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Joe Quesada got me sick, I'm sure of it.
I was very glad to have a big convention come to Boston, since it's my old stomping grounds, or at least nearby, and still pretty close to where I've ended up, so it's easy for me to get to, at least compared with dropping a lot of cash to get on an airplane and go anywhere else.
This convention was filled with all the usual stuff people have come to expect from conventions. Your big booths by the big companies, except for Marvel who mostly hung out at Wizard's booth, tons of back issues and action figures for sale, and a bunch of professionals.
The only thing I found lacking was the presence of any real news. I'm thinking this is a problem of having so many Wizard World conventions. By the time you get past Chicago, and the big San Diego convention, there's just not a whole lot of big juicy revelations for the big guys to drop on us, not even with Infinite Crisis being a few weeks away by the time this convention kicked off.
Even so, the panel discussions were fun, especially DC's. They were having a lot of fun teasing the fans, and dropping hints of things to come, even if they may have not been entirely true. The energy in these panels was high, and everyone was having a blast, from fans to the pros. Marvel's weren't quite as jumping, since they didn't have an Infinite Crisis type event to tease us with, and it was pretty much the same batch of questions the fans always ask, although no one asked when we'd be seeing Maggott again this year.
While I mostly had fun, it wasn't all smooth sailing. One of the main non-press related reasons I was going to this convention was to pick up a convention exclusive Dark Phoenix HeroClix figure. Once I finally reached the HeroClix booth, after waiting in line, I handed over my press badge so it could be hole-punched, so I could only buy one, and instead of punching it, the guy just kind of looked at it with a rather befuddled look on his face, and asked me what that was. I explained to him that it was my press pass, and he continued to look at it confusedly, and called out to the person running the booth, who told him they couldn't punch it, so they couldn't sell me one. But wait, there's more. As my badge was handed back to me, they told me to go and shell out 20 more dollars to buy a 'real ticket' and get a badge they could punch. I was too dumbfounded by them doing all this to someone who just said they were a member of the press, that I wandered off in a stunned silence. This left a very bad taste in my mind for WizKids, and I wanted to share with everyone the convention experience they're spreading.
On the upside, I did meet many people from the Legion World message boards, and had a brief, but fun time hanging out with them, before we scattered our seperate ways. Hopefully next year, I can plan things out a little better.
Greg Rucka did a Wizard School panel of his own, about how to write, which was quite informative for nascent writers, with such usual information, but often overlooked by people, as the classic 'write what you know', and that the best way to learn how to write is to do a lot of reading, and a lot of writing. Mixed in with these tidbits, was a lot of fun stories. Greg Rucka is a great speaker, and while he may say he tends to ramble on, I certainly didn't mind, as he made that rambling fun, and entertaining.
The other thing missing, was an almost complete lack of people dressed in costume. We've all see the pictures from other conventions, of tons of people dressed up and wandering the con. I think I saw about four people, the entire time. Aside from Stormtroopers, that is, but they're ubiquitous, even here. I suspect that part of it was this big weekend long convention thing is new to a lot of people there, and didn't know quite what to expect, as well as a lack of any sort of costume competition, like those found in Chicago and Atlanta's DragonCon.
I also think the newness of the convention may have been the cause of the lack of news, and the size. Compared to other conventions, this one was rather limited in scope, and while the panels were pretty packed for me, schedulewise, there didn't really seem to be a whole lot to actually do around the con. Being a first convention in the area, I don't expect it to be perfect, and hope things can only grow from here, and become a little smoother in the future.
And in the future, maybe Joe Quesada won't bring a nasty cold and congestion to the con and spread it to the fans!
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