MCM Birmingham Comic Con March 2018 Round-Up – Cosplay Photos, Videos & Comic Books!
It was good weather for ‘Frozen’ and ‘Game Of Thrones’ cosplayers this weekend, as winter had indeed come once again to the NEC in Birmingham. Not that it stopped many people braving the bitter cold to enjoy the first MCM Comic Con Birmingham of 2018!
Despite the snow on the ground and freezing cold winds, both days seemed pretty busy at the show. Saturday was apparently a sellout, and although things were a little quieter Sunday morning, the halls still seemed to fill up by the afternoon. That’s great news for MCM’s new parent company ReedPop, the people behind such shows as Star Wars Celebration and NYCC, took control of the event for the first time. Overall, there actually wasn’t much difference to the public, although there was arguably a more varied range of special guests than we’ve had before at a regional (i.e. non-London) MCM show. All the usual great stands selling geeky merchandise where there, along with some brilliant indie comic book titles and artists. Having chatted with some of the comic book stall holders, they had said things were much smoother for them in terms of booking stands, which is great news too.
Along with the great ‘Silver Sabres Combat Academy‘, which allows younglings to try their hand with a lightsaber, a new edition this year was the ‘Hero Blast Laser Academy‘. This let kids join a crime-fighting team, avoid the henchmen and raid the villain’s secret lair in a laser-tag maze, which looked really fun!
The Guests
There was a very fine mix of guest for this MCM Comic Con Birmingham, ranging from film stars to classic tv sci-fi, to brilliant gaming voice and motion capture actors. As often happens when you’re at these events as press, I didn’t manage to catch any of the panels due to being in the press room doing interviews, but Deadpool’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Brianna Hildebrand, took the stage on Saturday, along with the voice actors for Overwatch. Guardians Of The Galaxy’s Sean Gunn and Michael Rooker did panels both days, and Supernatural’s King Of Hell himself, Mark Sheppard, entertained the crowds on Sunday. We had the chance to chat in a more intimate setting with some of the guests as they took time off signing and taking photos to join us in the press room.
‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ & ‘Gilmore Girls’ Star, Sean Gunn
The first person we chatted with was actor Sean Gunn. Not only does he play Kraglin in the ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ franchise, but he’s also the ‘on set’ Rocket Racoon (which is later replaced with CGI). You might also know him as Kirk from the wonderful ‘Gilmore Girls’.
‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ & ‘The Walking Dead’ Star, Michael Rooker
Next, we got to sit down with Sean’s ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ co-star Michael Rooker. He, of course, played Yondu in the first two GotG movies, and also starred as Merle Dixon in ‘The Walking Dead’. He apparently started his weekend in Birmingham by visiting the Coffin Works, which is a casket museum!
‘Last Of Us’ & ‘Uncharted’ Stars Troy Baker & Nolan North
We also got to chat with Troy Baker & Nolan North, the two legendary voiceover/performance capture artists behind video games such as ‘Last Of Us’ & ‘Uncharted’. We have interviewed these guys before and they’re always brilliant and hilarious to chat with.
‘Blake’s 7’ Star Jan Chappell
This is a great one for some of the older readers amongst you (or those of you into classic British sci-fi.) We sat down for a brief conversation with Jan Chappell, aka Cally from classic BBC series ‘Blake’s 7’. She was really sweet and lovely, and it was a pleasure to get a little bit of time to talk about such an iconic show.
Mark Sheppard, star of ‘Supernatural’, ‘Battlestar Galactica’, ‘Firefly’, ‘Warehouse 13’, ‘Doctor Who’…
Finally, we got a lovely long interview with one of my favourite actors, Mark Sheppard. For those of you that don’t know the name immediately, I’d pretty much guarantee you’ve seen him on screen at some point. He has most recently been starring as Crowley in ‘Supernatural’ but has appeared in so many shows, it’s frankly ridiculous – ‘Battlestar Galactica’, ‘Firefly’, ‘Warehouse 13’, ‘Doctor Who’, ‘NCIS’, ‘CSI’, ’24’, ‘Leverage’, ‘White Collar’, ‘Chuck’, ‘Burn Notice’, ‘Bionic Woman’, ‘Charmed’, ‘Star Trek: Voyager’, plus many many more! He starts off the discussion by talking about how he’s not keen on the term “fan”…
The Comics
What would Comic Con without the comics! As usual, Comic Village was filled with amazingly talented artist and writers. Sadly, I didn’t manage to get a look at many books in detail, but I spotted a number of familiar faces. I had a nice chat with Jeremy Biggs of Subversive Comics, creator of the zombie teddy bear epic Bearlands, cyberpunk Metal Made Flesh, and Super Robot MAYHEM. I also spotted TPub, the people behind Twisted Dark, Tabatha, and their new book Theatrics, and Beyond The Bunker’s Moon… The story of how the Moon spends his days as a crime-fighting superhero… Yes, it’s a bonkers as it sounds!
The Cosplay
Lastly, we come to the cosplay… and the cosplayers had really outdone themselves! Every time I come to one of these shows, I’m astounded by the incredible work people put into their costumes. As usual, there were a number of Harley Quinns, but it’s nice to see some variety in the costumes – ‘Suicide Squad’ Harleys, “Club” Harleys, Traditional Harleys, and even a Negan/Harley mashup! Most impressive (in terms of size if nothing else!) was Ian Taylor’s amazing “Hulkbuster” Iron Man armour, which was phenomenal. My two personal favourites though have to be the Star Wars cosplay of the kid riding the tauntaun, and, for creativity and general awesomeness, the sousaphone playing Deadpool!
If you are in any of the photos, thank you for posing, and if you want the super high res version of the picture, just message me via the contact page, and I’ll email it over.
