The Kung fu of Comic Cons – GalaxyCon San Jose 2024

By Gene Ching

As the location of our Tiger Claw Elite Championships, the San Jose McEnery Convention Center is very dear to our hearts. Consequently, we were greatly disheartened when the once glorious Silicon Valley Comic Con devolved into the disappointing SiliCon, and then completely collapsed after that. We have been covering cons at the McEnery since 2016 through our unique Kung Fu lens, but we had a unique connection to SVCC because it's forerunner, Big Wow, once ran on the same day as TCEC.

But when a door is closed, a window is open. This year, a new fan con landed here. GalaxyCon San Jose took over the McEnery on the weekend of August 16-18, 2024, and once again the halls were filled with celebrities, fans, exhibitors and cosplayers, plus swords for martial arts aficionados. Although new to San Jose, GalaxyCon isn’t a newbie to cons. It is part of a privately owned promotions company that began in Florida as Supercon back in 2006. After a transitional sale, it rebranded as GalaxyCon, and has expanded to include events in Austin TX, Columbus OH Raleigh NC, Richmond VA, and now, this inaugural GalaxyCon San Jose. Not only that, GalaxyCon is aggressively adding two more focused events for this year: Animate! in Raleigh, Columbus and Des Moines, and Nightmare Weekend in Richmond, Des Moines and Miami. And it’s already looking to expand even more next year by adding Animate! Miami and GalaxyCon St. Louis.

For those new to the con scene, there are hundreds of comic-cons held across the USA every year and most are under different independent promoters. These range from megacons like San Diego Comic-con, New York Comic con, and Megacon Orlando where attendees number well over a hundred thousand to small grass roots cons that are happy to sell a few hundred tickets. With the backing of a national organization, Galaxycon is a very respectable gathering with tens of thousands of attendees. It’s no megacon, but it still brings nearly 8 million dollars of revenue to the city of San Jose.

Every con has a unique personality. Cons are family friendly for the most part, but GalaxyCon took an extra step by providing a Family Zone in the Grand Ballroom. There they staged hourly activities for younglings such as crafts, kid dance parties, Star Wars meet & greets, a sorting hat ceremony, temporary tattoos and more.

However, if you think comic cons are just for kids, you are sorely mistaken.

There’s a sexy adult side to cons and GalaxyCon capitalizes on that with their seductive After Dark events. This included a range of activities such as burlesque show (dubbed Nerdlesque Showcase), sexy costume contests, Drink ‘n’ Draw and Hentai coloring workshops (if you don’t know what Hentai is, beware - if you google it, it is definitely NSFW). Concurrently, there were several vendors with offering waifu merchandise (if you don’t know what waifu are, they’re a little less NSFW than Hentai).

The After Dark events also included Swamp Party, which was akin to a Shrek Rave (if you don’t know what a Shrek Rave is, they’ve been trending across the US and Europe since the pandemic). There was even Drunk Mario Kart (if you don’t know, you really need to get out more). There was even a huge tattoo and piercing area which offered special packages to make fresh celebrity autographs permanent.

And for its freshman outing, GalaxyCon brought many A-list celebrities. GalaxyCon knows how to make celebrity experiences personal and memorable. GalaxyCon attracted some big names like John Cleese, “Weird Al” Yankovic, and a strong showing of Star Trek veterans like William Shatner, Denise Crosby, Micheal Dorn (who is interviewed later in this review), Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner, Wil Wheaton, and several more from later series.

As with most cons, the celebs not only appeared on panels, but they were also available for autographs and selfies. Fees range from nominal to pricey for major stars, but it allows fans to interact with their favorite celebrities on a one-on-one meeting, even if only for a moment. Many cons covet their top talent, making them inaccessible except for the limited paid exposure. In contrast, GalaxyCon’s celebrities were far more accessible, as long as there wasn’t a long line of fans. On top of that, the major panels took celebrity stage selfies, and if you were quick enough to get up front and center at the end of the panels, you could get in the shot. The panel selfies were a special keepsake, available at the merch store.

