggests, and with better flavors than ordinary cafeteria food, which has disappointed us at other shows.

That final appointment was a solo photo op for Anne, which freed me to see a few more aisles, which (again) we’ll get to momentarily.

The way their op schedule was laid out, Brent Spiner would be doing solo ops, then sharing a dual Trek op with de Lancie, who would then have his own solo ops afterward. This set list led to a fun moment after the Spiner/de Lancie dual ops were done. When the latter’s solo line moved forward, Spiner barged through and demanded, “And just WHERE were all you people when MY photo was being taken?” Much laughter. He’s cool like that.

With that pic, our Friday itinerary was done. We took the long walk back to the other end of the convention center and headed toward the car and into a bustling Friday night rush hour.

Our hotel for the evening was two miles away, across the Ohio River in Newport, Kentucky. Inside, an older gentleman was regaling the young ladies at the front desk with tales of yesteryear and showing off three LaserDiscs he was planning to have autographed at the con — Raiders of the Lost Ark, Titanic, and Star Trek: First Contact. Anne tried to join the conversation and tell the ladies about the even older and more obsolete format called videodiscs. At the point when things threatened to escalate to a “well, actually” duel, we moved on and left him to his captive audience.

I slept through the night, but around 1:30 a.m. Anne awoke to the sound of our neighbors cranking up a radio for some wee-hours karaoke. Several minutes later came a heavy knock at their door, followed by a brief exchange, followed by dead silence.

…

Saturday morning we choked down the worst free hotel breakfast we’ve had in years (cold food, broken toaster, limp precooked Oscar Meyer bacon, etc.) and returned to the Cincy side of the river, this time angling for a sweet parking spot in the closest possible garage to the con entrance. We pulled up at 8:08, had to wait another minute for employees to move the orange cones and pricing sign that were blocking the entrance, and then nabbed a sweet spot. This may be the first time we’ve ever had to wait for a city parking garage to open for the day.

The first round of security tables weren’t even set up yet, but we weren’t supposed to be let in till 8:30 anyway, which is awfully late by any other con’s standards. At 8:35 the bag checks began, but this time we’d prepared by bringing two empty plastic bottles with us. This time nothing was thrown away by order of greedy businesspersons. I grabbed us the 11th and 12th places in the G.A. line while Anne ran off to fill the bottles with overlord-approved fountain water. We soon moved up a notch when ticketholders for a 9:30 special signing with DC Comics head honcho Jim Lee were ordered out of line to report upstairs.

Several hundred VIPs entered the hall at 9:30; we plebeians followed at 10 on the dot. Anne’s primary objectives lay in the Star Wars universe. At last May’s Indiana Comic Con she’d gotten a Clone Wars poster cosigned by voice actors James Arnold Taylor and Dee Bradley Baker, the respective voices of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Every Clonetrooper Ever. Here in Cincy, she hoped to complete the set with Ashley Eckstein and Matt Lanter, the voices of Ahsoka Tano and Anakin Skywalker. We’d already met them both, but Anne wanted this extra-credit assignment. We accepted the possibility of her spending the entire day in their lines. We’ve come to dread autograph lines because of bad past experiences, which is why MCC readers see us sharing more photo ops than autograph-line anecdotes. But she really wanted that poster completed as a trophy of sorts for her cramped li’l work-from-home office, which can use all the bright spots it can get.

Maybe ten or fifteen fans beat her to Eckstein’s line. While she began her vigil, I circled ’round the rest of the area. VIPs had already created small island nations at the tables of Stephen Amell (TV’s Arrow), Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom!), and Paul Bettany, whom we’d just met at Dragon Con. Bettany was already at his station and merrily signing away. Also on hand at 10 were Charles Martinet (it’s-a-him, Mario!), Johnny Yong Bosch (a Power Ranger), Karan Ashley (ditto), Aleks Paunovic (the strapping Tracksuit Mafia guy from Hawkeye), and the full membership of the Indiana Jones Revenge Squad.

While I ran around for more shopping and cosplay pics and whatnot, Anne stayed put. Eckstein and Lanter arrived at 10:40. Her husband couldn’t make it, so instead her parents accompanied her at the table, which is exactly the sort of sweetness one would expect from her. Things went smoothly from there. Anne approached for her third encounter, after previous brief moments at C2E2 2013 and Galaxycon Columbus 2022. If she remembered Anne from before, she d–

“We’ve met before,” said Eckstein.

Needle scratch. Freeze frame.

“I have a photographic memory. Where have we met?”

