Tag: Autographs

Autographs, Collecting, Comic Books, Community Service, Conventions, Cosplay, No One Lives Forever, Star Trek

FanX 2023 After Action Report

Written by TardisCaptain September 26, 2023February 25, 2024

2023 marked the 10th Anniversary of FanX: The Salt Lake Comic Convention. I remember when I first heard about this event in 2013. It was announced that Jonathan Frakes would be the guest at a con to be held at a convention center in Sandy, Utah. I had just arrived at a friends house to talk Seventh Fleet business. We had never heard of the company that was putting together Salt Lake Comic Con (as it was called then). The event became so popular (I think the name and lots of advertising helped) that eventually the convention was moved to the Salt Palace (the largest convention center in Utah). In 2013 it ended up being the third largest comic book convention in North America.

So it’s no surprise that ten years later it’s still going strong. Since the Seventh Fleet is given the opportunity to perform our community service mission at the con, I was in attendance to help out. Here is my after action report.

One of the first things that is different this year (for me) is using the FanX app. It had some good thing and some areas that needed improvement. I was able to see a lot of the panels that were scheduled and I could even set up reminders. However the reminders were not very descriptive when popping up on my screen (it’s only in the small notification area at the top). The map was very generic which was bad in trying to find something. Probably the biggest thing that needed to be improved was looking up the panels themselves. In order to see just the panels, you had to select each individual panel room. Then it showed you the panels for that room on that day. It would be very helpful if we could get this information (just the panels) in a grid so I could see if there was a conflict between two panels that I’d like to go see. I could see the value in having the app and I used it several times to confirm times. But I feel that this still needs some improvement before it becomes something to brag about.

Usually at a pop and comic convention there is a LARGE number of guests. Sometimes it is overwhelming when it comes to budgeting money to pick up autographs. As it turns out, this was Christopher Lloyd’s last convention appearance so that made . Something that FanX has finally done is added the autograph prices to their website so I could decide a head of time who I could afford. But I do dislike that a lot of guests (or more honestly, their agents) think, “Hmm… comic con. I’ll jack my prices up by 20-30 dollars.” I’ve found myself getting less and less autographs each convention.

The main person I was really interested in seeing was Jen Taylor. She is best known as the voice actress who voiced Cortana from the Halo series of video games and TV shows. But the reason I wanted to meet her was due to her work as the voice of Cate Archer in No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in Harms Way. This series is a cult video game that is in IP rights hell. No one knows exactly who owns the rights. So the game can’t be re-tooled for modern computers and added to GOG or Steam. Several years ago Jen Taylor had stated in an article that she didn’t know if there was still NOLF fans out there. I let her know that we were still present and really wished that the game could be re-made for new fans to discover. She was actually excited to hear that we were still out there.

I do have to thank my old roommate who had found this poster for me many, many years ago. He had found it in a gaming magazine and gifted it to me. This is the first time it’s been out of the frame I use in several years. Thank you Gibby.

One of the other guests that I met up with is Science Fiction author Dayton Ward. He has written several Star Trek novels and contributed to the Star Trek Adventures RPG Star Trek Comics and Star Trek magazines. I wanted to make sure that he felt welcomed to Utah. I picked up two books from him. His Star Trek Discovery novel Somewhere to Belong and the Star Trek Kirk Fu Manual (you know I had to add this to my resource library).

After picking up the Alien RPG at the 2022 FanX convention, I was wondering if I could find any RPG books this time around. Believe me, I looked to see if anything jumped out at me this year. A ton of dice vendors. I’d really like to know if they made the dice themselves or ordered it from a third party. There was an author selling a superhero RPG (which is a genre I’m not really interested in role-playing right now) and another author who had written his own 5E guidebook to a fantasy world he had a book series set in. This last one looked pretty, but I couldn’t justify the $50 for the full color version. I did bump into a local publisher who had their first Kickstarter out for the Ter’Ra’Mentia Role Playing Game. This was a fantasy game with a 2d12 system that sounded interesting. I was able to look through the beta-version of the book (about a third in size of the book that will contain player, GM and monster information) and it looked interesting. They are also using a local artist for all the art in the book (none of that AI generated crap). For that alone I’m giving this one some serious thought towards supporting.

One of the biggest surprises from the con came not from the con itself, but from a friend. Earlier in September comic book artist Sean Von Gorman was in Salt Lake to promote the newest IDW Star Trek comic, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds- The Scorpius Run. Sean was there to sign the Retailer Variant cover that was inspired by the cover of the first issue of Star Trek DC Comics issue 1. I was not able to attend the signing because of another engagement, but my friend had picked up a copy for me and gave it to me at the Seventh Fleet booth. I was very excited.

