The Jedi strikes back

It was a veritable Star Wars Celebration for us at New York Comic Con this year.

We briefly met the Jedi, experienced Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens with a whole different mindset as a full orchestra fleshed out John Williams' scores and enjoyed Mark Hamill's self-deprecating one-man show. Too bad we missed out on The X-Files panel Sunday, but that really wouldn't have fit into the structure of said Celebration anyway. (And anyway the Con-goers who got in didn't see a preview of the first ep of the season like we did a couple years ago.)

But back to the first day of the con. Getting off the train at Penn Station, we quickly spotted signs of NYCC in full swing, with all makes and models of princesses and superheroes making their way over to the Javitz Center. As we neared the venue, the cosplay increased in direct proportion with the decreased open-mouthed head-shrugging New Yorkers.

For that opening day, Sestra and I donned our latest custom-made obscure outfits -- Team Slesar and Team Matheson shirts (with respective hashtags of #Hitchcock and #Zone). No one asked us about them, although one guy did want to take a picture with each of us. That was bizarre, but you come to embrace bizarre at conventions.

This year, Sis and I tried to win special lotteries from exclusive panels to cast signings for the various shows. Sis was lucky enough to snare inclusion to the Supermansion session, which featured an All-Star cast topped by Bryan Cranston and Seth Green. My lone victory was the chance to go to the Lego store and purchase a Star Wars Con exclusive. But I wasn't willing to give up on the exclusive Lore signing. The Amazon series hadn't gone live yet, but with the pedigree of Gale Anne Hurd producing a show based on Aaron Mahnke's famed podcast and Robert Patrick starring in one of the episodes, I really wanted to be there.

I renewed ties with my Krycek buddy, Kelli, from DragonCon, and we resolved to get into that signing come hell or high water. It helped a bit that the program was misleading, insinuating that we could get into the signing if we made our way to the book seller's booth. We did that and were promptly told to go back to the line. They wouldn't let us in, stating that we could try four free hotspots around the Javitz Center that might have tickets to the event as prizes. We tried all four and didn't win a thing, so back down to the line we went. At some point, they could tell we were really interested in the series -- plus the line wasn't all that long -- so we were queued up with the lucky ticket holders.

It wasn't until about a half-hour later that we realized Patrick wasn't going to be there after all. This proved to be a recurring event for the exclusive NYCC events. (At Supermansion, OK, we weren't too surprised that Cranston wasn't in attendance. But Green -- who was at the con for the weekend -- probably should have been there for Sestra's exclusive signing and wasn't.) Don't register mine as a complaint, though, because it was cool to meet Mahnke and Hurd and tell them and the assembled cast how much I was looking forward to seeing the new show.

Sestra and I spent the bulk of the first day in the vendor room, picking up an array of free, albeit heavy, books -- among other collectibles -- that we wound up toting more than 25 blocks to Lincoln Center to watch the New York Philharmonic brilliantly perform John Williams' iconic score for Return of the Jedi as the movie played behind them. That first show we had amazing seats in the first box, stage right. It gave us such an unusual perspective of the orchestra -- we could even tell which musicians watched the movie and which just sat in their seats to play again. It was a truly unique and dazzling way to watch a film. Plus -- as two of the first 500 attendees -- we both got light sabers as well!

On Friday, we awaited one of the crown jewels of the weekend -- our photo op with Mark Hamill. We knew the drill -- you wait and wait and then get shuffled in for 10 seconds with the man. But it was kind of a delightful 10 seconds. He was doing an array of poses -- Sis was particularly glad we didn't get his trademark point in our sweet shot. Then he shook both our hands and told us to "Have a fun day!" It's gonna be hard to top that part of it, Jedi.

One of the non-Star Wars-related things I wanted to do was meet Nolan North. He was the only non-General Hospital character on the GH spinoff Port Charles who I liked. Since then, he's made quite the career for himself -- largely in voice work in animation and movies (Guardians of the Galaxy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and so much more), but also in Pretty Little Liars and the hilarious Con Man.

