Checking out costumes and celebrities at O Comic Con 2016

Costumes, celebrities and conversations highlighted the 2016 O Comic Con pop culture convention over the weekend. Thousands of people either dressed up as their favorite comic book, anime, movie or television characters or visited to check out the event.

The event at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs was well organized. The sponsors learned from their growing pains of a year ago. It was cool to see that there was even corporate or retail sponsorship of conference rooms or events.

While the Omaha-area event doesn’t attract the “A list” celebrities other more established conventions do, such as Stan Lee and lead actors, O Comic Con recruits celebrities who locals seem to enjoy seeing. Sean Gunn (“Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Gilmore Girls”), Lauren Tom (“Friends”) and “Sesame Street” actors Bob McGrath and Emilio Delgado were among the well-known actors taking part in question-and-answer panels, as well as photo opps.

We sat in on Sean Gunn’s panel. Gunn, who portrays the character Kraglin in the “Guardians” movie series, discussed his love for acting and cats. He is an avid cat lover, who participates in cat rescues. He has three cats of his own, and even took one along on a film shoot, so he would have something familiar to come home to at night, he said.

Gunn has loved acting since he was a little kid. “I loved being the center of attention,” he said laughingly. He looks at acting as a way of reaching out to people and provide a little compassion “in a world that seems like it could use some compassion,” Gunn said.

He enjoyed his work as Kirk on “Gilmore Girls.” His role was planned to be a one-time gig, but it eventually grew into a regular role. During his first season or so, he thought the episode he was shooting would be his last, Gunn joked.

It was fun filming the recent version of the series, he said. Having Amy Sherman-Palladino back to run the show allows closure, Gunn said. When she was replaced as the show runner for the series seventh season during the first run, it felt disjointed, he said. Everyone was happy to be back together and had a blast filming the 2016 version, he said.

He also loves the “Guardians” movies. The sequel for 2014’s hit recently wrapped, Gunn said. His brother, James, is the lead writer for the movies. He was bound and determined to ensure the first movie was a quality production, Gunn said.

O Comic Con strives to be a “bully-free” zone. That means people can dress as characters without worrying about being criticized. The convention hosts talks about the subject.

Lathan Murrell has been a member of the “nerd culture” for years. He led a conversation about “Body Image and Bullying.”

It’s interesting that some “nerds” (Murrell’s description of people) have become bullies when it comes to “nerd culture.”

People like him didn’t have a culture to fit in to, Murrell said, but with the growth of comic cons, he found it. Murrell loved comic books and cartoons since he was a young boy. He had a difficult time fitting in with others, but with comic cons and character groups, he found a home.

With comic cons growing in popularity, cosplayers are taking on more professional appearances with costumes. That has led to growing criticism of people, too.

People used to dress as their favorite character without hesitation. Now, some people have started bullying others, because they don’t think a person has the right body type or skin tone for the character, or because they are new to cosplay.

Online criticism has become easy since people can dehumanize others, Murrell said.

Murrell believes in supporting people. If someone wants to wear a certain character’s costume, he doesn’t tend to care.

“You should be able to say ‘I like this character’ and beyond stigmas,” Murrell said. “Enjoy the character you want to dress up as.”

With that said, plenty of people enjoyed dressing as their favorite characters during O Comic Con. The cool thing about cosplay is that it crosses age groups, ethnic groups and sexes. We saw people from young children to older folks dressed as their favorites.

People offer their own take on their characters, as well. One woman portrayed Catwoman wearing a professional-looking dress.

We expected to see people dressed as Ghostbuster characters since the new version of the film series comes out this month. We were a bit surprised when we didn’t see any. However, we saw a couple of Harley Quinn cosplayers. She’s a character in the “Suicide Squad,” which has its movie premiere in a few weeks.

O Comic Con provided several thousands of people a fun time over the three-day event. We enjoyed our time visiting. Our visit reminded me that you need to take in all three days to really get a good feel for the cosplayers and the pop culture events.

We recommend checking out the 2017 version of O Comic Con. We’ll share information on the dates and the guests attending in future posts.

Disclaimer: Thank you to O Comic Con for the complimentary admission. However, all opinions and views are ours.