Greetings Skkawliens! We had a lot of fun at this year’s Silicon Valley Comic Con (SVCC). Even if it was a much smaller con, in comparison to our last con adventure at SDCC, we still had a blast! Check out below as we share some highlights from our SVCC experience here.
The Sky is Not the Limit
For this Con I fully intended on attending a large panel. The headliner for the panel I chose was NASA astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield and master Maker extraordinaire Adam Savage (Mythbusters / Tested.com). One of Commander Hadfield’s claim to fame was his rendition of David Bowie’s Space Oddity from space! Check out his performance from the International Space Station (ISS) below:
Commander Chris Hadfield singing David Bowie’s Space Oddity from the ISS
That’s why, when the lights dimmed at the panel room and they started showing the video of Commander Hadfield floating in space (above), I immediately got goosebumps! But before we knew it, the volume to video cut-off and Commander Hadfield himself came up on stage with his guitar to finish the song.
Commander Chris Hadfield singing David Bowie’s Space Oddity
The crowd, including yours truly, went wild! I felt emotional as I watched Commander Hadfield complete the song and introduce himself. Being a big fan of Commander Hadfield and his work, I was really looking forward to this panel. If you’re not familiar, you should check out his book: An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. It definitely helps put perspective on your life and it’s a very interesting read. I highly recommend it.
Photos of Commander Hadfield’s presentation from his SVCC Panel
Commander Hadfield talked on his early life as a young boy (pictured above) and what inspired him to become an astronaut, which was you guessed it, comics! Yes, if it weren’t for the comics he wouldn’t have broken through earth’s atmosphere and slept cooly with the stars. It was a really great panel because Commander Hadfield basically justified SVCC itself, why comics and pop culture are so important to our lives. To summarize his talk, comics and pop-culture inspire us to become more than we are. It was really heartfelt and in inspiring.
Adam Savage (Mythbusters, Tested.com) left, Commander Chris Hadfield (astronaut) right
Additionally, it wasn’t just Commander Hadfield I was excited for because master Maker and Mythbuster Adam Savage joined Commander Hadfield on stage! It was funny because Adam was like: How do you top that entrance?? Adam also was a bit hesitant at first to give examples or talk on his life because, how do any of our lives compare to going to space? But Adam did end up sharing some stories from his Maker experience, which being a big fan to his work as well, was also fun to hear.
SVCC Cosplay
@Skkawlord, legendary cosplay representative fro SKKAW.BLOG
After the panel I found myself walking around the show floor and meeting the amazing SVCC Cosplayers. As you can see, I happily represented as @Skkawlord above and had a lot of fun doing it! For more on our SVCC cosplay encounters check out our full SVCC Cosplay article here.
SVCC Artist Alley
Following meeting some of SVCC’s amazing cosplayers I gravitated towards the SVCC Artist Alley. I really enjoy fan art and there definitely was no scarcity of it at SVCC. For example, Priscilla Wilson’s booth, shown below, called out to me because of her use Pokemon on traditional-type Japanese paper background to her awesome Pokemon illustrations. Check out her booth and some of her art below. Be sure to check her out on social media @valorandvellum (via Instagram) too.
And for our third featured artist, we have Sean Monohan. His ink and prints were intricate and expressive. We particularly liked his Totoro Print, shown below. We also really liked his Evangelion ink prints, which were very detailed. You can check out his work via his website at 8pmart.bigcartel.com and on Instagram 8_PM.
Mars and Emerging Technologies Panel
And after all the Artist Alley fun we made our way to another panel. Keeping with the day’s theme, we still attended a panel with at least one more astronaut. This panel was called MARS: TRANSFORMING FROM A PONT TO A PLANET WITH EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES. This panel was moderated by Jason Lederman (Popular Science) and the panelists included Andy Weir (author, The Martian), J.R. Skok (Scientist, SETI Institute, Made of Mars, AstroReality), Dr. Kitty Yeung (PhD Physicist, Manages the Microsoft Garage program) and Dr. Yvonne Cagle (NASA, astronaut).
This panel was very entertaining and informative. If you have never watched a panel with Andy Weir we highly recommend it. He’s very funny! You can see where the inspiration for Mark Watney’s (The Martin) humor comes from. But with all kidding aside, it was very interesting to hear from each panelist on their take regarding nextgen technologies to get us to Mars!
That’s a Wrap!
Overall, we had a lot of fun at SVCC! We really enjoyed the science meets pop-culture theme. Being based in the heart of Silicon Valley, it really is the one place you can appreciate meeting your favorite cosplayers and being able to listen to an astronaut talk about breaking through our atmosphere, at the same con. If you appreciate the sciences and pop-culture, we can’t recommend SVCC enough.
We hope you liked our highlights from SVCC 2019! Also, do you have any fun SVCC stories? If so, feel free to share some of them at the comments section below!
Until the next con!
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