Cobalt Lands in London Film Comic Con!

August 4, 2017

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Cobalt Lands in LFCC!

With guests galore at London’s Olympia, my first ever time at London Film and Comic Con was a fun filled fan-girl fest with an extremely large variety of guests, activities, sellers and collectors items. A great con for people starting out in the convention scene!

Attending for the Saturday and Sunday of the con, the start of it wasn’t the best, I will admit. With the press pass I was told by multiple “crowd control” high vis people to go in different directions, eventually having to “queue like the rest of them” (as the rude guy very… nicely put it). Not minding I followed suit and queued without my friend for a good 20 minutes before being led the extremely long way down to the entrance, where I asked yet another helper and got told that I was at the entrance, and by gathering my pass I headed on up to the chaos.

Con goers could get their photo with the Big Bang Theory set!

The lift took me right into the centre of the Celebrity autograph area, where scores of people were waiting to see some of the many many guests that had been announced. The friend that I was with on the Saturday took about an hour to get in so whilst waiting for him I wondered around the convention centre’s top floor, where I found some Dalek’s from the Daleks of Skaro cosplay group that were collecting money for charity and accepting photos. This continued into an inflatable Dino costume chasing around the Daleks, which provided a lot of laughs!

Daleks of Skaro making the rounds of LFCC with a collection box for Great Ormond Street Hospital

Wondering around the centre it was clear that in comparison to MCM (another big convention for the London con community) this con is a lot more focused on collectables and meeting/ supporting celebs from a variety of shows and movies (both recent and cult classics).

The cosplay was still strong at LFCC, but obviously being a more comic/ film con it was more “superheroes and Doctor Who” rather than the general anime genre I am more known to be into.

Awesome Spiderman: Homecoming Cosplay (Cosplayer unknown)

That being said, I am a huge fan of Doctor who so seeing some awesome Daleks and Tardis replicas around that you could take photos with was pretty awesome!

Sunday is definitely the best day to go if you are a first time con-goer, providing the guest you would like to see attends on that day. The appearances from guests depended entirely on their schedule, the majority doing the Saturday and Sunday. The likes of John Cleese (Monty Python), Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, Doctor Strange), Pamela Anderson (Baywatch), Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal, Doctor Strange) and even Natalie Dormer (Game Of Thrones, The Hunger Games) were some of the bigger names attending, as well as some Doctor Who stars such as David Bradley (1st Doctor) and Matt Lucas (Nardole). I had the pleasure of meeting Matt Lucas, who I discussed the new Doctor with (even representing a 13th doctor top) and even managed to get a photo with him (he really is a lovely bloke)!

Cobalt and the legend that is Matt Lucas!

The merch around the convention was generally nicely priced, with various collectors items such as Pokémon cards, geek-themed t-shirts, cosplay essentials and even magnificently hand made leather-bound books (which I just have to say, are absolutely amazingly crafted).

If you want to have an amazing time/ have a weekend involved around celebrities and queuing for autographs, photos and talks (some of which you have to pay for because they are in such high demand and unlike American convention centres there really isn’t the space to have everyone queuing), and buying some mercy to go along with that, LFCC can be quite a pricy con.

Comical Game of Thrones Merchandise

T-shirt designs from games The Witcher and Overwatch

I think I spent a reasonable £50-60 on merchandise and food, although saying that I outsourced food because the options within the convention centre were either a cafe with Pasties (being from Devon you can’t really get a good pasty up in London!) or Pizza Express, not the cheapest option with a Margherita being £10. For the weekend I would easily budget around £50 for the con, which without the need for merchandise (and the Matt Lucas autograph) I could have easily survived the weekend on a lot less!Overall the only spot of bother I had was getting IN to the actual con, as as a first convention for anyone, especially with someone that has young kids, it is the perfect start out to get you into the Convention scene.