Tampa Bay Comic Con 2017 has come and gone.
While thousands of excited fans, cosplayers and the curious streamed inside the Tampa Convention Center throughout the weekend, the event still felt lackluster. Maybe it was the distinct contrast along the celebrity autograph row, which saw some iconic film, television and anime stars staring down a lengthy line of fans and others just sitting and staring, waiting for the occasional person to wander by.
Maybe it was the sameness of many of the vendors. Conventions often are a great place to gift shop, especially for original artwork and handmade collectibles. Few booths, however, elicited that thrill of discovery at finding a one-of-a-kind treasure.
Maybe it was just the sheer size — 600,000-square-feet of space nearly maxed out.
With more conventions now vying for attendance, both in Tampa Bay and across the state, it feels like the time is right for a seismic change in how such conventions are structured and what they offer for top-dollar weekend access. This is a wheel that needs to be reinvented, and likely can, with some creativity and reasonable pricing platforms for interactive opportunities.
Still, TBCC 2017 wasn’t a complete wash.
Here are five things that delighted and/or surprised us:
1. Busch Gardens Howl-O-Scream Audition Booth
For the first time, Busch Gardens’ annual Halloween extravaganza made a public push to solicit and enlist the public to sign up to audition for a role in this year’s spooky festivities. This is a great idea, as Howl-O-Scream often, and unfairly, plays second-fiddle to Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights experience.
Designed to bring attention to one of Tampa Bay’s longest-running October attractions, the Howl-O-Scream booth also provided an opportunity for people to watch cast members get made up in bloody prosthetics and literally transform in front of their eyes. If you’ve ever watched an episode of Syfy’s Face Off, then you know the fascination and thrill that comes with watching seriously good makeup applied really well.
2. Iron Merman
At first glance, we didn’t even notice the wheelchair that keeps Ronald Seaman upright. It was his costume – a fantastic mash-up of Marvel’s Iron Man with a gold battle-armor mermaid’s tale – that caught our eye.
But Seaman, 56, of Spring Hill, is an inspiration – and not just to disabled individuals who maybe have thought cosplay was something out of their reach.
Seaman, a 25-year military veteran, is disabled, but he doesn’t let that dull his enthusiasm for one second once he hits the convention floor. On Saturday, he marked his fourth year appearing as Iron Merman by greetings people and posing for photos.
Cosplay has become a lifestyle now, and Seaman said he regularly is paid to travel to conventions to appear and speak on panels. It’s there that he meets people who in turn inspire him, sharing stories of how he helped them find the courage to fight through depression, injury and trauma.
“I also had a guy who cosplayed me,” Seaman said, smiling. “Not my character. Me! He went out and bought a wheelchair!”
3. First-time vendors
Like we said, conventions like Tampa Bay Comic Con can seriously strain one’s wallet by thrusting eager people front and center into booths packed with potential prizes. Many of those vendors are repeat offenders, regularly traveling the convention circuit.
Not Jason Selezinka, an artist from Jacksonville, who said he waited two years to have a booth at TBCC.
As patrons perused his work, which features up to 50 different pop culture icons painted in acrylic on wood and/or watercolor, including some with backlit bulbs to make the characters really pop, he marveled at his journey.
In 1993, Selezinka was accepted to Ringling College of Art and Design to study computer animation, but he passed on the opportunity. For the next 18 years, he worked for a company, rising from retail to a corporate position, but he never forgot his love of art.
In 2011, while at MegaCon in Orlando, he discovered Artist Alley and knew he had to follow his dream. He has since helped create an online portal, drexNINE Studios, where he has a lot of work available for sale.
4. One Big Fan
There’s always that moment when you are at a comic convention and you see someone or something that simply makes you pause. For us, that person was Jaimeson Bruns of Tampa.
Bruns was impossible to miss as he strode across the floor, his body encased in a large cardboard box emblazoned with panels from a variety of different comic books with a big propeller-fan on his chest under the word ‘Honeywell.’
We had to know: What the hell was he? So, naturally, we followed him through the crowd until we finally caught up to ask. It was immediately clear we weren’t the first to inquire.
“I’m a big fan,” Bruns proclaimed, a smile breaking from ear to ear.
5. A scare for Kate
Checking out the celebrity autograph area at any convention is always cool, but there was a heightened air this past weekend once Kate Beckinsale finally made it to the floor.
By 10:30 a.m., a long line had already formed for Beckinsale’s autograph booth. And the line continued to grow for several hours. She clearly had the biggest draw of fans, which made sense given her face has been splashed on billboards and bench seats around Tampa for months.
When she finally arrived, Beckinsale, the star of the vampire-werewolf Underworld franchise, was flanked by multiple armed law enforcement officers, several bodyguards and a host of TBCC staff — an unusual sight in an industry where many performers often step out from behind their table to interact with the public without security nearby.
What most in line likely didn’t know was that her Saturday began with an unexpected threat, which prompted the additional bodies on all sides. Terry Lee Repp, 45, of Moravia, IA had been arrested early that morning by Tampa Police officers for stalking Beckinsale after he arrived at the convention center. As of Wednesday, Aug. 2, Repp remained incarcerated at the Hillsborough County Jail.
According to various media outlets, Beckinsale moved her panel discussion back to 6 p.m. on Saturday so she could cooperate with law enforcement but still honor her obligation and regale convention-goers with stories about battling computer-generated beasts.
We'll be doing pre-Con interviews and a feature on women who cosplay before MetroCon heads to Tampa in Sept.; please get in touch and tell us what you want to see for coverage.
This article appears in Aug 3-10, 2017.