... And Introducing Star Trek

My son, The Deputy, is six years old, and he's just discovered Star Trek.

He has seen halves of the first two Abrams movies and went crazy for them. We cranked up Netflix and showed him the series his mom and I grew up on (the original, because we're old), and he went crazy for that too.

Because we only let him watch movies on weekends, he can't do what he really wants every day, which is watch Kirk and Sulu take out the Romulan mining platform over Vulcan. He thinks Sulu is a ninja because he has the sword, and he flip-fights, and I see no reason to correct him.

He didn't care for the original series cartoon, but he does like the live-action version. Loves loves loves "The Cage," the pilot with Captain Pike. We see that a lot. And we're slowly moving through the series when we can convince him to let Pike and Number One and Limping Spock take a break.

Pike is cool because he's smart, and that episode is smart, like a lot of the mid-century sci-fi of the time. And no wonder; the top talents at the time were a murderers row: Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, and shows like X Minus One and Dimension X. Star Trek could have gone in the opposite direction of, say, Space Patrol. It didn't. It strove for more.

Inspired by all that, I drew Pike, and I'll probably do sketches as we move through the series.

DragonCon 2016

This was the second year we took The Deputy to DragonCon, and it was our first year with multiple costumes. I dusted off my Littlefinger get-up, and we debuted our Harry Potter outfits. My six-year-old has become a diehard fan since this winter, but he also wanted to be a jedi and clonetrooper.

He was a hit, especially as Harry. We joined a Death Eater photoshoot to meet Rons and Ginnys, and then he got to play dead as the bad guys finally got the upper hand on the Boy Who Used To Live. He was giddy. He got to meet Jason Isaacs, who played Lucius Malfoy and was just wonderful to us. We even won a floor vote for costumes based on books.

Taking kids to the big show takes planning and patience. He could manage it for an hour at a time before needing a break, and I can’t blame him. But he was eager for all four days, and he found lots of costumes from his favorite stories: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Potter, Turtles, all the overlapping fandoms that make DragonCon such a fun show.

On the drive down, I finally introduced The Countess to Hamilton, and she loved it, so it meant a little more to find Hamiltons and Schuylers this year. Among the big costumes were Rick and Morty, inflatable T. rexes, Hogwarts students, Stranger Things, Ghostbusters, and movie Harleys.

There are people I see only at DragonCon, and I have no idea who they really are, but we know each other’s costumes, and it’s a thrill to get that annual picture together.

He’s already planning his costumes for next year. So am I.

You can see all my DragonCon pictures here.