Speaking of the Seventh Fleet, we were performing our community service charter by raising funds for a special charity. Heroes4Causes is a publishing house creating superheroes that have the same affliction (such as pediatric brain cancer or cystic fibrosis) so that kids can see that they can still be heroes. One of the artists was present at our booth and was signing books and art for donations. To draw in the crowds, we had home-made stand up cutouts of the Star Trek: Lower Decks crew for people to take photos with. We had a lot of people who were wanting photos. There was even a crowd of other vendor chanting “Lower Decks! Lower Decks!” when we first brought in the characters.

Many thanks to Dan Farr, the staff and volunteers at FanX. You helped us perform our community service mission and we had a lot of fun in the process. I can’t wait to see what will happen in 2024 when the convention is held on September 26-28.

Here are some random photos from the convention.

Autographs, Collecting, Comic Books, Community Service, Conventions, Doctor Who, Role Playing Games, Star Trek

FanX 2022 After Action Report

Written by TardisCaptain September 25, 2022February 25, 2024 1 Comment

So another FanX: The Salt Lake Comic Convention is in the books. With how hectic my summer has been, I didn’t know if i was going to be able to make it. Starfleet Command’s Seventh Fleet was going to have a charity booth at the convention again to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Thankfully our Star Trek fan club is set up so that when real life gets in the way others can step forward. The crew of the USS Pulsar led the various volunteers for the booth. They put together a brand new photo op for convention attendees to use which was the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds transporter pad. After talking with Captain Joe Coleflesh, he stated to just come do what I could and they would handle everything else. So on Wednesday (the day before the con opened) I arrived and got the booth registered. I’m in a walking boot now, but I still had to stay off of my foot as often as I could. Luckily a friend of mine had let me borrow a knee scooter. This allowed me to move about the very large Salt Palace with some ease. It was still a toll on my body so every day of the convention was a “game time decision” on if I was going to make it.

On Thursday I rode down with a friend and was able to check out the vendors floor before the con opened (an advantage of being an exhibitor). I saw a few things that I wanted to pick up when everything was opened. I spent most of the day at the Seventh Fleet booth meeting up with new recruits and old friends who stopped by to say hello. Despite being sore, I made the trek back down on Friday and took my youngest to Kid-Con. Unfortunately, that may have been too much so I wasn’t able to come down on Saturday. If I missed meeting up with you, I hope to catch you at a future event. I will be adding some new photos to my online photo album that were taken at the con.

From a Utah vendor I was able to pick up a dice tray and a pin with a graphic of a D20 that stated “This is how I roll”. I purchased the 2022 anthology “Parliament of Wizards“. With several of the local authors in attendance, I was able to get several of them to autograph the book. My last long Dungeons and Dragons campaign allowed me to play a wizard, so I thought I might gain some inspiration from this book for future gaming sessions. Speaking of getting books signed, I also picked up The Complete Elfquest Volume One and meet the creators Wendy and Richard Pini. I’ve been a fan of this series ever since I read the first trade paperback back in the mid-80’s and I was unaware that they were even coming. While there are a lot of geeky things for sale at the con, I hardly see any role-playing books. So when I discovered that Andrew E.C. Gaska, the author of the Alien Roleplaying Game published by Free League was also present, I had to pick up the core book for him to autograph. When I told him that Aliens was my favorite movie of all time, he wrote a special message with his signature. Yes, I will be using this system in my Character Creation Challenge in 2023. And thanks to my friend Tina, I was able to pick up the autograph of Steven Weber who played Colonel Day on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I would have picked up more autographs but I wasn’t informed about the prices before the con so I couldn’t budget before hand.

Despite missing Saturday and being sore, I did enjoy getting out and seeing the creativity that our local geek community comes up with. Also a big thank you to the members of the Seventh Fleet for running a successful charity booth and to all of the fans who helped donate to the American Cancer Society. To Dan Farr and the many, many volunteers at the con, thank you for all that you do. FanX 2023 has already set the dates of September 21-23 for the next event. I can’t wait to see what amazing things we will see then. Hopefully I’ll be well enough to cosplay.

Here are some different photos I took at the con.

Note: You can read my 2021 FanX action report here.

Autographs, Conventions, Star Trek

Farewell Starfest, thank you for the memories

Written by TardisCaptain May 19, 2022May 20, 2022 1 Comment

The program guide and badges from the 2022 Starfest

UPDATE: I’ve uploaded a large number of photos to the Photo Gallery. Also thank you for all of the responses about this blog post. It is good to hear from the readers.

