Convention Chaos: C2E2 2024
My full rundown and personal recap of C2E2 2024
Welcome to Convention Chaos. The rundown of who I met, what I did, and how much I spent (not really, I don’t want to know that) from the conventions I attended. For full interviews and other content from the shows - check out my HeartAsArt Substack.
The Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2) is the largest convention in the Chicagoland area. Taking place every Spring at McCormick Place in Chicago, the event brings fans from all different pop culture fascets together. Here is my rundown of what I saw and did at the show.
C2E2 2024 Rundown
Autographs
Star Wars Rebels is my all-time favorite piece of Star Wars media. I love how deep it goes into the lore of the force and the glimpse of Jedi life after the rise of the Galactic Empire. The humor in the show is great, and we see some surprise guest characters. The show does a great job of bridging the gap between the Revenge of the Sith and a New Hope. So when the entire cast of the show was announced to be at the show, I could not have been more excited.
Fredie Prinze Jr (Kannon), Steve Blum (Zeb), Vanessa Marshall (Hera), and Tiya Sinclair (Sabine) all autographed my Rebels poster. The only signature missing is Taylor Gray (Ezra) who had to bow out of the show. I will be sure to find him at another show soon!
The cast did a panel to celebrate 10 years of the show's first airing. The panel was amazing and the cast seemed to have fun joking and reminiscing with each other.
Outside of the Rebels cast I also met Tim Kitzrow who is the announcer of the Nintendo 64 game NFL Blitz. That game is a traditional holiday play for the cousins in my family so him signing my game and and a print was so fun!
I also met Kyle Fletcher of All Elite Wrestling. He signed a turnbuckle pad I have been collecting signatures on for a bit now, it was a perfect addition to the collection.
Shopping
Most of my budget went to the above autographs (I regret nothing at all). I did snag a copy of Heavy Metal Sailor Moon from Minerva Fox at Artist Alley. It is an awesome manga that re-imagines Sailor Moon if Sailor Mercury took charge of the Sailor Scouts. It is loaded with heavy metal band and song references which I enjoyed oh so much.
Cosplay
This was the first time I ever cosplayed at a convention! Juan Pintor of Pintogrophy photoed my Batman Beyond cosplay that I wore to the con. More on how I built the costume here, and more on the shoot itself here. In short, we went to the roof of the Hyatt Regency Parking Garage and had some fun shooting as if we were in Neo-Gotham!
Interviews
You can see all the interviews here.
Vanessa Marshall (Star Wars Rebels, Metal Gear Solid)
I met Vanessa Marshall at her table where she was a guest of 7 Bucks a Pop. She signed my poster and copy of Metal Gear Solid 2 (she is the voice of Olga and MGS2 is one of my all-time favorite video games). We went down to the media room a bit later and filmed the interview. Vanessa was an absolute delight to chat with. She talked about her Twitch stream where she raises funds for some amazing charities and of course, we talked all things Star Wars.
Joe Corroney (Star Wars Artist)
Keeping the Star Wars theme alive I headed over to Artist Alley and talked with Joe Corroney who has done Star Wars art for years. We chatted about his introduction to the franchise, how he got into working on Star Wars, his work with the Star Wars Gamer Magazine, the Star Wars Roleplaying game, working on the franchise during the release of Revenge of the Sith, and much more! His passion for Star Wars made me want to go home and watch the original trilogy again.
Jason Faunt (Power Rangers and Resident Evil)
Jason Faunt was the guest of Formula 350 exhibitor table. Faunt was the Red Power Ranger in Power Rangers Time Force and has also done motion capture work for the Resident Evil franchise. Jason chatted with me about all things Power Rangers, the difference between voice acting and live acting, and what it was like stepping into the shoes of one of the best-known zombie killers in all of gaming.
Chris of AnimeFig.com
I met Chris on the floor of a convention a couple of years ago and interviewed him for the network I was writing for at the time about the rare games he was selling. We kept in touch and I meet up with him anytime he is at a show. Chris was tapped by a school in his local Florida community to put a game room together for kids to reward good grades and behavior. He wanted to put comics in there and the amazing people at Black Cat Comics and Novels (my local comic shop in Algonquin IL) donated comics and posters to hang. Chris talked to me about the building of the room and how excited the kids were when it was done. His passion for the project really came through in the interview and I was thrilled to talk to him about it.
I hope you enjoyed the version of “Convention Chaos”. Be sure to connect with me at all my links here!