No doubt a good portion of your trip to the con will be spent totting up the overall cost of the weekend. Not just the tickets but also the travel there, the hotel room, feeding yourself...it all adds up to a pretty scary dent in your bank balance. Any such anxiety immediately goes out the window once you get through the doors and realise just how much awesome junk there is on offer, though! A Green Lantern cookie jar is exactly what your kitchen has been missing, a Patrick Stewart bobblehead would make a perfect addition to your car dashboard, and really what comic collection is complete without a entire run of Too Much Coffee Man? The only issue isn't how much you can afford, but how much you can afford not to buy. Maybe a little how much you can physically afford, too. Fingers crossed the overdraft still works...
6. Thinking Of Good Questions During Panels
Panels are one of the most exciting parts of a good comic convention. If the organisers are worth their salt, they've programmed an interesting and fun selection of guests and topics, with stars and experts rubbing shoulders and sharing their wisdom with the unwashed masses. This is your chance to both engage with people you respect, and also gain the respect of your fellow nerd! So when the Q&A portion of the panel begins, you step up to the mic and... What the heck do you say? It's something that takes almost as much prep as the beforehand planning of even getting to the con. You're not going to be the one to ask the insultingly obvious question, so you need to bide your time. You don't want your query to be one the panel have answered a million times, so you better make sure you're familiar with their earlier interviews. You have to ensure you look clued in, but not a total Comic Book Guy, so your enquiry has to be clever without being totally Inside Baseball. And by the point you've come up with the ideal thing to ask, the panel's over.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