I had a mix of emotions this past weekend from May 13-15. I attended the very last Starfest Convention in Denver, Colorado. It ended a 45 year run of a family/fan run science fiction conventions put on by Starland. For those of you who had never heard of Starfest, I’m not surprised. In the past I would describe this event as “A DragonCon in the west that you’ve never heard of.” At it’s height, the convention was held twice a year (StarCon was in the fall) in multiple hotels. I know that some fans were trying for a costume parade (I don’t know if this ever got off the ground as I was always traveling when this was planned). The convention covered a wide variety of fandom interests such as cosplay, media, anime, comics, horror, gaming, robots, art, models and more. I had the opportunity to meet a ton of new friends and attend various room parties put on by different groups. While the bulk of attendees were from Colorado, I always met people from around the country at this con. Movie studios had even sent actors on their own dime to promote upcoming movies. This is how they got Toby Maguire just before the 2002 Spiderman movie was released. In my photo albums, several of the photos of myself with guests or kewl stuff came from this convention. I’ve got a few more that will be added soon.

Back in the early 90’s I was a member of a Star Trek fan club called the USS Kelly. Several members had driven from Salt Lake to Denver to attend one of the conventions. They came back with stories and pictures and excitement. This excitement was infectious and I wanted to go. Normally I could not afford a trip by myself, so members of the club would coordinate travel and lodging to make the cost more affordable. Some of us worked for hotel chains which allowed us to get discounts. Sharing the cost of gas helped with the drive. Plus being with a bunch of Star Trek fans in the car for several hours allowed you to get to know your fellow shipmates very well. I even started a relationship with a fellow club member on one trip. That was a convention to remember.

One of the best things about Starfest was the guests they brought into the convention. Since it was a family/fan run convention, they kept prices low where they could. While Starfest was the first convention that started charging for autographs (something that started happening because people use to get the free autographs and then sell them on ebay) I found that I was treated well. I remember meeting Leonard Nimoy before he retired from traveling to conventions. Oingo Boingo front man and soundtrack composer Danny Elfman was a guest one year. Mark Sheppard wanted to betrothed one of his sons to my daughter to start a geek dynasty. Science fiction authors Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore are considered good friends now (thank you for putting up with me). There are so many memories of meeting guests that I love revisiting when I look at the autographs or photos. This past weekend I finally had a chance to meet Star Trek production artist Rick Sternbach. He is best known for writing and illustrating several Star Trek technical books such as the Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology (I had him sign both the US and UK printings), the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual and the Klingon Bird-of-Prey Owners’ Workshop Manual. Rick even added some original art to the Spaceflight Chronology.

While I was there, I picked up several of Rick’s new publications detailing some of his artwork on various Star Trek shows. This made me happy because at past conventions is where I would find various technical and resource books on Star Trek and other shows. It disappoints me now that I’ll attend one of the larger comic-con events only to find no books for sale. It use to be that a convention gave me the opportunity to pick up tech books from various merchants. Hey look, there’s a cloud in the sky and I’m yelling at it.

At Starfest I had the opportunity to meet fans from various fan clubs that had shown up from all over the inter-mountain region. I still have friends that I met from the USS Pioneer, USS (and Battlestar) Stormbringer, USS Tiburon, USS Anasazi, 501st Stormtroopers, House VamPyr, House Veska, USS Silverthorne and many more. I’m sure there are a few groups and fans that I may have missed. There have been so many of you that have come and gone. I’ll miss having a large room full of club leaders all wanting to help each other no matter who our parent organization is.

At the end of the convention my good friend, Dennis Hollinger (the first captain of the USS Kelly), and I didn’t want it to end. After the very last panel we searched around for a location where we could get a photo together and found the last Starfest banner that was still standing. All of the other banners advertising previous conventions had already been taken down.

I want to personally thank KathE Walker, her family and all of the volunteers that helped make Starfest one of the bests conventions out there. You inspired me so much that I even volunteered for several conventions over the years. I know that real world issues shut down the con in a perfect storm of suck, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t look back on the many memories and moments that have been created. I hope to cross paths with you again some day. Live Long and Prosper and Thanks for All the Fish.

Collecting, Conventions, Music, Sports, Star Trek

Why I collect autographs

Written by TardisCaptain June 11, 2021March 29, 2022

I was thinking about this subject the other day and realized that it would make for a good blog post. I’ve been collecting autographs ever since I first met several members of the Utah Jazz at a mall in downtown Salt Lake City in the 80’s. The team was trying to drum up interest in fans and they had several of the players at a table signing autographs for anyone who happened to be there. I was able to get four of the five players who were present (the fifth had just run out of photos to sign). I still have memories of going through the mall to that chance encounter. It was one of the many of my teenage times when I would just go wandering off on my own not knowing what I would find while exploring.

As I started going to Star Trek conventions I had the opportunity to meet several different actors. Some I’ve been able to get photos with that I’ve added to my Star Trek Actor’s Photo Gallery. From these conventions I’ve been able to get autographs from several of the actors that I’ve seen on television and movies. To get an autograph, especially when you can see them sign it yourself, is to have something that they have interacted with. I will never forget meeting with James Doohan. Especially since he was staying in the hotel I was working in at the time. I was able to interact with him on the phone after the convention.

