Phoenix Comic Con/Saturday

Saturday was pretty much a panel day since we'd walked the floor on Friday. Our first panel started not too long after the convention opened, at it was Zombies, Government and You. And it was about how to survive in a zombie apocalypse (or any disaster really) without any help from the government. The guys that did the panel were pretty interesting, but I found that their panel got away from them. There were a lot of what-ifers in the crowd, or people that were there solely to argue, and it detracted a lot from what you could tell they were trying to talk about. Also, there was this one guy in the audience that was like, trying to sell everyone survivalist bunkers at one hundred thousand dollars a piece, and that got to be really annoying. The panelists do have podcasts though, one being the name of the panel (Zombies, Government and You) and others a nineties nostalgia one called 2 Legit with Drew and Nick. The panel was fun and it made me want to listen to their podcasts, even though I left really irritated at some fellow audience members.

The panel title is in the background.

 After that one, we moved on to a mashup panel about Goosebumps. It was more for the kids because we were trying to make sure they didn't get bored during all the panels (six and ten is rough for a full day of panels!), and they had a lot of fun in this one. There were members of the National Comedy Theatre (Derrick Tesson, Frenchie Lynn Augustin, Jacob Talbert, Jesus "Chuy" Huerta, and Mike Mayfield) who were ad libing the entire two episodes of Camp Nightmare. Do you guys remember the short lived Goosebumps teevee show from the 90's? It was so campy and fun, but these guys did it one better by removing all the sound and basically making up their own show. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of this panel because it was like, bam, darkness and right into the episodes, but they all did a wonderful job.

We saw some of the previous panelists again right after in our next panel, Whoa! Battle of the Keanus! Its based on a podcast that they are currently doing, and the panelists (Alice Baker, Andrea Coffman, Anthony Thornton, Jacob Talbert, Krissy Lenz, and Nathan Blackwell) showed different Keanu Reeves characters, and had them "battle" it out, with audience participation. It was very much like the Rotten Tomatoes panel at WonderCon, but instead of clapping or whatever, you were supposed to say whoa. It was a very lively, interactive panel, and our final battle was between John Wick and Ted Theodore Logan....and I'm sure you can guess who won! I think its a really great idea for a panel, I just don't see how they did a whole podcast series around it. But they have, so go check that out if you're interested.

Claps for Keanu!

Have you ever wanted to hear Ed Sheeran talk about zombies and how they've evolved? You should've gone to the Evolution of a Zombie panel at PHXCC then! No, it wasn't actually Ed Sheeran that did it, it was Craig W. Chenery, but he looks darn close to him and they both have that fantastic accent. This panel was also very interesting, he was a one man panel with a great Power Point presentation. He has researched the zombie genre going back all the way to the 20's or 30's, it was pretty cool. I had no idea that zombie movies were really a Caribbean thing, but that's how they started. He really knows his zombie stuff, and is currently writing a couple fo different books, one of them being a zombie movie encyclopedia of sorts. Hes watched like over a thousand zombie movies, or something like that, it was nuts. And sadly, I don't have a picture of him either. Just picture Ed Sheeran.

Our last panel of the day was the only panel that disappointed me out of the whole convention. It was supposed to be about post-apocalyptic obsession, but instead it basically turned into this cosplay group's hangout and all they did was talk about this piece of land that they own that they're trying to fix up to look wrecked based on some place here in CA (and their apparent love for bourbon). To be fair, the program description said that the group would talk about themselves to an extent, but they weren't supposed to be the topic of conversation for the whole panel. So that was lame, but some of them did have cool costumes. No pictures of them either, because the room was so crowded there really wasn't the space to.

After that, we left the convention center. We ate at Whataburger again (its all my kids wanted the whole trip- its that good!) and then saw X-Men Apocalypse.

The best thing EVER.

Don't forget to read Friday's coverage, and look for the final wrap up tomorrow!