She looked at Anne, who freaked out on the inside and lost all her words. She hadn’t expected that. It never happens with certain other actors she’s met more than once. In that moment Galaxycon disappeared from her mind, but she managed to mention C2E2. Eckstein was pretty sure that was too long ago and wasn’t it. Ultimately the two didn’t quite get closure this day, but Anne received her autograph.

By this time Eckstein’s line was so long that the back half had to be separated into its own segment, with extra coordination required to maintain continuity. Most fans were meeting Eckstein first, then getting in Lanter’s line. He consequently had a deceptively shorter line because he was keeping apace with her signing rhythm. So technically it was a massive line for both of them.

I rejoined Anne for Lanter’s table because we were both fans of Timeless, his NBC sci-fi drama that only got two seasons and a special. (We both also watched Clone Wars, sure, but anyway…) The three of us mourned the loss of that short-lived series together. If Lanter remembered either of us from that same Galaxycon photo op with Eckstein and Taylor, or our very first time meeting him solo at Star Wars Celebration Chicago, he didn’t let on.

We had one last appointment for the day, and a medium-sized window of free time to pass. We filled some of it with lunch at Julia’s. While Anne had some Salisbury steak (the daily special), I went for the barbecue meatballs. We agreed the mac-‘n’-cheese sides also hit the spot.

After lunch, we split up for a while. Anne joined the autograph line of Neal McDonough, an actor who’s been in so, so many things. On the tip of that iceberg are Star Trek: First Contact, Captain America: The First Avenger, Minority Report, The CW/DC’s Arrowverse, Desperate Housewives, Sonic the Hedgehog, and The USA Network’s Suits, which Netflix has somehow recently turned into the most popular TV series in world history. McDonough returned to his booth after the end of his 11:00 Q&A and hugged his next-door neighbor, the aforementioned Mr. Spiner. He then turned to Spiner’s line and told them of the First Contact cast, “YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH THEY PUT ME THROUGH!”

McDonough took time to talk to every fan. After a while he apologized to the line and confessed, “I am a chatter.” Not a problem: fans love meeting friendly actors, especially when it’s the actor who’s really chatty and not just the other fans. Anne waited patiently and tried to keep her mind off the lady in line who wouldn’t stop coughing, which is not something you want to hear at a comic-con post-pandemic. Anne was even more nervous than usual about it because — I may not have mentioned this in that write-up — she spent several days after Dragon Con in the throes of a nasty bout of con crud. She didn’t want to go through all that again so soon.

Meanwhile, I headed upstairs to watch a noontime Sketch Duel. I got my first taste of this recurring con feature at Fan Expo Chicago, got a kick out of it and would love to see more. The premise: two or more artists take the stage, are given subjects, and then draw and draw and draw while a moderator bugs them with questions and keeps the audience engaged so everyone’s not just sitting there watching furrowed brows and listening to pencil scratches and ambient hallway noise. Every audience member receives a raffle ticket; at the end, winners get the sketches. You get to watch artists do what they do best, you learn a little more about them, and sometimes you get entertaining repartee.

For the noon Sketch Duel, our participants were Scott Beaderstadt, co-creator of Trollords, among the few survivors of the late-’80s black-and-white comics boom; Jay Fosgitt, a Disney-brands artist (Sesame Street! Fraggle Rock!) whose creator-owned Bodie Troll popped up in a few past Free Comic Book Days; also-Disney artist Guy Gilchrist, who’s done Muppet work for fifty years and counting, and whom we met at the inaugural Indy Pop Con; and Dave Aikins, who’s done tons of licensed work in the Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. realms.

Unfortunately a mean ol’ sign in the room prohibited videos and photos, so I have no visual evidence to prove I was there. Gilchrist and Aikins kept up a steady buddy-rival trash-talking rhythm throughout much of the panel, and yet they found time to draw in between barbs. But when asked how they get into the mindset of drawing other people’s IPs, the two of them were in firm agreement that their field demands professionalism and a serious work ethic. Theirs is a job that requires them to be mimics, not bring drama or try to sneak naughty images into their art. Anyone who wants to make a living like they do — and, y’know, pay their bills and their health insurance — can’t behave as if they’re frat-boys trying to outsmart Dean Wormer and make zero-GPA fools think they’re cool.