Not all encounters were pleasant ones. Sometimes you have to plan to attend conventions out-of-state, make arrangements to get something to sign, think about what you are going to say to the celebrity since you only get a few seconds with them (if you are lucky it could be a few minutes). At a convention in Los Angels I had the opportunity to get an autograph from Dwight Schultz. While he is famous for his role as Howling Mad Man Murdock in the 1980’s television series, The A-Team. I wanted to get a signed photo of Lt. Barclay from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I went by his table before he arrived and noticed all of the A-Team photos, but there were no Trek photos. I enjoyed watching the A-Team. But I knew what I wanted. In the dealers room I found a vendor who had a stack of Lt. Barclay photos for sale and snatched one up. I remember being in the first dozen people in line at the appropriate time for autograph signings. Several people had commented that they liked my Barclay picture. When you get to the table, you hand the assistant your money along with the photo. My photo was the first Star Trek picture of the day for Mr. Schultz to sign and he said “oh” and reached down with his pen to sign the photo. Suddenly from behind him, a hand reached out and yanked the picture away from him. Shocked I looked up to see some woman shaking the picture at me and screaming “Where did you get this picture? This is an illegal picture!” As I started arguing with the woman that I had already paid my money and that I was owed an autograph on the item I selected, Mr. Schultz’s face went back and forth between me and the woman as we yelled at each other. I think she was his agent or something and she wouldn’t budge. I wouldn’t budge either as I had already paid for my product and stated so. Suddenly she whirled around and grabbed one of his photos, slapped it down in front of him and yelled “Sign it!” The poor actor quickly made it out to me an not wanting to fight any more, I thanked him for the autograph. Then the woman grabbed me and stated “You’re going to show me where you got this in the dealers room.” As I was being dragged past the line, I noticed how many other fans with the same photo I had quickly hiding them. I knew that while she was away, they would be trying to get them signed as quickly as possible. Not wanting to get the dealer mad at me, the moment we got into the room, I waived my hand in the general direction and said “he’s down that way.” and I walked in the opposite direction. I couldn’t have been more than a minute later before I heard the harpy scream of this person yelling at the vendor. Every time I see the photo below, I think about that encounter. To this day, I wonder what Mr Schultz thought of what happened. I don’t blame him for it, but I could tell that he was embarrassed by it.

I wish I could say that I’ve met everyone that I’ve got an autograph from. I’ve had several friends, knowing of my hobby to collect and of my interests, provide me with autographs that they have come across on their own. I’ve enjoyed several “Weird Al” Yankovick concerts, but I’ve never had a chance to meet the artist in person. Two different friends procured an autograph for me at different meet-and-greets that they participated in. I am very thankful to these friends. And yes, someday I’ll get a chance to meet Weird Al in person. Until then I’ll continue to enjoy his music and his sense of humor.

I’ve got a quite a few autographs. Not just photos in an album but on artwork, books, action figures, hats, comics, games and other collectibles. And while some have gone up in value, especially with the celebrity passing on from this life, I’ve never thought about selling these items. These are memories for me. Memories of efforts to collect the autograph. Memories from meeting these human beings who have done extraordinary things. Memories of friends who have gone out of their way to help me with my collection. I’m sad that large scale events and online auctions have pushed autograph prices higher and higher. But I am also grateful for the opportunities to meet these people. I still get a smile on my face when I look over my autographed items.

Autographs, Community Service, Star Trek

A Green Girl in arrives the mail

Written by TardisCaptain March 6, 2021March 29, 2022

In a previous blog post titled “Charity On Two Fronts” I talked about how Crystal Allen was running a GoFundMe page for her charity to cook meals for the medical staff and frontline workers who are helping with the pandemic.

Ms. Allen wanted to give back by preparing healthy home cooked meals for nurses, firefighters, paramedics and more. I thought this was a wonderful idea and sent in some money on the GoFundMe page. For those of you who don’t know, Ms. Allen is an actress that has appeared as the Orion, D’nesh, on the Star Trek: Enterprise episode, Bound. She also appeared in the Star Trek fan film, Of Gods and Men, directed by Tim Russ. She was willing to send autographed pictures of her character to anyone that donated $40 or more. Donating for a good cause was the primary reason for contributing, in my mind the autograph was just frosting on the cake.

I was having a bad day before I opened up the mailbox and discovered that my signed photo had arrived. Since this brightened up my day, I decided that I should post about it on the blog. Plus I also wanted to show to others that gifts for donating were arriving as promised. If you think that this type of charity event is a wonderful idea, I’d encourage you to send in a few dollars.