MANCHESTER, NH – Like many Manchester residents, I’ve been aware of GraniteCon, not from its very beginning 22 years ago, but for quite a while now, even though I never attended. Whenever it coincided with nice weather, it was always huge fun to stroll downtown and see all the young people walking on Elm Street, dressed as characters from their favorite imaginary worlds, be they comic books, movies, anime, or video games. And on one memorable year GraniteCon coincided with a city meeting (one of several “Plan-a-palooza” meetings), also at the DoubleTree, so that year we had SpiderMan, Iron Man, and many other characters bless our city plans. And I have the pics to prove it! (provided by my wife, who was part of that meeting. Once again she comes through for me!) See below. How many city planning sessions can make a similar claim? Show me one! A single one!

This year GraniteCon was bigger than ever, using space in the DoubleTree (its traditional location) AND the SNHU Arena. While I didn’t have time to make it to the arena, I did manage to spend some time at the DoubleTree Saturday. Even got to take in the Costume Contest! What a blast! And I got to sit right next to Avera Cosplay and Dark Lady Cosplay! (OK, honesty demands I fess up that I had no idea who they were, only learning it after the fact. I was just a clueless mundane wandering into the room early and grabbing a seat up front.)

Quite seriously, I made a point of arriving early. If my time there was going to be limited, I wanted to at least be sure I attended the Costume Contest and had a good seat. I did have time to wander the armory a bit first, where I saw an ENORMOUS line of fans getting autographs from Kevin Eastman, a creator of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The room was filled with creators and artists selling items and giving autographs, under huge oversized posters displaying their work. And some of that work was glorious! It’s come a long way from when I was hoarding my New Gods, Mr. Miracle, and Forever People by Jack Kirby back in the 70’s.

After taking all that in, I realized I should head to Panel Room “A” where the Costume Contest would begin in 15 minutes. Conventions like this usually make the most of their available time and space, so it was not surprising that another event was still underway in that room. So I caught the tail end of a Q&A session with two voice actors. I later learned that these were not just any voice actors – these were the voices of none other than Pinky and the Brain! (If you don’t know who Pinky and the Brain are, you have been missing out! Go find them and watch them NOW!) Rob Paulsen voices Pinky and Maurice Lamarche voices Brain, as they have for 30+ years.

As I arrived one of them was explaining that to be successful in their business you needed far more than talent, you also needed to be polite and respectful and professional and generally a pleasure to work with. You wanted others to always WANT to call you, to have zero reasons to avoid you.

They summed up by explaining how they viewed voice acting as in many ways the least constrained form of acting. Appearance, size, shape, age, even gender, did not matter – only your voice and what you could do with your voice. If you could control your voice properly, you could play the opposite gender, you could play wildly different ages. Sometimes you could even play greatly differing characters in the same production! And with that, their Q&A session ended.

I had been standing at the back of the room listening, there were very few available seats. As the room emptied, I headed for the front, and took a seat in the now-empty front row, just right of the center aisle. Two women were right behind me, who would prove to be the Cosplay sisters, and they sat on the left front row. Staff came in to remove tables and chairs from the stage and generally get the room prepped for the different space requirements of a costume contest. The seating arrangements also evolved – three seats in the front row, just left of center, had to be reserved for the judges, and the entire right front row had to be reserved. This meant I had to move. No problem, I can sit next to these two lovely women, problem solved! I’m flexible like that.

One woman introduced herself as Avera. I smiled and we shook hands. Unusual name, I thought, making zero connection that she was the Avera Cosplay mentioned in the schedule book and who had herself given a presentation earlier that day on how to build armor for a costume. (Later I learned that Avera had once built a costume that involved having live pigeons fly out of her skirt on cue. My mind boggles.)

Then BOOM they opened the doors to let in the audience. Whoa! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a room fill up so fast. And in a few minutes we were underway.

I’m not sure what I was expecting. It’s true that not every costume was amazing. But many, even most, were extremely impressive. Especially considering that most of these people do not have the resources of a movie studio costume department behind them. Or even a local college theatre costume department. Many of them are working at home with whatever they have available to them, researching how to make a certain kind of boot or hat, devoting huge amounts of their available free time to their efforts, all so inspired because once upon a time they read something, or watched something, or played a game, which presented a world and characters and story that somehow gripped them powerfully, made them want more, made them fall in love. These imaginary adventures laced themselves through their brains, and just like love, they’re embedded deeply, but never too far from the surface, and if these people are lucky, they will remain forever. And they see this in each other. Even though one may be a future space soldier, and one a medieval Japanese princess, they both know they have seen a vision, and hope to manifest that vision in a way that gives them joy and shares that joy with all of us.

After the end of the show, and after consideration by the judges, the best in show award was in fact given to a medieval Japanese princess, and she could not stop smiling. I could feel the happiness radiating from her. And as she approached the prize winners in other categories, she shed a tear.