London Film and Comic-Con

We’ve just about got through the convention season with the heavy hitters of SDCC in the United states and LFCC here in the UK. Here all our info on the convention here in London as well as a brief look at some interesting things that have made their way from across the pond.

LFCC held at the Olympia had much of what we have come to expect from the event. Hordes of people at Earls court station wearing culturally referenced T-shirts and basic to mind-blowing Cosplay followed by the inevitability of queuing inside and out. Amongst the plethora of Cosplayer’s seeing “Fat Vader” and a Storm Trooper racing across the floor desperately in need of a pee was thoroughly enjoyable. Although Cosplay has always looked like fun, it’s an experience currently very foreign to us. Largely because we’ve never had the dedication to do it and we’re made up of not quite the right kind of attention whores for now.

The highlight of the event was the new “Dredd” panel made up of Karl Urban(Judge Dredd), Alex Garland(writer), Mark Simpson(Artist) and Allon Reich(Producer). As fans of both the comics and the Stallone film, be it as entirely separate creatures, we were very wary going into the panel for this reboot. As it goes the panel actually allayed many of our fears and left us excited to see the flik. Karl Urban’s revelation that actually he had been a fan since childhood went a long way to help in this. This panel also revealed previously unseen footage of the movie which was very impressive and filled with a perfect Dredd sense of humour. Also the panel expanded on the use of the Slow-mo drug in the movie that slows perception to 1% of normal speed, which twinned with the 3D technology may be the first sensible use since the beginning of this stupid craze.

Best buys from this years LFCC came down to two signings and two stall buys. The two signings were Dave Prowse and Kenny Baker. Furthering our attempts to get signings from all of the surviving Star Wars cast (a pipe dream me thinks). Kenny and Dave were both lovely and upon revealing our 1977 annual Kenny remarked “ooh that’s an old one” which made us stupidly happy. The two best buys were a 1 litre Giant Doctor Who mug to perpetuate an already unhealthy caffeine addiction and a V mask from love of the V for vendetta movie. Possible future Halloween costume, and possible future political statement wrapped up under one banner.

Upon returning home, feet aching and weighed down by a bag of swag, our new mission began to hunt down the trickle-down Information and videos from LFCC’s American counterparts. Obviously the super-power of the convention circuit is SDCC, but it would probably be redundant to talk about it here, especially as there are many better informed sources across the inter-web. However one thing we want to stress is the importance and greatness of the event concurrent to SDCC in Nerd Hq.

If you are unaware of The Nerdmachine it is a web-based company founded by David Coleman and actor Zachary Levi (Chuck, Flynn Rider and soon to be Fandral), to celebrate and perpetuate Nerd culture. Nerd Hq is their small panel and gaming based convention held alongside San Diego Comic-Con to raise money for the charity Operation Smile.

Being based in the UK one of the many great things about this Con specifically is that all the panels were streamed live and were also recorded and are available at the The Nerdmachine website. Joss Whedon fan nominated “King of the Con” had his very own panel (Available here) which was just one of many wonderfully entertaining examples at Nerd Hq. During which Joss named Zachary Levi joint king of the con, for the greatness of this event both humanitarian and in its awesomeness.