Saturday night on Feb. 15, local middle schoolers Catie and Annie Emery met Sean Astin, an actor and filmmaker famously known for his roles in “The Goonies,” “Lord of the Rings” and “Stranger Things,” among others. Astin was in Carbondale Saturday for Saluki Con 2025, an annual pop culture convention held at Southern Illinois University. Although Astin did not appear on the con floor, he spoke to a packed Shryock Auditorium about his life and career for the “Special Saturday Night Speaker” event.
“It’s also kind of cool that he’s in Carbondale, right?” Jennifer Emery asked her daughters. “That Carbondale would bring your hero here? Usually, you have to go to St. Louis or Chicago to see your hero, right? But right here, you got to see somebody you look up to and admire, so that was really cool.”
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Nervous and shaky, the mega fans said they enjoyed listening to Astin speak at the event beforehand. Astin answered audience questions and shared words of advice with the crowd, including, “People will root for anyone who shows them their heart.” Jennifer said that Annie, who wants to be an actress and author, cried the entire time.
“It was neat to hear everything he had to say, and we learned a lot about him we didn’t know, didn’t we?” she asked.
Saluki Con 2025 took place Feb. 15 and 16. As a celebration of science, technology, arts, humanities and comics, the event brought together an array of fans, many of whom mentioned how welcoming the environment was.
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Tina Kitchell drove around two hours from Roxana, Illinois to attend the convention. She brought a stuffed animal along — a red ruffed lemur she calls Reggie — which is a tradition she said she started as a joke around five years ago. Since then, she’s been to around 100 comic cons, which she loves because “people don’t judge here,” she said.
“I’m 45 years old with a stuffed animal. I mean if people are gonna judge, that would be something to judge about,” she said. “But instead everybody wants to have fun. Everybody will take the idea of like what I do with Reggie and they go with it, and they just love it, and it’s something positive. And there’s a lot of positive things out here. And on top of that, you have all these great people, all the great vendors and all the different things that everybody sells. You may not even find some of this stuff anywhere else and it’s great to come see.”
The event featured vendors, interactive panels and workshops, gaming, contests and special guests.
“Getting to meet all the great people and everything makes it worth it,” Kitchell said. “And then on top of that, you get to meet some famous people that you’d never meet anywhere else either.”
Among the special guests were Dan Payne and E.G. Daily, both of whom spoke with the Daily Egyptian. Payne is an actor who has starred in several Hallmark films and is also known for his roles in “Watchmen,” “Battlestar Galactica” and “Descendants.” Daily is an actress and singer commonly known for voicing Tommy in “Rugrats” and Buttercup in “Powerpuff Girls.”
Payne said networking was part of what brought him to Saluki Con. Mandi Jourdan, the Saluki Con committee’s cosplay contest organizer, is a friend he met a long time ago at a convention in Chicago, he said.
“Just by relationship, I got to come and hang out here this time. So (it’s) kind of just the cool part of making connections through conventions and work,” Payne said.
To Payne, human connection alone is part of what makes conventions so special. “I feel like that’s the one thing that, for the most part, Covid took away. Even in our industry, our auditions aren’t even in person anymore,” he said. “You send tapes. You miss that human element. So for me, this specifically, conventions, are a great place for people to come and be able to express themselves however they want, free of judgement. You can be vulnerably yourself here and enjoy it. And then it’s also a really cool way for people to just meet and connect…So it’s kind of cool that just by that alone, you just make friendships and relationships over shared interests and similar likes.”
He encourages people to start attending conventions so that they can build these relationships.
“Connection is a fuel for life,” he said. “And I think the truest connection you get is in person. So yeah, come on. There’s only so much you can do through a screen or through digital, and there’s nothing that can replace eye contact and being in front of somebody. So get out and connect.”
Daily said the people she came across at Saluki Con were “awfully sweet” and “accommodating.” Like Payne, she said her favorite part about attending conventions is getting to meet new people.
“It’s just very sweet to see the reactions from people and just to know people from somewhere else, their world,” she said.
Daily also spoke with the Daily Egyptian about the upcoming Season 3 of the “Rugrats” reboot. “It was really exciting to do, and to see the Rugrats in CGI is really cool,” she said. “It’s really remarkable, the animation, to go from the way it was to now is pretty awesome.”
At Saluki Con, Daily spent some time walking around the con floor and checking out “a lot of cool vendors.”
“I like to see the artists that are doing their own little beautiful work,” she said. “There’s always something beautiful to look at.”
The convention hosted over 50 vendors, including Neon Tiger Tattoo, a Carbondale tattoo shop. The shop offered piercings and tattoos for those ages 18 and up at the event. Shawny Rotten, who has been a tattoo artist for seven years, said it was the first time a tattoo shop was featured at Saluki Con.
“I’m just really appreciative that we got to be here and do this,” he said. “Neon Tiger is a new tattoo shop so it’s cool to get our name out there and I’m really excited to come back next year.”
To Rotten, tattoos are an unwavering form of self-expression, which was a common theme throughout the weekend.
“I think it’s cool ‘cause you can get whatever you want and be whatever you want, and it’s an extension of yourself. It makes you feel pretty or it makes you feel tough, you know? You can be whatever you want to be and no one can take your tattoo from you, so I like that a lot,” he said.
On Sunday afternoon, a cosplay contest was held in the Student Center Auditorium. The contest spanned over three hours, with six separate categories being judged: children, teens, adults, groups, best homemade and judges’ choice. Rheanon Bartley and Riley D., who preferred not to give their last name, won the group contest with costumes of Gabriel and Lucifer from the Bible made almost entirely out of foam.
“It’s just fun to dress up,” Bartley said. “It’s just a nice little expression of art.”
Regarding the convention, Riley D. said, “I like meeting up with my friends and just costuming together and taking a look and seeing what all the local artists and stuff are selling around, because I like supporting small businesses, that kind of thing.”
The cosplay contest had four judges. Jourdan, the contest organizer who is also an award-winning cosplayer known on social media as MadamJigsaw, was the head judge. The remaining judges were Josh Pay, a panelist at the con and owner of BPSFX, a cosplay business; Marz Stardust, an award-winning cosplayer; and Taylor René, a cosplayer and makeup artist known online as Nerdypinupgirl.
René said she thought the cosplay contest was fantastic, and Stardust said everyone did amazing. Both judges said they agreed there were a lot of hard choices to make.
“I’ve loved seeing everyone come together, whether it’s (the costume) bought or it’s handmade, like everyone puts their looks together amazingly, and I just love it so much,” Stardust said. The event also taught her new techniques for her own cosplays, she said.
René said, “There’s so much inspiration around here, and there’s so many different renditions and versions of your favorite characters that you wouldn’t even think of, but it’s also, again, a way for them to kind of relate to those characters, and it’s interesting to see people’s perspectives on it.”
For those who may be worried about participating in a comic con or cosplay contest, René encourages people to just be themselves.
“Like, if you think you’re gonna feel like a weirdo, everyone here is a weirdo, and we embrace it, and we love it,” she said. “That’s the whole thing about cosplays. Like, you see a lot of hate online, but when you actually go to conventions, you’ll be more likely to find a community than you would trolls. So don’t be scared. Go out, make some friends, play dress up. It’s a lot more fun with adult money.”
News editor Carly Gist can be reached at cgist@dailyegyptian.com. To stay up to date on all your southern Illinois news, be sure to follow The Daily Egyptian on Facebook and on X @dailyegyptian.
Editors note: This story has been updated to include new information about the cosplay contest and correct the misspelling of contest judge Taylor René’s last name.
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