9:00 am: As soon as I walked onto the train station platform, I was greeted by a woman dressed as Princess Leia on Endor (holding a toddler dressed as an Ewok) and a sixty-something-year-old Brony. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one heading up to the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo (C2E2). I was also happy to see my son’s girlfriend, Rachel, who’d be taking the train a little further than McCormick Place to her job at the John G. Shed aquarium. There’s nothing like good conversation to make a ride go faster.
9:45-10:30 am: With a much better train schedule than the previous day, I arrived just 15 minutes before Svengoolie whom, like yesterday, I’d be assisting. Once we were together, we repeated our steps through the checkpoint and behind the scenes to our preferred table.
10:40 am: Cameraman, Patrick Payne, and Svengoolie’s Director, Chris Faulkner, immediately set back out to the main floor to gather footage for the show while Producer, Jim Roche, dispatches Associate Producer, Jane Borim, crew member, Brianna, and me over to Artist Alley. Our mission was to locate some of the contributors to the upcoming Frank Miller presents Svengoolie comic. The goal was to see if they were available for a quick interview.
10:40 – 11:20 am: As Artist Alley begins filling up with patrons, locating specific artists is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. After what seems like forever, we finally locate one of them; “Scary Godmother” creator, Jill Thompson. Ms. Thompson agrees to an interview and I quickly text Jim her location. I then try and find more artists but, by the time Sven has finished his Thompson interview, I’m summoned back to the group.
One of Thompson’s creations gifted to Sven
11:30 am: All seven of us travel over to Cosplay Central for footage. We stop by a random woman’s booth who’s talking to someone else before seeing Svengoolie. At this point she completely loses her marbles; panting, crying, and putting a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Sven asks if she’s willing to be interviewed on camera and she can barely breathe let alone respond; finally managing a nod instead. Her emotional response triggers Jane to start tearing up causing the whole crew to get verklempt. This entire interview was taped and will no doubt appear in an upcoming “Svengoolie on the Road” segment.
12 Noon: After interviewing a few more cosplayers, time demands we head upstairs for his 12:30 “Svengoolie Spotlight.” This one-hour Q&A was hosted by Word Balloon podcaster, John Siuntres who always does a great job. First, we are guided into a side room waiting for the previous panel to finish.
12:30-1:30 pm: This wasn’t the first discussion I’ve witnessed between John and Sven but was by far the most informative. Foregoing the usual “How did you become Svengoolie?” or “Where did the whole Berwyn thing start?” there was more time for advanced questions. Consequently, even a seasoned fan like me learned quite a bit. I saw Chris Connolly from the Mr. C Dives In YouTube Channel whose obsession with Svengoolie sidekicks led him up to the microphone when it came time for audience questions. Chris wanted to know who came first, the original Sven’s “Zelda” or Durwood (the answer is Zelda).
As of this date, Word Balloon hasn’t posted the interview and I’ve heard that the audio has been lost. I’m hoping someone will post a video or some footage will eventually come to light.
Shortly after the panel started, super fan, Warner Huston, approached me. “This is for you,” he says casually while handing me a hard plastic sleeve. Inside was a pair of vintage 3D glasses from when Rich Koz (then referred to as the Son of Svengoolie) had aired “Revenge of the Creature” on WFLD Channel 32 in Chicago. Warner had watched my YouTube interview with Chris Connolly where I shared my fervent desire to own a pair of these and generously decided to give me one from his collection. Needless to say, it’s a miracle I didn’t disrupt the entire event by jumping for joy. To this day, I am still in shock, and, Warner, if you are reading this, just know you have my sincere gratitude for making a forty-year Svengoolie dream come true!
12:35 pm: We leave the Q&A and head back downstairs to our familiar roundtable for a short break. After about fifteen minutes, Svengoolie and Jim head over to the photo op area where Sven is scheduled to take pictures with fans from 2:10-2:20. Jim instructs Bianca, Jane, and me to start setting up his signing area at Booth 39. Before leaving, he also encouraged me to go up and down Sven’s autograph line (which was triple the size it had been the day before) and drum up some sales. This proves a good strategy as within fifteen minutes T-shirt/hat/button sales would already double the entire previous day.
2:25 pm: Jim summons me to meet them at the photo op area. There, I was instructed to escort Svengoolie myself to the signing booth of his friend, actor Michael Rosenbaum. The former Smallville alumnus is also the host of one of my favorite podcasts, Inside of You , so this was a fun errand. While en route, we bumped into Charisma Carpenter who played the iconic “Cordelia Chase” in the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” series. As mentioned in my previous post, both Svengoolie and I are huge “Buffy” fans so seeing Ms. Carpenter was a true pleasure. Sven introduced himself and asked if they could get a picture, to which she agreed. She then walked over to me, took my cell phone, and snapped a selfie with him. Needless to say, this is one picture on my camera roll I shall never delete!
12:35 pm: Svengoolie and Rosenbaum had a brief chat and I’m unsure if their busy schedules led to an on-camera interview later on.
2:45 pm: I escort Svengoolie to his signing area and he immediately starts attending to his eager fans. One of which was a familiar face – Ming Chen from Kevin Smith’s hit reality show, “Comic Book Men.” I met Chen back in 2014 while visiting Jay & Silent Bob’s Secret Stash comic book store in Red Bank, New Jersey.
There were no sketchy visitors today and everyone was extremely pleasant. Sarah Goolie returned and showed off a Svengoolie skateboard she created. I’m hoping to see her in an upcoming episode of that aforementioned Mr. C Dives in Show.
3:50 pm: The signing went on till 4 o’clock but my train was leaving the McCormick Place station at 4:20 so I had to leave early. I said my quick goodbyes and fought my way through the crowd to get there on time.
4:30 pm: As the train heads south, I spot a young woman dressed as an elf. While cuddling a plush mythological monster, she writes in her journal which resembles a medieval scroll. C2E2 really does offer a lot for its various branches of fandom and I smiled while thinking of all things I’d be chronicling, myself, in this very blog…which I hope you all enjoyed.
~Dave