MCM Expo - London - May 29th 2010

Having started with the colossal disorganisation fail that I so fondly remember Expo for, it ended up being a wonderful day. To those unfamiliar with it; MCM Expo is a bit like a badly run, less glamorous English version of Comic Con. To give them fair credit; they have drastically improved since I first attended in 2007. Just don't ever hope that a steward will be able to help you.

The much anticipated Comic Village absolutely lived up to expectations. I had the opportunity to meet a host of wonderful artists, and some really interesting collectives. I'll be posting plenty of reviews and snippets in the next few weeks. There is just so much talent out there, it really is overwhelming.

Having blown all of my current earnings, I dropped in to the Steampunk Panel, run by the lovely VSS. It merits, and will receive, a post of its own but was a wonderful - and far more down to earth than expected - introduction to steampunk.

Next up was the Caprica panel with Ron D. Moore (yes, I had a pronounced fangirl squee moment) and Esai Morales. I confess that Caprica has been on my to-do list for what seems like forever. After yesterday, it's definitely right at the top!

I had anticipated being spoilered for some episodes, but thankfully many of the questions were very vague. Esai Morales is a wonderful guy; very intelligent and with a wonderful sense of humour. He really seems to enjoy his role and be invested in the future of the show.

As Ron described it, Caprica came about not just as a result of the desire to tell the backstory of BSG but also Remi Aubuchon's submission of a completely independent pitch to the network about the development of artificial intelligence. It is something that I have long been interested in, so I am very excited about watching.

The panel did reveal some interesting information...! Esai Morales announced that he is going to be a father! Ron Moore confirmed that they are discussing several possible further BSG spinoffs with the studios. Apparently there are multiple possible directions they could take, and no one in particular has been favoured over the others so far; consequently he was reluctant to discuss them. We will also see at least Gemenon and potentially more of the Twelve Colonies in Caprica.

One of the best aspects of Expo is, of course, the costumes. There is a cosplay competition for animated characters, so many of the costumes do lean in that direction and most of them I don't recognise (if anyone can enlighten me as to what anime/manga/game character has a red, swirly face and a black coat with white trim I would be much indebted to you, as I saw about 10 of him/her and it's been driving me absolutely crazy), but there are still some absolute gems.

I did my very best not to openly fangirl this woman, but it was a disturbingly accurate costume and I was awesomely impressed. She looked completely normal aside from the obvious, and I would never even have noticed anything - as she had her back to me - if some other people hadn't started flailing and asking for photos.

The one part of the day where I truly let myself down was in not getting a photo with Darth Vader and the stormtroopers; but I was reluctant to step out of the queue before getting in and I was, I admit, considerably grumpy as we were having trouble with our tickets and no one seemed to know how to sort it out. Their costumes were so accurate! I've been paying close attention to Vader, as I am designing a costume for myself, and they even had the silk stripe at the bottom of the cape. Amazing!

This Neytiri (wow, Avatar was so memorable that I had to Google her name :S) looked pretty exhausted at this point - which was about 4pm - and we weren't far behind.

Expo is essentially a large floorshow, so passing time between panels can get a bit tedious as the day goes on - and paying £4 for a sandwich doesn't do much to improve matters.

While burning time at a booth, I made the mistake of screaming "OMG it's so sexy. I need one" at the Alienware M11X and the demo guy took it out of the glass case so I could play with it. Let me tell you; I have lusted after these computers for years. YEARS. What I did not need was to hold one in my hands. So, the next time I find myself in posession of £800 *pause for maniacal laughter* I know where that's going. I love my Scully *pets HP Pavilion* but those laptops are just too sexy to be allowed. Therefore - logically - I must own one.

Nobody puts steampunk Alien in a corner! Except apparently whoever owns this one; it was stashed at the back of a stall selling pornographic anime keychains...

The free bag of stuff that I got with my early entry ticket contained mostly shite (and Nanny McPhee stickers! I think they may have gotten their key demographic slightly wrong...) but did come with a free t-shirt. No idea what it's about (and I did misread it as Vital Slut; which I found far more exciting) but I won't say no to free pyjamas!

Detailed below is my comic book haul, and the free stuff that was actually worth keeping (and a little of the glamour of my bedroom floor!). I'll be talking about each of the artists over the course of a couple of posts; so watch this space. Lots more steampunk on the horizon too!