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I attended Wizard World Chicago, yesterday. It was rather enjoyable. Wizards is actually a comic convention, but there’s so much crossover with comics and other scenes that it ends up being kind of a pop-culture mecca.
It’s way fun.
To give you an idea what it’s like to be there, here’s a short 2 meg WMV I took from the show floor.
Basically the show consisted of racks and stalls and booths of comics, figures, toys, clothing, posters, you name it. There were panel discussions from industry people, but I didn’t attend any of those. Mainly I came for the spectacle, and in the hopes of catching a sight of the elusive Furry.
The latter was not to be, alas. I did, however, see some really awesome non-animal costumes from series such as Final Fantasy and Star Wars and the Marvel Universe. There were a buttload of storm troopers, actually. So many that it kind of gave the impression that they were walking around on patrol, much like security. Kinda cool.
I would say there were literally hundreds of areas that one could find old and new issues of just about any popular series of comic. Lots of stalls with lots of cardboard boxes containing any book you could imagine, many for a dollar or less. For a comic neophyte such as myself, it was a little overwhelming. I mainly viewed the spectacle and checked out the expensive toys and lithographs.
As I’m not so much into comics, the main thing I was looking to find, in fact, were figurines of Motoko from Ghost in the Shell. Fortune smiled upon me and I was able to locate a few — but now I’m not sure if Motoko is too risque to take into the office, what with the sort of bikini thermoptic camo thing she’s wearing. We’ll see.
When you get right down to it, the goal of the show is really half for the enthusiast to celebrate his enthusiasm, meet artists and creators, and fill out his collection. The other half is pure merchandising. This is typified in one toy I saw on sale that was called “Spider Hulk”. It was a boxed toy of Spiderman as The Incredible Hulk. I talked with a couple people, and as far as we could determine, that character does not exist. So, half the show’s point is purely for coming up with ideas for new junk and selling that junk to people who’ll buy it just cause it’s a tie-in to something they like.
The JXXLA
But even given that, the fact that you can locate hard-to-find curiosities such as pulp novels from the 40′s and Japanese action figures makes the show not a total font of commercial marketing evil. My feeling is (and granted this is the one and only convention of the type I’ve been to) that the scene is still for the enthusiast rather than at the enthusiast.
Anyway, if you’re at all interested in sci-fi, anime, or comics, I very much recomend attending a convention. They’re truly events to witness. There wasn’t nearly the stench of BO I feared I would encounter.
Also, Kristen Bell from Veronica Mars is way cute in person.
