Awesome(?) Con
In which I kick off this year's con season
Last weekend I pulled on my Doctor Strange t-shirt, put on a (surgical) mask, and joined the throngs at DC’s Awesome Con, which bills itself as a “pop culture convention” celebrating “geek culture.” The same Saturday was also packet pickup for the Cherry Blossom Ten-Miler, so the streets of downtown D.C. were a delightful medley of runners and Jedi Knights.
We’re maybe 10 years out from the halcyon days of conventions, where shows like The Walking Dead commanded dedicated weekends (“Walker Stalker Con”). The convention craze led to a proliferation of cons and a few amusing stories about failed events leaving jilted fans in the lurch. Now, the geek-con industry is consolidating, and one obvious way to create efficiencies is to merge separate geek events into a single dork-stravaganza: see New York Comic Con’s 2012 merge with the New York Anime Festival.
Awesome Con is all that, but on a smaller scale. There are the typical things you’d expect at a comic convention: an artists’ alley where artists sell prints, commissions, and the like; vendors hawking plastic weaponry for the cosplaying crowd; and the Misty Mountain Gaming people who diligently serve the market for $100 sets of dice. A guy meandered around the show floor steering a life-size warbling R2-D2 replica. The Royal Manticoran Navy was recruiting, and Joe Pantoliano signed autographs.
“Pop culture” is a big tent that apparently includes a science demonstration stage, the Defenders of Wildlife, and Harvard Medical School’s Personal Genetics Education and Dialogue. Who am I to criticize? The con is in the business of selling table space; why should I care who they sell the tables to? I’d just prefer that they bring in a few more comic vendors.
My con plan was: arrive early on Saturday, beeline for artists to see who had original art, and if I had spare time after blowing my art budget, spend the rest of the day sifting through comic vendors’ wares. In the days leading to the con, I fantasized about finally picking up the last issue of Helen of Windhorn, tracking down trades of Kurt Busiek’s glorious run on Dark Horse’s Conan, or discovering obscure indie titles.
Boy, did I have spare time. Unfortunately, only about five artists brought Itoya portfolios of their original art. I spent about an hour visiting each of them, paging through the art, and enjoying a few longer conversations with Gavin Guidry and Rich Woodall about “the business” and life as a comic artist (admittedly, more time for leisurely chit chat is probably an upside of a smaller con). None of the published art fit well within my collecting focus, so I didn’t pull the trigger on any pages, although I came close on a few pieces by Guidry and Alessandro Vitti’s gorgeous Red Lanterns and Swamp Thing work. I did commission a Guidry sketch of Kyle Rayner, and picked up a few books from Rich Woodall - Sgt. Werewolf and The Bloody Ring of Dracula, stay tuned for his upcoming Space Frankenstein is Angry! Woodall also showed me some pages from Space Frankenstein (awesome, very Wally Wood-inspired), and, because he did the graphic design for the con, he signed my convention badge!
After visiting with the artists I roamed the show floor searching for comic book vendors, but found very few. Those I found had some product, but not the boxes upon boxes of hidden treasure that I expected. I picked up (half-priced!) trade paperbacks of The Strange Talent of Luther Strode and Rogue Trooper: Last Man Standing. Luther Strode is an early entry in the career of white-hot artist Tradd Moore and Rogue Trooper is a reboot of a 2000 AD character that, unfortunately, failed to attract much attention and didn’t proceed much beyond the first four issues (but there’s an upcoming movie!). Haven’t read Luther yet, but the Rogue Trooper book was a delight, and I’m so glad I discovered it - that’s exactly what I wanted out of a con, and it’s too bad there weren’t more longboxes to mine for those little nuggets of gold.
All in a day’s work
Miscellany:
-Manga - Japanese animation - is firmly a part of the culture, no longer a cultural sub-component. Fans of this stuff are DEDICATED. The costumes I saw walking around were easily fifty percent manga characters. Another 40 percent were star wars characters (primarily Mandalorians or stormtroopers) with maybe ten percent American comic book characters.
-Autographs - as at many cons, for about 200 bucks, you can memorialize (with a photo or autograph) a passing interaction with a geek-lebrity while their hovering manager prays you don’t do anything weird, and then hustles you on your way. I usually do a quick walkthrough of the meet-and-greet areas to see who I can spot from afar. I saw Joe Pantoliano, mentioned above, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator Kevin Eastman, and Summer Glau (best known for portraying River Tam on Firefly). I did not see con headliner Orlando Bloom, but I can only assume that for a few brief, glorious hours we were both breathing the same air.
-IRL Lootboxes - there’s this weird product at cons where you can buy boxes full of stuff - sometimes aligned with a particular theme, e.g., Power Rangers or something - without knowing what’s in it. I can’t think of a better business model than packing a cardboard box full of $20 worth of plastic crap, slapping some popular logos on it, and then selling it for $60. Oh wait, yeah I can: taking that model online, and packing virtual boxes full of virtual crap. Nice!
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