Last weekend, January 23-25th, I attended the Wizard World Portland Comic Con at the Convention Center in Portland. I had a good time, and made some cool connections at this "celebrity heavy" event, and spent most of my time in the celeb area fulfilling my autograph collecting needs, haha, so here's my abbreviated pictorial recap of the show.
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| This guy greeted us at the entrance to the show! The company who made him apparently worked on the LOTR and Hobbit films. |
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| This Animaniacs cosplay group was a hit with kids (and myself) and were beautifully constructed! I'd like to commend Brady Danger Gage and his crew from monkey5studios.com on the excellent costumes. He is also a member of the Portland Superheroes Coalition (facebook.com/PortlandSuperheroesCoalition) a great group of costumers who do fundraising events for the community. |
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| This guy won best in show, and deservedly so. Hours and hours went into this. Inspired me a lot! Find me more info on this cosplayer! |
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| You might know this guy. Mr. Brett Dalton aka Agent Ward from Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D...This dude was cool! We have mutual friends, so he took extra time to hang with me. Stopped by his booth numerous times to chat more. We even traded info, so ya know what that means...Interview in the near future! Stay tuned for that! What questions should I ask? Shoot me some ideas! |
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| Mr. X-Men himself, Chris Claremont! This gentleman is responsible for some the best known storylines and characters developed in comic book history! |
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| Another legend! One of the greatest Batman artists, Neal Adams! I was nervous to meet this guy! |
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| No convention is complete without a visit from a Dalek! I wan't to build on with PNWSFX. Oh, whats PNWSFX you ask? It's a new group I'm part of where we fabricate cosplay props, costumes, and other nerdy stuff! Keep your eyes open for more info on the project. For now, go follow us on Instagram and Twitter, and like our Facebook page to keep updated on our projects! |
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| This Disney group was beautifully done! I wanted to get their info, so if anyone knows them, help me out! UPDATE: Thanks to Brady Danger Gage, I got some info on this group now... https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dragon-Theater-Puppets-Princesses/315521551800143 more to come hopefully! |
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| The lovely Ireland Reid. I had happened upon her on Instagram recently and was pleasantly surprised to run into her at a booth. She was beautiful, charming, and crafted some nice costumes. Glad to call her a new friend after hanging with her that weekend. Give her a follow on the following social media outlets: Twitter and Instagram and tell her @thestevestrout sent ya!!! |
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| I was pleasantly surprised to run in to my buddy Jesse Lagers hangin out at Jessica Merizan's booth. He is known for his work on SyFy Network's Heroes Of Cosplay. Jesse is one of my favorite costume fabricators and always fun to hang with. I really hope to have him on one of our Comic Book Swap Meet shows soon!! |
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| Aaaaaand speaking of Jessica Merizan. She is another super talented cosplayer from the SyFy Heroes Of Cosplay show, and co-owner of Crabcat Industries (http://crabcatindustries.com/)! I got to hang with her quite a bit too. We even did an interview which I am working on posting very soon! Look Jessica up if you don't already know her, or just follow these links: Twitter and Instagram. She was even cool enough to make a video greeting for my good friend/cosplayer Haylee Troncone, who has tons of potential but couldn't make it to the convention. |
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| Josh McDermitt was awesome to fans too! Yup that's Eugene from the Walking Dead!!! He was so cool to fans that people were going through his line more than once to meet him. He also takes great selfies. He played with my phone for a few and took a few goofy pics of himself. I will show ya some time! |
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| So, I don't know if I ever mentioned my "nerd crush" list with you all, but this beautiful young lady is up there on the list! Miss Ksenia Solo, who portrays Kenzie on the show Lost Girl! She was a sweetheart! |
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| I really hope Jessica Merizan saw this awesome young cosplayer as Tank Girl, since Jessica did a badass portrayal of the character on Heroes of Cosplay! |
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| My sidekick, Mr. Nutter found a Patty to go with his Quail Man! Had to document this one!! |
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| One of my favorite Batman's around. NW cosplayer and nice guy, Allan Quick. His whole family costumes! It's awesome! |
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| Another NW cosplay legend in her own sense, Retired Wonder Woman! Go follow her tweets: https://twitter.com/wonderwomanret |
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| Since I'm shouting out to some awesome NW cosplayers, check out this wonderful Falkor, from the Neverending Story. This was built and worn by Ryan Wells. Ryan is hands down one of the best fabricators I've ever met! He is currently building one of the alien/insects from Starship Troopers. Go follow him for progress updates at https://www.facebook.com/CosplayofRyanWells?pnref=lhc |
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| Ok, she might have played a bad mom on the Walking Dead, but Sarah Wayne Callies was nothing but amazing to her fans! |
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| I met this young superfan, who did a nice Beth Greene, right down to the hole in top of her head. Turns out she has a great Walking Dead blog too! Check out here blog at http://www.walkingdeadnow.com/. This kid has a passion for the show like no other! I wish her lots of luck and followers for her site! Go look! |
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| Yeah, maybe its not real...It don't make it any less creepy!!! That's about all I have at the moment. Having to redo this whole post was discouraging and tiring, especially after the long last couple weeks working on the Comic Book Swap Meet (which you will hear all about) and all. I definitely look forward to Wizard Portland next year! Be sure to stay tuned for lots of big things throughout this year too. I'm going to be going out and setting up tables/booths at a few cons to spread the word! I will keep you posted on when and where I will be. I'd love to meet ya! Steve Strout is the media mastermind behind this site, host of the Comic Book Swap Meet, nerd, terrible artist, gamer, convention goer and comic book reader who spends more time rescuing toys from thrift shops than a normal adult should. He is also known around the northwest for his promotion of live music and stand-up comedy events and is the creator/producer of the Comic Book Swap Meet mini convention, and Olympic Peninsula Comedy Competition (which will make it's big return in 2015). Follow him on Instagram at http://instagram.com/thestevestrout, and He can be reached for comments at ptcomedy@yahoo.com on twitter at @thestevestrout  |
