Fantasy Con

The last Comic Con my wife, my daughter and I went to was ‘For the Love of Fantasy’, an event held in London. It was very much a vampire themed event with actors from shows like The Vampire Diaries, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural (yes I know that is not strictly a vampire show but there were vampires in it occasionally).

As we entered the massive venue and made our way to our hall one of the first things I noticed was a lot of very smart, well dressed people heading the same way. I wondered what event they were going to.

As it turned out they were going to a Jehovah Witness conference, which someone in their wisdom had decided to schedule in the hall directly opposite from the Con. I don’t know if this was done on purpose or not by someone who revels in irony or who thought it would be a good laugh. But it did make us laugh. Watching the black robed, pale faced, makeup wearing, vampiric cosplayers standing in line for a hot dog along with the primly dressed Jehovah’s. At one point I thought that they might catch on to what was occurring across the corridor and descend on us en masse, telling us to denounce our evil ways and demonic worshipping!

Anyway once into the venue we made our way to meet in our eyes the main star of the event. Mark Sheppard, or as we will always know him as, Crowley the King of Hell, from the tv series Supernatural. We joined the queue to meet him and get his signature. As we neared the front he spotted us in the line and gave us a nod, which from him I gather is a huge compliment. You see I was dressed as Crowley, in his trademark black suit with a bright red tie and my wife was dressed as Castiel, an angel in the show and his sometime nemesis.

When we got to the front he looked up at us. He looked most unCrowley like in a Mrs Doyle t-shirt from the old Channel 4 comedy Father Ted. It had a picture of a teapot on it with the words ‘Ah, go on’.

He said he liked my outfit and loved the tie, words which I will take to the grave. He wasn’t so keen on my wife’s outfit. We asked him to sign a photo of himself as Crowley and my wife asked him to write ‘Hello Boys!’ on it as that was his famous catchphrase. He grumbled at this and asked if she gave everyone homework. To which my wife replied ‘Yes I do. I’m a teacher’. He looked more disgruntled at this and explained that he had just been watching Matilda so he didn’t have a very high opinion of teachers. We tried to reassure him that she was one of the nice ones.

As we took our photo my wife said that she was pleased that he was well again after his ‘little scare’. (He had recently had several heart attacks and major surgery in hospital). ‘A little scare!’ he exclaimed indignantly ‘I bloody died!’ We left quickly clutching our photo.

We had heard that he was a bit of a grumpy old man and so it turned out to be. Not that that is a bad thing. I may have been accused of being something similar myself, once or twice. In fact it is somewhat refreshing to meet a celebrity who is pretty much normal and doesn’t put on any fake pretences or false smiles.

After that we went and met Charisma Carpenter from the tv shows Buffy and Angel. She was the complete opposite of Mark, all smiles and hugs and best wishes. How much of it was real or fake I couldn’t tell, after all she is an actress, but she seemed like a genuinely nice person. James Marsters and Juliet Landau, Spike and Dru from Buffy were also there but we had already met them at an earlier Con.

After getting a bit of lunch and then getting over the shock of the exorbitant cost of said lunch we headed back in.

One of the showpieces at the Con was the Impala car ‘Baby’ from Supernatural. I don’t know if it was the actual car used in the show or just a replica but it was still very cool. We got to sit in it and pretend to drive it which made for a good photo op. We may or not have inadvertently jumped the queue for this and cut out Mark Sheppard’s wife and daughter who were also waiting to sit in it. Oops. No wonder the man is so grumpy!

We then wandered around the obligatory stalls for a while as traders tried to sell us their goods. Merchandise such as posters, t-shirts, mugs, swords, badges, lanyards, figurines, toys, games and just about everything else you can think of. All branded or fantasy themed of course. We went around trying not to spend all our money and having the usual conversations. ‘Yes that is nice but where would we put it or what would we do with it?’

Whilst we were having a tea break later on (how much for a bit of hot water and a teabag?), there was a minor burst of excitement. One of the male actors from the Vampire Diaries must have slipped his leash and was walking across the main floor, which prompted a stampede of teenage girls to rush after and swarm around him. As you may or not be able to tell I am not the least bit interested in the Vampire Diaries. In my opinion it's full of too beautiful, soppy, vampires and focuses too much on love and romance. What's romantic about getting your throat ripped out and the blood drained from your body? To me It’s vampire-light.

Anyway that was pretty much that. We left and made our weary way back to the tube. Past the Jehovah Witnesses, who were still looking very bored listening to their sermons, our legs sore, our heads aching and our hearts happy.