The cosplayers came out in force. As always, the Star Wars, Star Trek, MCU and DC franchises were well represented. Beyond that, One Piece is still trending – something we’ve been monitoring since last year. This year, the anime celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary with over 1100 episodes. There was a panel dedicated to One Piece featuring voice actors Stephanie Young, Colleen Clinkenbeard and Luci Christian, as well as Jeff Ward, who played Buggy in last year’s live action adaptation from Netflix.

As mentioned in previous KFM con coverage, Netflix’s One Piece brought new fans to the beloved series, along with some martial arts royalty. The swordsman Roronoa Zoro, who bears three katanas, is played by Mackenyu, the son of veteran martial arts star Sonny Chiba. Consequently, he has practiced karate, horseback riding and yabusame (mounted archery) since childhood. If anyone can wield three swords, it’s Mackenyu.

Subsequently, there were plenty of Zoro cosplayers at GalaxyCon. Watching them awkwardly negotiate walking through the crowd with three swords was an amusing sight, especially from a martial perspective. Carrying a sword without kneecapping fellow attendees in crowds is more challenging than the uninitiated realize. If nothing else, a martial arts cosplayer can learn a lot from the experience.

The Sword Merchants

As mentioned before in my KFM con coverage, cons can be good place to find swords. Starting with the most prominent, no con would be complete without lightsaber vendors. Lightsabers come in so many shapes and sizes (and prices!) Lightsabers have been discussed on KFM previously and will likely be explored further as the phenomenon continues to expand. Lightsaber is the fastest growing martial art in the world right now.

One booth had another amusing sight – lightchucks. Light-up nunchaku have been a part of the martial arts scene for decades. However, with the surge of lightsaber popularity, light tech has improved greatly. The makers at Weed Technology & Fabrication (a.k.a. WTF) created nunchucks with shafts made from the same battle worthy materials as combat lightsabers.

However, the most popular swords at cons remain the anime katanas and GalaxyCon was no exception. The Triforce cosplay exhibitor offered an extensive array of brightly colored swords, some of which lit up like lightsabers. Run by some Chinese vendors, Triforce didn’t offer anything metal. Everything was plastic or bamboo.

There was even a special panel related to non-metal swords – Foam Swords: From Start to Finish w/Tabitha Lyons. Lyons is a full-time crafter and cosplayer who also had an autograph-and-photo table at GalaxyCon. She was presenting with her father, Nic Samiotis, and this father daughter team form the UK based prop company Artyfakes. Over the course of the short panel, Samiotis built a simple foam sword from scratch, demonstrating his techniques, as Lyons narrated.

Despite all the cosplay weapons, a few real weapons could still be found. Weapondirect had two booths of a wide variety of arms, mostly anime katanas. But tucked into their offerings were a few fine hand forged steel katanas. These were pattern welded steel, and came complete with a certificate of authenticity and a traditional Japanese sword maintenance kit. “It’s all Chinese made,” said the proprietor Amir, who neglected to offer his last name. He’s a travelling sword salesman, moving from con to con with his vast arsenal. He doesn’t even have a website. You just have to catch him at a con.

Michael Dorn on Klingon Martial Arts

If you’re not a trekkie, Michael Dorn has been in more Star Trek than anyone. He brought Star Trek’s most memorable Klingon to life. Worf had major roles in the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999) and final season of Star Trek: Picard (2023), as well as the feature films Star Trek: Generations (1994), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002).

And for martial arts trekkies, Worf brought Klingon martial arts alive with the iconic Klingon weapon, the Bat’leth. Thanks to GalaxyCon’s celebrity accessibility, I was able to catch an exclusive interview with Dorn.

GC: Do you have any martial arts background?

MD: No, I don’t. I’ve always been athletic, so it always kind of lent itself to that, but only when I got into Star Trek. There was an individual named Dan Curry who was the special effects supervisor. And also he's a martial arts expert. And so when we decided in the first season to do something different with Worf, I came up with the idea of martial arts.

