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Wizard
World East: Convention Review
Click
here for pics of Wizard
World East
Rating:
5  bananas
The
Greatest Show on Earth!
As the
months roll by the hardcore comic fans eagerly await the late
spring and summer seasons because it's that magical time of
the year. School starts to let out, baseball season is in
full swing, and the major comic book conventions start taking
place across the country. The second annual Wizard
World East convention took place in Philadelphia, PA (otherwise
known as Philly Con) on May 29th - June 1st and none other
than yours truly was in attendance to meet some creators,
buy some books, and get some info to relay back to you all
at home. So without further delay, here's the scoop:
I've got
to hand it to the folks at Wizard, I may not be too big into
their publications anymore but boy o boy do they know how
to put on a show. Philly Con is the biggest convention on
the northeast (the next closest thing for people living in
the NY tri-state area or New England is in either Baltimore,
Chicago, or Charlotte) and it attracted fans of all genres
for miles around. I met dealers from Canada and fans from
North Carolina and Ohio. The Convention Center is located
close to the airport and in the center of town near many hotels
and shopping outlets, which makes for a lot of fun when the
con closes as well as a high convenience factor when it's
time to leave.
I was
only there for the first two days but it was more than enough
(my wallet can only handle so much). The lines started forming
early each day for admittance to the show floor. I was in
line for over an hour on Friday, but persistence paid off
as I was about the 10th person let in when Wizard President
Gareb Shamus got on a blowhorn and sounded the call that gave
way to a stampede of frenzied fanboys and fangirls rushing
on to the showroom.
The floor
was well laid out with the company booths coming first followed
by the dealers and eventually "Artist's Alley." Marvel's booth
was more like long line at Burger King, where the only thing
to do was wait in line to meet whatever creators were there
at any given time or to get your portfolio reviewed by a comic
pro. The DC and Crossgen booths were fantastic. Crossgen has
their layout down to a science. They had 4-5 lines going for
creators and tables for items like statues and their comics
on CD structured so that nobody was in each other's way and
you could still walk right through it. Trying to get in and
out of the DC area could be hazardous, as everyone was bumping
into each other.
The guest
list was quite long, and I'm not going to repeat it here,
but I'll give you a few highlights. Guest of honor Alex Ross
was extremely polite and signed for hours on end every day.
The longest line I waited in was for Smallville actress Allison
Mack (Chloe Sullivan) who was extremely chipper and really
seemed to be enjoying herself. I would liked to have talked
with her more, but after waiting almost 2 hours there were
still 100+ people behind me. Jim Lee was a great guy if you
could manage to squeak into one of his lines. He was easily
the most sought after person at the con so I was glad that
I got to meet him on Friday when the attendance was minimal.
A few other people I met were: Jim Krueger, Angel Medina,
Bill Willingham, Peter David, Brian Pulido, Butch Guice, Rick
Leonardi, Sean McKeever, Sean Chen, Chris Claremont, Robert
Rodi, the Devil's Due crew, John Cassaday, Geoff Johns, Billy
Tucci, Neil Vokes, Mark Silvestri, and Bill Rienhold.
Every
creator was nice and answered as many questions as they could.
The independent artists, as always, were more than willing
to share whatever information they had about their books to
those who were wiling to listen. My indy picks for the con
would have to be Rummblestrips
by Joanne Ellen Munch, Finder
by Carla Speed McNeil, and Evenfall
by Pete Stathis.
Now you
didn't think I'd travel 800 miles to not buy anything, did
ya? Any comic you could possibly have wanted was there for
the buying. My key purchases were the last few issues I needed
to complete my Daredevil run and 6 more issues of Amazing
Spider-Man that brings my need count down to 13. I also closed
out my Marvel Spotlight and Namor: Sub Mariner runs and picked
up a bunch of old random books. Lately I've been into anything
drawn by the late, great L.B.
Cole so I grabbed a few old romance comics he did. And
to round out my spending I even grabbed 3 anime flicks from
Manga Entertainment:
R.O.D., Perfect Blue, and Macross Plus: The Movie (Director's
Cut). I've only watched R.O.D. so far, but it was great! I
was tempted to buy Captain America's shield, Wolverine's glove-claws,
or Elektra's sai's but I didn't think they'd let me back on
the plane with them, so I passed.
Just so
you know, comics weren't the only draw to this show. The Magic
gaming area was a hotbed of activity and the fans for Mech
Wars were an intense crowd. Providing even more entertainment
were skateboarders doing tricks in an area of the main showroom
and there was even Kaiju
Big Battel matches for the fans (Kaiju is where people
dress up in monster costumes and wrestle - it's pretty funny).
A show just wouldn't have been complete without at least a
few Star Wars actors, who were the only people charging extra
for signings. And for you WWE fans Steve Austin and Virgil
were there for signings too.
The only
panel I attended was Billy Tucci's panel about the making
of his movie, "Some Trouble of a SeRRious Nature" which was
pretty interesting - and it was nice to just sit down for
that hour. I would have liked to attend the Q&A with Kevin
Smith, but it would have taken up over 2 hours on con time
and was anticipated as such a high attraction that you had
to get a separate (free) ticket just to get in the room. I
passed on other sessions like the X-Men or Batman panels because
I knew I'd get the scoop from those sessions on-line later.
If many
of you have been reading the comic news sites lately I'm sure
you've heard all the good gossip already, but here are a few
other things that haven't been getting mentioned too often
yet. Arkham Asylum and Gotham Adventures writer Dan Slott
told me that they are going to be bringing in a new character
to the animated DC universe that has never been mentioned
before that will be a new reoccurring character similar to
what Turk was to the old Miller Daredevil issues (for those
of you who want to know who it is, drop me an e-mail so I
don't ruin it for everyone here). In mid-August look out for
Crossgen to have their comics on DVD at your local toy store.
For $8 you'll get around 10 issues with trailers for other
DVD's. Hopefully they will throw the CGI cartoon of Chimera
on those DVD's too, which was just jaw dropping.
I was
glad to see a wide variety of people in attendance too. Right
up front waiting to get in line with me was a 65-year-old
woman who was by herself and looking for some back issues.
How cool is that? There were some kids, but not nearly that
many.
Overall
I had an excellent time and for those of you looking for a
good con to go to I strongly recommend that you save your
pennies and head to Philly!
Jamie
Tarquini is a collect-aholic that will stop at nothing. Visit
his website at http://www.pmpknface.com
or drop him an email at: pmpknface@hotmail.com
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