Review of Salt Lake Comic Con FanX 2015, Day 2

Salt Lake Comic Con FanX 2015

Salt Lake City, Utah

Day 2, Friday, January 30, 2015

Review By: John Fragglepuss Evans

Day two of Salt Lake Comic Con FanX kicked off with the Christopher Lloyd celebrity spotlight. Lloyd had a lot to say about his acting career, including how One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is likely the favorite movie that he played a part in.

The next panel of the day was The Animaniacs Live. Rob Paulsen and Jess Harnell, the voices of Yacko and Wacko from Animaniacs, opened the panel with “Hello Salt Lake City” in the voices of the Animaniacs. They talked about the music of Animaniacs and how they had a 40-piece orchestra for the show. They were personable throughout the entire panel and even closed the panel out by singing the Animaniacs song about the nations of the world.

Nichelle Nichols had a celebrity panel on day two of FanX. She played Uhura on Star Trek, the original series. She mentioned how the Star Trek cast was always playing pranks on each other, but the pranks will stay anonymous. She closed her panel with a beautiful song.

The panel for Felicia Day was packed! She came to fame by way of The Guild. She has a book coming out in August which can be found at FeliciaDayBook.com. She is still in touch with her geek side, in her panel she even mentioned the new expansion of World of Warcraft. The inspiration for The Guild came from a mixture of World of Warcraft and creative frustration in Felicia’s life at the time.

Chris Hoffman of Touch Paper Press was on the panel titled: “Yo Joe! GI Joe, A Real American Hero”. This panel was heavy on panelists, with six of them hashing out GI Joe for an hour. The panelists knew their GI Joe business. GI Joe has been influential on toys, cartoons, and comics ever since they originally came out.

Day two was rounded out with a Robotech panel, hosted by Steve Yun and Tommy Yune, both of whom work on the Robotech series. Robotech is celebrating its 30^th anniversary in 2015. It has come a long way since the original anime series in 1985. There has been several editions of the anime, novelizations, ebooks, comics, and even an RPG. Last year they launched a Kickstarter campaign to relaunch the Robotech RPG. The Kickstarter did much better than expected, raising $1.4 million.

Day two of FanX appeared to run smoothly. It seems that the organizers of the convention have learned from their mistakes in previous Salt Lake Comic Cons. The main ballroom for the celebrity panels has run smoother in the first two days. They do not clear the entire ballroom after each panel, which has made the convention goers happy. The increase in panel room size has also helped with convention goer morale, since pretty much everybody that wanted to get into a panel could get in. Another plus that has been added to Salt Lake Comic Con FanX has been the addition of the “Panel Q&A Guidelines”. The guidelines are simple but have helped the celebrity panels run smoother and without so many hug requests.