So, a bunch of us went to Wizard World Chicago, which is a comic book convention in one of the biggest cities of the Midwest (or, at least, in its suburbs). We all had fun and have fully recovered from our four day excursion. So, what did we see and do? Do tell, Anacronus, do tell.
First off, let me say that Wizard World Chicago was both bigger and smaller than the usual convention I attend. What I mean by that is while there was plenty in the way of quality, the quantity was severely restricted. Let me elaborate on that: quality-wise, there were lots of celebrities from the realms of comic books, fantasy art, television, webcomics, even pro wrestling, as well as a lot of dealers selling a plethora of items (for way too much, I might add). However, the convention was only held in four rooms - that's right, four rooms. Granted, one of the rooms was huge, but the other three were much smaller, in comparison. The other thing that was small was actual convention time. I'm used to conventions that open on Friday and close on Sunday - a continuous three day event. This convention closed every night, early, no less. I can understand the dealer room needing to close at a decent hour, but that kind of puts a damper on things when almost everything was happening in the dealer room. Just about everything was happening at the dealer room. We were kind of left entertaining ourselves almost every night. There were a couple of things to do after the dealer room closed, but those usually let out around 9 or 10 p.m., so we, more often than not, just went to bed early.
Despite this, we did get to meet some cool people. I got autographs from the stars of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (a show as old as I am). It was great talking to Gil Gerard (he's just as glib and smooth talking as he was in the show - I mean that in a good way), but I totally embarrassed myself in front of Erin Gray (my apologies, Ms. Gray, for being a socially awkward moron).
On Friday, my wife and I were dressed like Luigi and Princess Daisy. I left my felt mustache at home and one of the booths in the artist alley was giving out these paper mustaches attached to wooden tongue depressors. So I picked up one of those. When a lot of people took our pictures, they thought it was awesome when I "pulled out my mustache." I imagine that booth got a lot of attention, because of that. Also, Felicia Day told my wife that her costume was really cute. Yeah, Felicia Day, no foolin'.
My wife and I also got to meet Steve Bryant, who is the artist and creator of the comic Athena Voltaire, which the eponymous character is this pulp heroine who has amazing adventures fighting Nazis, vampires, and esoteric societies. She's a heroic woman who doesn't have to resort to the common trope of T&A, which my wife found refreshing. Steve was a really nice guy and even signed both trade paperbacks that my wife bought from him. If you like pulp action with a touch of supernatural, check out the Eisner nominated webcomic here and, if you are aching for more, go buy the graphic novel "Flight of the Falcon" and a TPB of the collected webcomics here (just scroll down to see them). Steve's also finishing a third TPB, "Athena Voltaire and the Volcano Goddess," which, hopefully, will be coming out soon.
My wife and her friends also spent a lot of time (and money) at the Interrobang Studios booth. She bought some art cards with the characters from the old Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. The group also commissioned four drawings from them. Needless to say, I think they made some new friends.
On top of the celebrity autographs, dealer tables, and artist's alley, the main room had a gaming area. Gaming storefront Troll & Toad was running it and it featured a couple of games, such as the Castle Ravenloft board game for D&D, the Back to the Future card game (I talked about that one, before), and this interesting board game called Chaostle.
The other thing worthy of mention was this movie called Unicorn City, which was shown three out of the four days of the convention (it was one of the very few things to do during the convention at night). It's about this guy who creates a sort of fantasy-rpg-LARP-camp-thing in order to get a job with an rpg publisher. It's an extremely funny movie. While a lot of its humor is based on role-playing games, I think anyone would get a lot of laughs out of this movie. It actually won top prize at this year's Gen Con film festival. Check out their website, like them on Facebook, do whatever it takes to make this move available in your town, then go see it.
So, that's Wizard World Chicago, in a nutshell. We had fun, but I don't know if we would go back next year. Surprisingly, we're all talking about going back to Anime Iowa next year. That's not exactly set in stone, but we'd have to have a real good reason to go back to Chicago for next year's con.
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