Don't judge New York-Comic Con by its cover

I didn't think New York Comic Con 2016 set up well for me at all. Boy was I wrong.

My wariness was based of the initial celebrity guest list, which didn't feature the allure of last year's screening and panel for The X-Files as well as the appearance of longtime favorite John Larroquette. But as I found out, NYCC clearly has more to offer than just those actors making themselves available for panels, photos and signings.

Sestra and I worked up very specialized costumes for Day 1 -- so specialized that no one seemed to get our drift. We were Candy and Sunshine from the 1980 flick Midnight Madness -- perhaps best known as Michael J. Fox's first feature film. Obscure, to be sure, but we would have thought some of the tens of thousands would be geeky enough to pick up on the reference. Oh well, I think we still looked pretty sharp.

Without the need to be in the door at 10 a.m. sharp to get into the long queue for main stage panels, we strolled in after the doors opened and the huge throngs were already inside. I was immediately besieged by people giving away free stuff -- books and buttons and even a foam chainsaw. Nice, that's the way the con should work, for sure. (While walking to the Javitz Center, we got one of our best freebies -- a survival hygiene kit promoting the Hulu show Freakish with such con necessities as hand sanitizer and tissues).

One of the actors I was really looking forward to meeting was J. August Richards -- best known to the Sestras as Gunn from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff Angel. Expected him to be as tall as he was, but definitely did not expect him to be as cool as he was with us.

He alluded to our matching outfits, but he didn't know the movie. Still, when Lor told him we needed a Leon to be the Game Master, he willingly agreed. Now normally that might be considered to be lip service, forgotten the minute we paid, got our picture and moved on, but I saw J. August later that afternoon at a hilarious gaming panel (the object was for players to throw each other off girders or onto subway tracks where death was swift and merciless). When I told him he did a good job as he exited, he stopped and pointed and yelled "Leon!" I was like, "Yes!!" I was suitably impressed.

The next day we started with the Falling Water panel, which gave us an intriguing look at a new USA series spearheaded by Blake Masters and executive produced by Gale Anne Hurd. In the show, a trio of strangers realize they're dreaming parts of the same dream together. Stars Lizzie Brochere, Will Yun Lee and Zak Orth were on hand with Dr. Moran Cerf, who detailed the science behind the science fiction.

Sestra and I were definitely living the same dream when we saw Mike Massimino at the Penguin Random House booth. Lor knows the astronaut best from The Big Bang Theory, in which he had a recurring -- and funny -- role as himself.

Now it's one thing to meet people who have entertained me, but quite another to be talking to (and squatting beside) someone who has blasted off and walked in space. I was almost speechless. Except for the word "Astronaut," that is. I just kept exclaiming that over and over.

We both bought a copy of his book, Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe. Sestra's was personalized to "Fruit Loops," a joke from Big Bang Theory that made her happy and gave me material for the rest of the weekend. Have to give big kudos to Massimino for the visceral way in which he described every aspect of space missions, even before the big rocket blasts into the sky -- far better than just watching a documentary on the subject.

I was much more grounded when meeting Jonathan Maberry, author of the upcoming X-Files Origins novel Devils Advocate. We got our posters signed, but even better, Sestra implanted the idea of interviewing skeptical Maberry -- and possibly believer Kami Garcia, who wrote the Agent of Chaos coming out at the same time in January 2017 for our Sibling Cinema blog. 

Another of my planned events for the weekend was my photo op with Carrie Fisher.  Never got on one line for an hour only to be put on another one for another hour. And I'm always amazed that all of us can wait like that and not show any wear and tear when we get face to face with the celeb. She made the photographer hold -- they shoot these things as fast as humanly possible, herding us in and out -- but she made sure she was comfortable and I was comfortable and that we had a firm grip on each other without my hair in the way before giving the OK to click. Her dog, Gary, had his tongue stuck out at us from his perch on a neighboring chair.

A couple things I enjoyed more than usual were the cosplayers, even taking pictures with some of them. There was Freddy from Nightmare on Elm Street and a couple of sharks (Tiburones!) Everyone who has tuned into Doctor Who at some point or another in its decades of existence has his or her own doctor, and mine is No. 9 -- Christopher Eccleston played the role for one year. His cosplayer was sharp indeed, I don't remember having previously seen one that good.

We finally got some props for our own attire on the final day as we wore our spanking-new Sestra shirts. For those not in the know, we started calling each other "Sestra" by following clone Helena's lead on Orphan Black and then commandeered that for our Sibling Cinema blog. Basically the comments consisted of "Hey, Orphan Black! Nice shirts!" We definitely should work up business cards for next year.

Had two items on my agenda for the final day -- the screening/panel for Eric Kripke's new show Timeless and another thing I didn't know about until perusing the NYCC schedule of events -- Hannibal show runner Bryan Fuller (the brilliant mind also behind Pushing Daisies and other cult fare for people like me) signing a new cookbook released with Janice Poon, who helped create the show's somehow mouth-watering dishes.

Like Falling Water, Timeless looks like a show to take a chance on. We saw the second episode before Kripke and cast Abigail Spencer, Matt Lanter, Malcolm Barrett and Goran Višnjić came out to talk about it. The episode reminded me a lot of the Supernatural episode in which Nicholas Lea played Eliot Ness, not surprising since Timeless is another Kripke production. The show seems to have a lot of opportunities to traverse time as the scientist, the soldier and the professor board their machine to key moments in history. Actually, now it kind of sounds like Quantum Leap too.

We had no problem getting into that panel, which saved the bigger question for later. I headed right to the Titans booth for the Fuller signing that was over an hour away, just to hear that the line was already capped off. That came as very disheartening news not only to myself, but to two others who had been told they wouldn't even be starting to form that line before that time.

The three of us hung together and hovered outside the capped line -- even though we were told we couldn't block booths in the process. I'm here to tell you, dozens lined up behind us. We waited the hour and the woman with the cutoff sign kept sounding like the voice of doom, but we did ultimately get the proverbial golden tickets to buy books and get on line. Was funny spending all that time trying to look inconspicuous and like we weren't trying to listen in on conversations any time the guy in charge came over to the one holding us back.

I spent 15 minutes watching the swatch of Fuller's amazing technicolor dreamcoat I could spy from behind him. And also partaking in a new obsession. I'm not a fan of the Pop! Funko figures that don't look much like the characters they're supposed to be, but I quickly got into the X-Files Titans, plastic mini figures from different shows that they've craftily put into mystery boxes so you don't know what you'll get. The Titans booth traded figures on display for duplicates, so that's how Sestra scored me Scully in place of less-appealing villainess Phyllis Paddock. They had Hannibal ones as well, the chase variants will get you every time, right in the wallet.

When we finally got up to our Hannibal friends, I told Janice that all her work on the show always made me hungry and I didn't really care whether that was wrong or not. And then, finally, I was in front of Bryan Fuller. It was amusing that we had been told the two of them wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, but it was a booth employee that brusquely tried to move us along while they tried to listen to what we had to say. I did manage to blurt out that I've always found Fuller's creative vision to be unique and inspirational.

After we continued along the show floor, into terrains we don't usually get to while hopscotching through panels and autograph or photo op lines, Sestra found me a cool -- and rather dangerous -- booth with a wide array of art related to Wes Anderson movies. I could have happily gone broke in there, but settled for a few packages of magnets and a killer story about how the director showed up at his gallery one day. Not only did he get to show off his collection, but then Anderson brought up his friend, Jason -- Jason Schwartzman, of course. A fine tale for me to pin on to this year's Comic Con.