I promised to write a Kapow! Comic Convention report - here it comes!

Friday, May 18th 2012
We (MonkeysCanDance and me) left for London on Friday evening. (It would have been lovely to spend all Friday in the city, but there was another lecture at university I had to attend. The lecture got cancelled in the end… but well.) Both our car ride to the airport, our flight to London and our train/tube ride to the city center went well and without incidents.
At King's Cross St. Pancras we met up with Vivi and moved into our hotel room at Wardonia Hotel which was  an approximately 2-minute-walk away from the train station. We had dinner at a lovely Indian restaurant and hit the pillow early.

Saturday, May 19th 2012
The next day we got up at 6:00 AM to get ready for the convention. I wore Leah from Marvel's Journey Into Mystery that day.
A friend of mine had informed me that the queues in front of UK conventions are always pretty long. Therefore we left the hotel at 8:30 AM to be at London Business Design Centre at 9:00 AM – the time the convention opened.
Unfortunately the queue was already 2 ½ blocks long the time we arrived at the convention center. We were shocked. We had never seen a queue this long! (In Germany you hardly ever have to queue to get into the the convention building.) I tried to make good use of the time, put on my long skirt and got my costume ready. While queuing we also met Lilistprince  and KingIsAmused for the first time! ♥

It was about 9:30 AM the time we made it into the convention center. I also met my friend Johanna there. We both did an internship at the fashion label Saloni in London two years ago. It was amazing to meet her again!

The first person we decided to see was Kieron Gillen who is the writer of Marvel's Journey Into Mystery -  the comic I was cosplaying from that day. Luckily Boa, Vivi and I had brought comics for signing along.
We were all really excited to meet him. He was so incredibly nice! He signed my book and we took a picture together. He even told me that he had traced the production progress of my costume!! He also took an Instagram picture of Lilistprince  and me as Loki and Leah.



Later on we also met Dough Braithwaite who is the penciller of Journey Into Mystery in the artist's alley! I didn't even know he was at Kapow!. We took a picture together and he sketched a tiny Loki into my first volume of JiM. He complimented me on my costume and said that I looked exactly what he imagined Leah to look like. I had absolutely no words! To get such amazing feedback from the writer and the penciller of a series is an incredibly big honor and I really, really appreciate it. I would have generally never expected that my Leah costume would be received so well.



I also stopped by at AmanoJyaku's table in the artist's alley. He's a professional comic pin-up artists from the US. We had talked on deviantArt before and he had asked me if he'd be allowed to use one of my Batgirl photographs as a reference for one of his new projects. Have gave me two signed prints for me and my photographer.
I was blown away by his work! I would have never expected this picture to turn out that well! I absolutely love and I'll get a proper frame for it as soon as possible!



After getting an autograph from JOCK for a friend (Sidenote: Jock was so incredibly nice was well! I have no words!) we started queuing to see Scott Snyder. We wanted to line up, like, 1 hour before the signing started, but by the time we reached the end of the queue somebody was already holding the the "End of Signing Queue Here" sign. We were a bit frustrated at first, decided to stay in line though. We were in second place behind the boy with the sign. There were only a father and his 10-year-old son in front of us.
A few minutes later one of the staff members informed us that our hadn't been in vain and that they would try to get all people in line to see Mr. Snyder. We were relieved. He was the reason we attended the convention for. Haha.

By the time we reached the signing table we were really excited. You don't meed a world-famous comicbook author every day - especially not when you live in Germany. Famous artists hardly ever attend German conventions.
The father with his 10-yeard-old son were up first. The father wanted to take a picture of his son and Mr. Snyder, but I stepped in quickly and offered them to take a picture of the three of them together.
Father and son were happy, Mr. Snyder shook my hand. We started to chat a bit, he signed my first volume of "Gates of Gotham" and I told him that I'd be at the convention as Stephanie Brown the next day and he was all like: "I love Stephanie. I'd love to bring her back in the New 52, but I'm not allowed to. Come along tomorrow and we'll take some pictures together." It was amazing to meet him. I mean, I hardly ever blush when I meet people I admire, but this time...

Afterwards I changed clothes and Boa, Vivi, Johanna, Ne0Nic0 and her friend Rachel we went to a fish & chips restaurant to have dinner. We later also met up with LucilleSmiles who happened to be in London as well. We had coffee and cake and chocolate and sandwiches.

Sunday, May 20th 2012
On Sunday we got up at 6:00 AM again and got ready for the convention. I wore Stephanie Brown's Robin outfit that day and I was really excited to see whether people would recognize the character or not. We had breakfast at Prêt-à-Manger and went into the convention building at 10:00 AM. We didn't really know what to do, so we went to see DC's The New 52 panel with Dan Didio, Scott Snyder, etc. It was pretty interesting, Dan DiDio came across pretty unsympathetically though. To me it felt like he didn't take his fans and customers seriously. When one of the fans asked him when DC would bring Wally West back Mr. DiDio was all like: "Haha. Who's Wally West?" Besides a few series I'm not a fan of the New 52 and this panel definitely didn't change opinion for the better.
A good thing about the panel was that we met a French comicfan called Bruno who told us about a French comic convention which takes place in Paris in July.  Rafael Albuquerque will be at the convention and I'd love to see him! But let's see…

After the panel we queued to see Scott Snyder again. It was amazing that he remembered who we were and we took pictures together – just as promised.



I also met an amazing Batfamily cosplay group from UK that day!
Anna, Claire and Spider were so nice! It was a pleasure to meet them! I hope I'll see them again the next time I visit a British convention.

Later that day I also took my chance in the cosplay competition, I didn't win anything though. Right afterwards I changed clothes and we had late lunch at Pizza Express and did some sightseeing.

➡ All in all Kapow! Comic Convention was a blast, worth every cent I spent and one of the best events I have ever been to! I'd love to go there again next year!