Nick Valentino: Dallas Comic Con

Last weekend Lizzie and I went to Dallas Comic Con! It featured almost the entire cast of Firefly with photo ops, autograph signings and a reported 60K projected attendance. It took place in the Dallas Convention center and upon arrival on Friday night we headed straight for the dealers room. My first impression was confusion. The pace was huge and under construction and well, there wasn't but a maybe few thousand people there total. The dealer room was quite large, think Gencon sized for those con going readers and I noticed there was a ton of kind of Fan artist style vendors. Of course they had all the regulars which was great but it was interesting to see that there were a ton of booths with custom t-shirts, art, and stuff that was basically unlicensed material that I guess falls under the "parody" section of copyright law.

Don't get me wrong, it was really cool and most of the stuff was well done. It was just different from what I'm used to. The likes of William Shatner, Stan Lee, and Nathan Fillion were guests of honor here. So it was no joke.

We attended the Nathan Fillion Q&A and the Firefly Q&A and both were so fun! It was so cool getting to hear almost the entire Firefly cast speak. Really, most of them seemed shocked that so many people still care about the show. That panel alone had 4500+ people that packed the room. Lizzie got her picture with Nathan Fillion which was a huge bucket list thing for her and it was so awesome seeing her get to meet him. We also met Tate from the movie make-up show, Faceoff. He was insanely nice which made us even bigger fans. We had a blast all weekend, ate good Tex Mex and enjoyed everything about Dallas and the con. (We even got Han Solo frozen in Carbonite ice trays!!) This was one for the ages. I love traveling with Lizzie, we always have a great time wherever we go, but this was just wonderful nerdy indulgence around every corner.