I’ve never been to a convention of this size, and with less then a day to prepare myself, I was very over stimulated. As stated in my previous blog, I went to Chicago last weekend with the intent of attending the Flashback Weekend horror mini-con, which has become a yearly tradition. My buddy Blake, who I always drag along, isn’t a horror geek, but a comic and general pop culture geek. Neither of us was aware that Wizard World Chicago would be going on right across the street. Hell, I didn’t even know what Wizard World was.
So after a rather disappointing horror con (though I did get to meet George Romero) I attended an impromptu (to me at least) ginormous comic con. Walking onto the convention floor was like walking into another world. People dressed like cartoon characters, multimedia presentations, and collector’s items for everyone. This is a world were the handicapped hold power over the bi-pedal by parking their fat ass wheel chairs in from of the discount comic boxes (all five of them), and calmly reading before buying. This is a world where an obese grown man can admit his love for Sailor Moon, and dress as a character without risk of injury.
The floor was so big. I’m not big on autographs, but Bruce Timm is one of the people on my short list of celebrities I want to meet, so after a little browsing I went looking for the Batman: Gotham Knights booth. I never figured out where it was. Every time I got close to someone that appeared to be “in charge” my eyes met with some kind of amazing sale that I couldn’t pass up. Being a Sunday, I guess most of the sellers didn’t want to take too much product back home with them, so just about everything was on sale. I’ve only recently (in the past three years, thanks to Blake) begun reading comics again after a decade’s long time off, so I’m only really interested in TPBs and graphic novels. Most tables had their TBP collections set at either 50% off or $5 a piece. I was conservative, but still came home with The Ultimates 2, and the last two New X-Men books, for a grand total of about $22.
Then I found a booth with oodles of Asian media, mostly on Hong Kong DVDs. On the floor was a series of boxes marked “2 for $10”. I dug through everything and came up with a stack of stuff that I had to slowly talk myself out of. I ended up only taking Ishii’s Blind Beast Vs. Killer Dwarf and the entire run of Last Exile, the later of which I remember liking, but am perfectly willing to give to a friend at that price. Then I found an HK bootleg of Mother of Tears. Why the Hell didn’t anyone at Flashback Weekend have this?
So it was a good day, a better day then Flashback. I think I may come back next year.