This past Saturday, some friends and I attended the (Wizard World) Chicago Comic Con. Now while it is true that the convention lacked the presence of big publishers DC, Marvel, Image and Dark Horse, (with their booth space taken up instead by washed-up wrestlers and has-been celebrities from the 70s & 80s) I am not entirely sure that that was a bad thing.

The rest of the convention floor was business as usual. All the usual comic and toy dealers appeared to be there, in pretty much the exact same spot they always are. And despite not being filled to capacity (i.e. there were empty tables), the Artist Alley appeared to be thriving in the absence of the big publishers. We certainly had our best time of the day wandering the tables, my friend buying a crap load of original art prints. I wish I had been working on something new this year and been able to afford a table of my own. Maybe next year (or the C2E2 in April).

In addition to a couple of the prints my buddy got me, I picked up some comic strip art boards for a very very good price at the Blick Art Materials booth. This is what prompted me to start posting again early, back to a Mon-Weds-Fri schedule. I also chatted briefly with David Willis and met a few of the guys from Ape Entertainment. I had a nice talk with Matt Anderson who is the writer of White Picket Fences, a comic book I adapted to the iPhone for iVerse Media. He ended up giving me free copies of his comic, and, quid pro quo, I gave him copies of the Grimstone series.

All in all, not a bad day. Now if only I had had the money for those vintage Black Hole action figures from Mego…

This entry was posted on Monday, August 10, 2009 at 3:46 pm and is filed under News & Updates. 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.