Meanwhile, Anne got her turn with Mr. McDonough. The previous fan in line had brought a large Band of Brothers poster to sign, which prompted McDonough to remind everyone to watch that HBO miniseries now that it’s on Netflix because he wants to see it do bigger numbers than its companion show The Pacific. As it happens, Anne had planned to ask him about the same show, where his performance as First Lieutenant Buck Compton was one of his best. She’s also read the real Compton’s memoir, which came with an afterword by McDonough. As a value-added bonus, he threw in a mention of Flags of Our Fathers, which I’ve seen but she hasn’t, and which director Clint Eastwood decided to film in the black sands of Iceland because doing it on actual Iwo Jima seemed inappropriate.

Meanwhile, questions continued at the Sketch Duel:

• RE: Weirdest Sketch Request, Aikins once had someone ask him to draw Carly Rae Jepsen.
• Gilchrist, the elder of the group, told us about meeting Alice Cooper (whom I’ve also met!), who admitted he wasn’t interested in hosting The Muppet Show till he learned Vincent Price do it, so then it was cool.
• Gilchrist and Aikins know well what it’s like to see their books in clearance aisles and thrift shops, which is…certainly a feeling.
• Aikins once did a Blue’s Clues book that was high-pay and really easy for him to draw, an ideal project in that sense.
• When asked what they do in their downtime, Fosgitt listed movies, drawing for fun (even pros can still do this!) and naps. One audience member misheard this as “maps” and asked if he ever drew fantasy maps, which led to a discussion of “fantasy naps”, which all agreed should totally be a thing.
• When asked randomly if any of them had ever met Grant Morrison, Aikins’ most apropos reply was, “If you have met a leaf in the sky, you have met Grant Morrison.”
• Fosgitt once saw someone cosplay as a character he created, which got him emotional.
• Our moderator, who didn’t introduce herself, has been hosting these Sketch Duels for six years.
• Beaderstadt stayed mostly silent, concentrating on his art.

The finished artworks are sadly Sir Not Appearing in This Chapter. Based on the suggestions from the studio audiences, our panelists drew:

• Beaderstadt: zombie Care Bear
• Fosgitt: Popeye in Judge Dredd’s uniform
• Gilchrist: Miss Piggy as Harley Quinn, standing over a beaten-down Bat-Kermit
• Aikins: SpongeBob in an Easter Bunny suit fighting Patrick in a Santa suit

…and I won none of them in the free raffle. Rats.

In a stroke of perfect timing, Anne finished up at McDonough’s table a few scant minutes before I left the upstairs panel room and rejoined her in the exhibit hall. We paced around a bit more till our 2:05 appointment: the Neal McDonough jazz-hands experience as seen in our lead photo. By this time the photo-op area was 500 more times crowded than it had been on Friday, but somehow they kept it organized. I scanned the tracking board and was surprised to see DC publisher/artist Jim Lee was doing pro ops, like an actor. He’d be the first comics pro I’ve ever seen doing photo ops like this since…well, since Stan Lee, far as I can recall. We joined McDonough’s line and had an unexpected reunion with two other ladies who’d also been in Friday’s Indiana Jones villainy-op with us.

At one point while we waited, a group of cosplayers dressed as Narkina 5 prisoners from Andor did a lap around the hall chanting, “ONE WAY OUT! ONE WAY OUT!” It was funny the first time we saw this done. This was, we believe, our third vantage on a pretend-prison-break.

The photo op went smoothly as evidenced in the pic, but this time our digital copy was not online within minutes. I checked and checked over the next couple hours, and…nada. Assuming they hadn’t simply lost it, we’d have to trade instant gratification for delayed gratification, one of the lower-tier gratification forms. Boo, hiss.

Our main goals were now all officially done. Before we left, I decided I wanted to do one last panel: another Sketch Duel. They’re fun! Our same moderator returned, and we learned her name was Chris, or possibly Kris, or for all I know Khryyyss. Somehow she’d sprained her ankle between panels, but she soldiered on in the name of comic-con duty. We had three artists participating this time: Seth Damoose, an indie creator whose works have included Floppy Cop, Savants, and Image’s Xenoholics; Jay Fosgitt, returning as the center square; and K. Lynn Smith, a webcomics creator whose work I’d never seen because I’m a terrible person who doesn’t read webcomics. (Comics are one of my favorite methods for taking a break from screens. Also, I’m an old fuddy-duddy.)

This time the usual format was shaken up for a little game Khryyyss called “Roulette”. After the audience did the usual suggestion-shouting, each artist would have ten minutes to begin a drawing. When time was up, they passed it to the artist on their left and continued working on the sketch that was passed to them. After ten more minutes, they’d pass one last time and finish whatever got dumped in their lap. Again: fun, but different!

