The Terrible Catsafterme

For fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the photo above is quite awesome, but innocuous enough. However, there is a story or two about it. The setup itself isn’t all that exciting. I simply paid the exorbitant fee for the photo op while attending the Wizard’s World Comic Con in Chicago, Illinois, on Saturday, August 13, 2011. That was the easy part. I worked for my money and I plunked it down.

In order to do this, you might guess that I have an affinity for all things related to Buffy and her cast of slayers…and you’d be right. You can see from previous postings that I have met many people involved with the show (and movie) including Mercedes McNab, Clare Kramer, Emma Caulfield, Richard Herd, Elisabeth Röhm, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark, Ken Lerner, Kristy Swanson, Juliet Landau, and Mark Metcalf. I had even seen the original Buffy House and the location for Wolfram & Hart. We won’t even count my missed chances like meeting Felicia Day or Serena Scott Thomas. Nor my encounter with the Buffy wax figure. This was my track record up until now.

Understandably, I was excited to attend this Comic Con with the chance to meet four of the major Buffy cast members for the first time: Nicholas Brendon (Xander Harris) , Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia Chase), James Marsters (Spike), and Julie Benz (Darla). As a bonus, Nicholas Brendon’s twin brother, who had acted as his stand-in and prominently played his look-alike in many episodes of the series, was present. Also three were two actresses whom I had met earlier in the year: Mercedes McNab (Harmony Kendall) and Clare Kramer (Glory).

My goal was to get photos with the main four, but I soon found out that they were not posing for any photos at the tables. The only way to get good pictures with them was to pay for the professional photo op offered by Froggy’s Photos. As I understood it, you were free to take pictures at the tables, but they were instructed not to look at the cameras. Silliest thing I’ve ever heard. It caused me some stress, but I soon decided that I was going to just try and enjoy my meetings with them and then shell out the (choke, gasp) $190 to get a group photo with them all. Kill seven birds with one stake, so to speak.

But first I had to get the autographs I wanted. I began with Charisma Carpenter. At this point I hadn’t quite made up my mind about getting the group photo. Being nervous, I accidentally chose a photo of her from the TV series Legend of the Seeker. I also noticed that when my friend Jason snapped a photo of us, she did in fact look at the camera at the last minute. But since we were trying to be sneaky, she didn’t have time to smile. But I could tell that she was snubbing Froggy’s instructions. Like her character Cordelia, she had the attitude, but also like Cordelia, she was utterly lovable.

Charisma tries to pose as she signs the photo that I’d later return

Eventually I got the guts to go back and admit that I chose the wrong photo and ask her to swap it for a Cordelia picture. He handler refused me, but she said sure. As I handed her a picture and she began to sign it, she said “you know this is from Charmed right?” I said “oops”, so she chucked it aside with a huff. I was loving this. It was like meeting Cordelia Chase in the flesh. I ended up walking away with a signed photo of her as Cordelia. This was our second of four encounters of the day.

Now, this is Cordelia

I then moved on to James Marsters who played Spike. His fee was $40 for a signature, which was $10 more than the others. For this $10, you got nothing but utter friendliness. He was quite talkative and accomodating. But he did spout off Froggy’s instructions (actually saying “Froggy taught me well”) when it came to the picture taking. He said to take all the pics that we wanted, but he couldn’t look at the camera. A sigh for Spike.

The inimitable Spike

James Marsters makes $40 for two seconds of work

And he does it without looking!

But I’ll admit, he was probably one of the most friendly guys at the show

Finally, I went through Nicholas Brendon’s like. He was sitting with his twin brother Kelly Donovan, and somehow Kelly looked more like Nicholas than Nicholas did. I could have sworn I got it right when I approached Kelly to sign a Xander pic, but he told me that this was his brother. So I nicely bypassed him and moved down to the real Xander Harris. (Remarkably, it wasn’t until doing this posting that I figured out who was who in the photo at the top of the posting – even getting it totally wrong in my Christmas Newsletter.)

The real Xander, not his twin

Chatting with Nicholas Brendon, telling him that some guy at his table looks like him

No ask, no look, no tell

I had already had a signed photo of Julie Benz, who played the beautiful Darla. Bob had picked it up for me at a Hollywood Collectors Show in the early 2000’s. Therefore I only needed to get a photo taken with her. The group shot would cover that.

My signed photo of Julie Benz

The time rolled around at 3:40pm for my group shot. Froggy’s was dramatically behind schedule at this point, so when I finally got close to the Buffy gang, we were herded through like cattle. James Marsters was doing most of the talking and told me “ah, welcome back!” He posed me between him and Nicholas Brendon, whom I thought was Kelly Donovan at the time. When the single bulb has flashed and I was dismissed, I walked over to get my bag from Jason and he informed me that Charisma Carpenter had looked away. Uh-oh. Turns out I should have gone back and demanded a retake. When I got my photo later on that day, this is what I found:

Standing: Nicholas Brendon, Brad F., James Marsters, Kelly Donovan. Seated: Clare Kramer, a distracted Charisma Carpenter, Mercedes McNab, Julie Benz

So there it was. $190 for this ruined photo op. Trying to get the photo in the first place was a melee so I decided to bide my time and approach Froggy’s later on. In the meantime, I decided to approach the culprit, the delightfully snippy Cordelia… er Charisma Carpenter.

As per usual, the handler tried to stop me from making any requests, but I asked her anyway. “I was really hoping to get a nice picture with you, but you kind of looked away. So can I get a nice picture with you now?” Of course I could…and did. She apologized for ‘ruining the picture’ and grabbed it and signed it – for free, of course.

A great shot with the beautiful Charisma

The “look-away’ version, signed by Charisma… Oops, she says

Weeks later, I decided to deal with Froggy’s. I demanded some recourse for the lackluster way that this photographer treated this photo op, having a full or partial refund in mind. Instead, he had his fix-it guy do some alterations to the photo, and I ended up with the picture at the top of the posting. Admittedly, it was flawless. No one on earth including me could tell that this had been doctored in any way.

Of course it led to the moral dilemma of having an ‘honest photo’. I mean Buffy herself could have been added to the photo using this method. Froggy sent me two hard copies of the fixed photo, jpeg images of both, and I have the original ‘look-away’ photo signed by Charisma. In the end, after having been somewhat appeased by Froggy and especially by Charisma herself, I decided to let it drop.

Like the show itself, there wasn’t a dull moment in assembling autographs and photo ops with the cast members of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My hopes are pretty high that I’ll stake a few more.

Celebrities of the 2011 Wizard World Chicago Comic Con will continue…

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 25th, 2011 at 6:38 am and is filed under 2010's - Early, Autographs, Celebrity Encounters, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.