So, here I am to finally speak of my 3 days at Wizard World Chicago, although it is a little later than I was hoping. Damn that chronic case of laziness.
Overall, this years convention was kind of a letdown. They did some stuff quite stupidly, and the convention very much paid for it. First off was moving it forward almost 2 months. This move placed it right smack between two other conventions, and many creators decided to skip Chicago for the other ones. Also, placing it before San Diego caused us to get some pretty crap exclusives. The one really nice thing was not nearly as big a crowd showed up. I was actually able to walk pretty quickly on Saturday! The downside of this was waaaaaaaay fewer costumes to look at.
Shopping wasn’t nearly as nice this year, because there weren’t nearly as many dollar bins, or super great deals as there was last year. I still managed to get a huge chunk of Savage Dragon related comics, and am now damn close to finishing my collection. Also got snazzy Mr. Glum statue that was an exclusive for the NY Comic Con, I believe. Once again, I unfortunately didn’t get the chance to buy all sorts of random books in artist’s alley. This is the second year in a row I ran into that problem.
I was able to get most of the stuff I took signed though, and was able to meet several cool folks. Patrick Gleason, Will Pfeiffer, Tony Daniel, Ethan Van Sciver, Jim Valentino, Erik Larsen, David Petersen, Don Kramer, Ande Parks, Phil Hester(who was nice enough to sign my stuff while eating ice cream), Andy Parks, Chuck Dixon(totally wussed out when asking him about the DC situation), Freddie Williams III, and I know I’m forgetting a couple folks. I’m also happy to report that all the artists and writers I was able to meet were very nice folks. A few guys who were incredibly nice and really kind of stood out were Franchesco!, Chris Mitten, and Jason Latour. All three were just really outgoing, but outgoing without being forceful, which is something that most people have trouble doing. The only bad person experience happened to a friend of mine. After being told by a certain artist that he wasn’t going to sign anything at that moment, because he was signing at another booth soon(which was understandable), said artist signed stuff for several other people, at the same booth, not 30 seconds later. So, yeah, that was a pretty shitty thing.
This year I also went to my first panel! The Max Brooks Ultimate Zombie Survival Guide panel, which was incredibly awesome, but unfortunately only an hour long. I like to compare it to a Kevin Smith Q&A, but about zombies. Funny story about the line though. His panel was beginning at the same time as the DC Universe panel, so there was a maaaaassive line for the DC panel, and a couple of smaller lines for the Max Brooks panel. Then when the panel started letting people in… it appeared that about half the people in line for the DC one jumped ship into our line, and the room was fucking packed. I’m thinking they had to turn some people away. This wasn’t the only funny Max Brooks line either. When I stopped by his booth on Friday, for his first signing, I looked back and his line was actually longer than the Warren Ellis line on the other side of the Avatar booth. So all-in-all, Max Brooks pwn’d that convention.
Overall, I actually found myself getting kinda bored. I left early both Friday and Saturday, and was really just sort of following my friend for most of Sunday. The retailer section was also larger than last year… which is why it was incredibly annoying that we couldn’t find many great deals. It must have been a “We’re gonna bend you over,” theme for the retailers this year.
And in closing, Chicago style stuffed pizza rocks. Very much.