Questions flew once more:

• Naturally the very first question put to Smith was that timeless anti-classic, “What is it like being a woman in Sketch Dueling and/or comics?” She answered, but also confirmed she hates the question.
• When asked for drawing advice, Damoose shouted, “Stay in school! Pay attention in math!” But also, don’t be precious about every drawing, make each one better, but try not to compare your works with others’. Fosgitt recommended going the creator-owned route. Don’t try jumping into the art field by begging to draw Spider-Man. Smith likewise recommends the DIY worlds of digital comics and Kickstarter.
• Light confusion ensued over what flavors Superman ice cream is, and what alias it’s given at some ice cream shops.
• Smith was the most into video games — loves The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption, and Uncharted. Damoose digs The Last of Us and the FIFA games.
• Favorite Robin Williams movies: Aladdin, The Fisher King, and Mrs. Doubtfire.
• Feeling cheeky, Anne asked which they’d prefer: Chris Evans’ Human Torch, Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern, or Ben Affleck’s Daredevil. Damoose chose “cyanide pill”. Fosgitt conceded Evans was the best part of those two FF films, at least.
• Every ten minutes, all three of them shook their heads at their stopping point and at what they were asked to take over.
• All three of them agreed perspective is the hardest of the drawing fundamentals for them. Damoose once spent two weeks drawing nothing but buildings just to force himself to get better at it.

Once again the finished artworks exists only in the minds’ eyes of the attendees. Based on the suggestions from the studio audiences, our panelists unwillingly collaborated on two different post-apocalyptic Bugs Bunnies, one of them fighting a likewise Mad-Maxified Daffy Duck; and one post-apocalyptic scene of Rocky and Bullwinkle which also fit in one My Little Pony. And I won none of them in the free raffle. Rats.

We returned to the show floor one last time to allow for any final temptations. At this point let’s backtrack and do an entire weekend show-floor rundown, starting with shout-outs (shouts-out?) to the following creators we gave money to in Artists Alley:

For me the best things about our Artists Alley experience at CCE were the sensations of being able to enter Artists Alley, see artists in Artists Alley, and buy cool things in Artists Alley. It sounds simple and possibly as if I’ve hit my head several times, but after the frustrations we ran afoul of at Dragon Con, I was ecstatic about getting back to the bare fundamentals of being allowed to buy comics.

Kudos to the following dealers and exhibitors who also successfully sold us new stuff:

• AP Collectibles – another round of buttons for my convention bag
• Midnight Cards, who designed a deck of “Scranton” playing cards with very familiar faces on them
• Pop’s Comics – a Final Fantasy X box-art keychain
• Literary Alterations – a Grogu notebook, Death Star tie clip (yep, I still wear some!), and Wicked keychain
• Gem City Books – yet another discount giant-sized hardcover omnibus to add to my reading pile
• Merlin’s Munchies Coffee – a free 2-ounce sample of something extra-caffeinated and with some sweetened creamer, which tripled my cosplay-pic-taking capacity for the next fifteen minutes
• Drew Blank, whom I’ve bought from so many times that he remembered me, but he just won’t stop creating new buttons for every show I’ve ever watched, in this case Community
• Dany Cat Designs, makers of geek-themed soaps and other nice-smelling products, who got our attention by complimenting one of our shirts, which confused us because Anne hadn’t heard them and I wasn’t sure whose shirt they meant, so of course we had to seek clarification

If you’ve made it this far into this 6000-word adventure, congratulations! Your reward is one last gallery of sights seen around the exhibit hall, many of them from the Star Wars.

…in all, a robust and exhilarating comic-con experience. We left Cincinnati at 4:30 pm and returned to Indy in record time, dead on our feet but happy to be home.

Later that evening, the digital copy of McDonough’s jazz hands was finally up on Pose’s site now that one of their reps had gotten around to uploading it, thus making our lead photo possible without resorting to our old scanner. I also learned what the coughing lady in Anne’s line looked like, after her cute tiny cosplayer child went somewhat viral. So far, no new maladies have sprung up for either of us yet — just a panoply of new acquisitions for the collections in our tiny abode and a new set of memories to carry forward to You, The Viewers At Home.

The End. Thanks for reading! Lord willing, we’ll see you next comic-con, or after our next trip to Cincinnati. One will be a little sooner than the other…

[UPDATED 9/28/2023, 7:30 a.m.: Factual error corrected per the comments.]