I may have not said
it so explicitly, but…I am a fan of Transformers.
When my sister and
I found out there was going to be a BotCon in Pasedena this year, we decided we
would go during the General Admission days Saturday and Sunday.
We’ve been fans of
Transformers for one year. June 2013 we
started watching Transformer’s Prime. Then September we started watching Transformers Armada. Starting in mid-April we’ve caught several
good episodes of the classic 1984 Transformers
cartoon on its second season. We love
all of these shows. We haven’t finished
watching the entirety of all three of them, but we will. We now have seen all three Michael Bay Transformers movies and are at this
moment giddily looking forward to Transformers:
Age of Extinction—no matter what others will say. It’s Transformers. Why not.
I think it’s safe
to say we aren’t noobs to the franchise anymore.
So we went to the
Pasedena BotCon 2014 at the Pasedena Convention Center. We didn’t know what to look for—we aren’t
collectors of the Transformers
toys—so upon entering the Exhibit Hall, we were quite lost on what to do. It is very different from going to an anime
convention. The majority of items sold
and displayed there is the Transformers toys, but there were other cool things
too. There were artists who displayed
and sold their fan art. There was a Transformers Art competition. IDW Publishing was selling their Transformers comic books at their booth.
The writers and artists of The Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye
and The Transformers: Robots In Disguise attended the Exhibit hall and sat
at tables for fans to meet them and possibly buy their artwork. James Roberts (writer of The Transformers: MTMTE)
and John Barber (writer of The Transformers: RID) were there. A video game demo was set up for Transformers Universe (the designs of
the characters are reminiscent of Transformers
Prime).
The panels were
held at the Conference Rooms at another building within the Pasedena Convention
Center. Sis and I went to several of the
panels in the course of the two General Admission days at BotCon. It didn’t leave a whole lot of time to absorb
everything that was in the Exhibit Hall.
We needed to eat and use the restroom too; if we wanted to enjoy
ourselves, we needed to take care of ourselves too, and at least drink water
and eat a snack if not a lunch.
My personal
favorite panel at BotCon was “James Roberts: Storyteller.” I absolutely love the TF:MTMTE comic books; it was such a treat to hear him tell his fans
about what was behind the scenes in creating the story for the comic book. There
was a nice long Q and A session. Unfortunately I came up with a question to ask
soon after the panel was finished. And
we didn’t get to meet him in person. But
it was so awesome just to be in the same room as James Roberts and hear him
talk about his work.
We took pictures of
some cosplayers (Sis took most of those—I took a couple myself), got to chat a
bit with a couple of comic book artists, and we were even lucky get our copy of
the Transformers: Dark Cybertron
comic book volumes 1 and 2, before they ran out. This way we get more of TF: MTMTE and are introduced to TF: RID.
Maybe we might get into that and start reading TF:RID from the beginning sometime later. Sis and I just finished Volume 5 of The Transformers:
More Than Meets The Eye and…well, we want to continue reading it. At the risk of meaning we’d lose our favorite
characters further in the story. The
stories in this comic book can be so heartbreaking sometimes. I have a few favorite characters I don’t want
to see killed off, as well as plenty of characters that are not necessarily my
favorite but are cool to appear every once in a while.
FAVORITES:
*Rung
*Drift
*Skids
*Fortress
Maximus
*Tailgate
*And maybe Rodimus.
I’d regret if I
didn’t go to this year’s BotCon. We owed
it to ourselves as newish Transformers fans to be introduced into the world
that is—well, for us, just nice toys to look at, but also the beautiful artwork
and storytelling that goes into the franchise as a whole.
