This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
An estimated 50,000 Jedis, super heroes, zombies, steam punks, video game characters and generic civilians packed into the Salt Palace Convention Center for the three-day Comic Con Fan Experience, a celebration of the cool in all things geeky.
It was people like Chantel Bryson, who spent 100 hours making her own costume, Queen Lissandra from the online multi-player game League of Legends.
Bryson stood nearly 7-feet tall with long blades on her fingers, a black and purple corset, and a headpiece covering most of her face with 18-inch long spikes.
"It's about the energy, the people," she says. "It's really energizing and I just love being with my fellow nerds," she said.
Tim Hafer hired someone to build his detailed Ironman costume.
"We like to see all the different costumes, the stuff people come up with," he said. "You're with your own people. We're all nerds together. There's no judging. It's a beautiful dynamic."
Chayse Felt and Jillian Rogers came to Fan X from Roy, dressed as Disney princesses Belle and Cinderella. The highlight, they said, was when a sick young girl who was attending as part of a Make-A-Wish trip asked to have her picture taken with them.
"I like to come here because at home sometimes it's hard to find people with common interests, but here we all have common interests," said Felt. "It's a feeling of family and togetherness here."
Ryan Glitch has taken the "common interests" to the next level. For the last six years, he has run Sci-Fi Speed Dating, which tries to turn the shared love of geekdom into love connections. He travels to about 40 conventions a year to stage the rotating dating meet-ups.
Women get in free; men have to pay $20. Three times a day during Fan X, several dozen men and women would take three minutes to try to get to know each other and then shift to the next person.
Most of the folks left the room Saturday looking dejected. "It's expensive to flirt," grumbled one man in a military-style costume. Still, Glitch said in the six years, he can claim credit for 72 marriages, 47 couples who are engaged and 22 babies - with a 23rd due any day.
"The fact that, for speed-dating at a convention, [you have] people with shared interests. There's a lot to build on," he said.
Glitch said he and his partners keep enough of what they make to get by and donate the rest of their proceeds to charity, usually a local women's shelter.
Saturday's final day of the convention was headlined by Jeremy Renner, best known for playing Hawkeye in Marvel's Avengers movies and for his role in Mission Impossible and the Bourne Legacy.
Renner has been in Park City filming "Wind River," where he reportedly plays a fish and game officer coping with the death of his daughter who finds the body of a girl who has been raped in the woods.
Fans, however, were more eager to hear any tidbits about the upcoming "Captain America: Civil War," the latest installment in The Avengers franchise, where a rift between Captain America and Iron Man has the heroes battling each other. But Renner wasn't willing to spill any spoilers.
"What I have seen is really, really spectacular. I'm excited to see what happens in 'Civil War.' I'm as excited as you guys are," he told several thousand fans in the center's main ballroom. "It should be pretty great. A bunch of friends fighting. … I have no information to give you guys. I like to keep it that way."
His advice to prospective actors was to find "anything, anything in life that makes you happy, makes you smile, other than acting."
"I don't want to squash somebody's dream," he said. "If you have a Plan B, you plan on failing, so don't plan on failing," he said. "Either do it or do not."
He also joked about his most awkward interaction with admiring fans.
"It's the selfie in the urinal. That happens," he said. "Look, man, probably not the right time, [and they say] 'It's for my son.' So I do a stall now. And if I see a cell phone come under the stall, now I've got to hurt someone."
Other featured guests at the 2016 Fan X - which is sponsored in part by Media One, the advertising partner of The Salt Lake Tribune — included Gillian Anderson from 'The X-Files, George Takei from "Star Trek", astronaut Buzz Aldrin, actress Kate Beckinsale, and Chandler Riggs and Danai Gurira from "The Walking Dead".
Twitter: @RobertGehrke