Wizard World/Comic Con 2010

Ok, I'm late on this one, the convention was last month. But I have a one year old and a full time job and well... excuses abound.

Anyway, I found it funny this year not seeing it called Wizard World. Instead we're now to refer to it as Comic Con again. Wizard runs it though.

I also missed the chalk artist guy. He always does amazing work and if he was there he certainly didn't have a location where I could find him. Where are you chalk artists guy?

Even with calling the convention Comic Con it felt less comic book focused than in years past. In fact it feels less like a comic convention each year and more like a pop culture convention. Now, I don't mind pop culture conventions. I got to see Michael Trucco of BSG up close and he IS just as good looking in person as he was on the show. But let's not call it a comic book convention if the only thing representing comic books is a handful of dealers. Even the panels were primarily meet and greets with actors and screenings of upcoming shows, not the discussions of comic books that they've had in years past. Once again this year Marvel and DC were not present either. I don't mind seeing small publishers at conventions, I like to see them out promoting themselves. But even those were few and far between - comic creator-dom was largely represented by artist alley where individuals were out to promote themselves regardless of publisher. Again a good thing! However artist alley seemed like it was an after thought this year for the convention except for the occasional appearance of a bigger name artist who would have a line.

Sure, there were some fun comic book character costumes. We always get a kick out of those. But even those, at least on Saturday, seemed fewer in number. More costumed people that I didn't recognize who they were than in years past, a lot of them looking rather scary.

These are really just observations. I still enjoyed the convention, but would really like to see something more comic book focused I'm going to check out C2E2 next year - I've heard good things about that. But there was one BIG thing that REALLY ticked me off about the convention and I know other people found it alloying to - the presence of Rod Blagojevich, former Chicago governor outed due to political corruption. Sure, he's from Chicago and the convention was in the Chicagoland area. But why do we need to promote this guy? Who made the decision to give celebrity status to a guy who gives politicians, and heck even people, a bad name? I'm embarrassed at having attended an event that was publicized in local media not as a great place to find out about comic books and have fun, but the place where people could pay to have a picture and/or autograph with a political criminal.

(Thanks Phil, for this pic that summarizes my opinion soooo well!)