When I got to the front of his line, I told him I was a fan from his very first iMDB acting credit -- at present, he has 362 to his name. Looking at it now, I see the video game Interstate '82 before Port Charles, maybe that's why he seemed a little surprised. He told me his son wasn't even born when he was on the soap, and they recently watched clips from the show on YouTube, howling about the frosted tips of Chris' hair. "I look soooo young," Nolan said. "You still look soooo young," I responded. Not surprisingly, he appreciated that.

I mentioned that I had yet to see the two seasons of Con Man -- the crowd-funded show that sort of sends up the very event that we were meeting at -- spearheaded by Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion, which led to a discussion on how the streaming landscape has changed in the past couple years. And then we both waxed poetic on Fillion -- one of his favorite people in the world -- before I departed.

Sestra pre-purchased a book to get the opportunity to meet cult favorite Bruce Campbell. Perhaps "meet" is too strong a word, basically books were being shoveled to him and he signed them and moved on before the fans got much of a chance to get a word in edgewise. I didn't have my X-Files yearbook with me, but since he had guested on the show, I wanted his autograph for that ongoing project. Den of Geek's Con magazine had a preview of The X-Files' 11th season on the cover, and although he wasn't in the article, we decided to have him sign that for me. As Sis recalled it, he looked at it strangely (perhaps bizarre since the official list of what he would sign included marriage licenses), then said, "Oh, I did an episode of X-Files."

We went back to Lincoln Center for the New York Philharmonic's take on The Force Awakens. This time I spent more time watching the movie than the orchestra, probably a byproduct of the fact we were now sitting in the back of the venue and the fact that I don't know that film quite as well as Jedi. It wasn't any less appealing and I probably gained more appreciation for Episode 7 than I previously had. And we added two more light sabers to the tally. I did note that Mark Hamill's screen time was very close to the amount of time he spent with us in the photo op. As Sestra later quipped, he actually said more to us than he did in the film.

Before our con weekend capped with "Hamillstein," Mark's one-man show at the Hammerstein Ballroom, I was looking forward to the panel for Sarah Shahi's new program, Reverie. We got to see the first episode and it seemed to have an intriguing premise -- her character, Mara Kint, is sent to retrieve people who prefer living in an advanced virtual reality program to the real world. Not sure how they're going to be able to sustain that for a season or beyond, but I'm definitely willing to give that one a chance.

It was interesting when Shahi talked about people getting disconnected during the Q&A -- which also featured co-stars Dennis Haysbert, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Kathryn Morris and Jessica Lu."We need to look up from our phones," she said. "Technology is isolating by design." I looked around the room and just about everyone was looking down at their phones, taking pictures and posting on social media. Use it and enjoy it, but don't let it run your life, Sarah said in essence. But her message wasn't really hitting home at that moment.

The cast exited as I was waiting to meet up with Sestra and they went over to take some pictures in front of a huge banner for the show. I wound up riding a neighboring escalator up and down about six times so I could get the perfect picture of them posed in front of it.

Apparently we weren't the only ones unsure of what Mark Hamill's one-man show would be for our grand finale. After making a hilarious entrance that mirrored the scene at the end of The Force Awakens, he tossed off the hood of his robe and cackled. And then proceeded us to just tell us stories about his career for the next couple hours.

Now one might suppose that attendees wanted to hear just about the Star Wars saga, but I'm here to tell you the response to mention of his work as The Joker and The Trickster garnered just as much applause from the assembled crowd. Although his show wasn't part of the Comic Con experience, most of the attendees did come from that direction.

The Star Wars stories were pretty legendary, though. Like how he thought at the outset of casting that he was supposed to the annoying sidekick to Han Solo. But nothing topped his heartfelt tribute to friend and co-star Carrie Fisher, who he loved like a sister -- although she could also irritate him in the way only a sister could as well. "She made everything more fun for me," Mark said. "She was all about having the most fun she could have all the time." A final very special salute was in order and we all joined in.

It was the perfect way to cap off our mini-Star Wars Celebration.