And so Dan and I, we talked about it. He said ‘Well, you know, Michael, I do that.’

And that’s when we started to incorporate martial arts into the Worf character. And so whenever we had battles, which there were a lot of, Dan and I would get together. We’d go over the scene and he and I would add all the stuff. He’d say ‘Okay Michael, this is how you do this, this is how you do that.’ And then I’d say ‘Okay, I’m Klingon so let’s change it a little bit.’ And then we’d send that to the stunt people and then they would put in their own stuff. Block it out.

GC: And with the Bat’leth, how did that come about?

MD: Same thing. We were excited. Instead of, you know, you got to all the other characters’ quarters, right? And they have plants and pictures and really nice stuff. And Worf has a set of weapons.

GC: Right. I remember that first scene.

MD: Yeah, and all of those weapons come from martial arts. And in fact, Dan, he basically created all of those weapons and a couple of them worked a little too well.

GC: [laughs]

MD: But that’s the germ of that. On Picard, same thing. He built that.

GC: So when you first saw the Bat’leth, did you imagine that it would become such an iconic part of Star Trek?

MD: No. No, not at all. Not at all. Any of the weapons, we just did it because it fit with whatever the scene is we were doing or whatever the – what do you call it? The mythology.

It’s pretty amazing that from that, all the Klingons, that created a whole culture behind that. .

So no, no, we didn't think so. But like I said, it was my idea to make it more martial arts. But Dan was the one who did all the designing.

GC: And what of Worf’s journey in Picard?

MD: When they called me to do the Picard show, they said ‘Oh by the way Michael, we want the character to be this and that.’ And I said ‘Well, I want the character to be in a journey and it’s kind of Zen Buddhist.’ You know, we’re not staying the same. He’s not crazy, blah, blah, blah. And they said ‘Yeah, but we want him also to have white hair. Like everything white.’

And at first I was like ‘eh’ you know? And then I thought of one of my favorite characters ever, Pai Mei for Kill Bill (2004). And I went, ‘You know what? That’s not such a bad idea.’ [laughs] And we actually put two pictures of me and Pai Mei side by side.

GC: Nice!

MD: And they’re very close.

GC: That’s perfect!

MD: Yeah, and I love that. I’m a huge fan of martial arts and martial arts movies. I remember – was in the 80s or the 90s? – every Saturday they had Kung Fu theater. And I just loved it.

MD: That’s awesome.

Will GalaxyCon Live Long and Prosper?

Beyond meeting beloved celebrities, the next best thing is connecting with fellow fans. I was delighted to run into my old friend Lawrence Washington, a graphic designer whose unique art boxes were one of the booths at this year’s Tiger Claw Elite Championships. He has a distinctive style that leans heavily into the martial arts, despite it being an underserved fandom at comic cons. “At comic cons, martial arts don’t really grab attention,” confesses Washington. “I’ll get a few outliers here and there, but most people like me, they’re here for superheroes and anime and things like that. But you can never really predict who’s going to like what, and when.”

“But I’ll keep doing them. That’s out of loyalty to the genre. You know, I’m always going to do what I love.” And loyalty to the genre is what cons are all about.

At this writing, Washington is planning to have a table at the next Tiger Claw Elite Championships. “I’m actually planning some new stuff just for that. I didn’t really know what it was the first time I did it. Now that I know, I’m like ‘Oh, I got some ideas for how I’m going to make stuff that’s more suited for the event.’”

GalaxyCon has committed to three years in San Jose. The next GalaxyCon San Jose is scheduled for August 15-17, 2025, once again at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.

About author:

For tickets to GalaxyCon San Jose 2025, visit their website here.

Gene Ching is the Publisher of KungFuMagazine.com and the author of Shaolin Trips.

All photos by Gene Ching except for those from the Tiger Claw Elite Championships. Those were shot by KungFuMagazine.com graphic artist Kevin Ho.

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