HeroesCon!

I am writing this immediately after returning to my house because i am still miraculously awake. very long weekend that involves a family reunion, and very little sleep. but that is a story for another time. this post is dedicated to comic books and HeroesCon!

today, leaving town at around 9:30, Kelly & I traveled to charlotte for their comic book convention. got in about 11:30, and holy hell was it huge! it was downtown in the convention center, and was a lot bigger than i thought it would be.

all the gray area was where artists, writers, and creators were at. all the white on the right were booths, most of which sold a plethora of comics, all just in boxes. thousands of issues of comics, and trade paperbacks. beyond belief for the number of issues of comics there.

there were any number of people and things that i wanted to see there, but a lot of them were gone by sunday, so we missed them, but there was no way to get there friday or saturday. regardless, it was a really fun trip and we got to see numerous things & i am really glad we were able to go. we did not wait in line to get autographs, but we saw Stan Lee, which was kinda neat. the lines were really long for him, and really expensive; not worth it for either of us. here are some of the things we saw:

jawa and stormtrooper

tusken raider

ghostbusters car outside

Lady Loki.

now, onto the more important stuff: the purchases! we might ahve gone a bit overboard on the batgirl stuff, but it is what we both wanted. :) descriptions are under each.

this is a signed drawing by mike maihack. I have had this picture on my computer as a rotating desktop background for years, and love it. couldn't pass up the chance to thank the artist, and get a physical copy. please go to his site and look around, he is really cool. cowshell.com

just a couple single issues that we got for cheap. a great issue of batgirl featuring supergirl and draculas, then a batman inc issue, and then the last stephanie brown batgirl issue because it is awesome, and was only a dollar.

a big reason we wanted to was to meet the creator of Little League Comics. this guy runs a tumblr, and makes these comics staring preschool versions of dc comic characters. it is really fun to read, and was super nice to meet him, and tell him how much we liked his work. he just does it for fun, so hearing grateful fans really is important for him. we both got a set of buttons of all the characters. i am partial to the batman and power girl. kelly's favorite is flash.

the crown jewel of the trip. Batgirl Year One. if you happened to click that link, you would see that it is not in stock on amazon. can buy from sellers for $50 used, and $100 new. these are not in print anymore, originally running in 2003. they were once collected in a trade paperback, but that is also out of print. these are clearly very hard to find, especially a complete set of all 9 issues of this mini-series. the same guy who signed the batgirl print higher up, talked to us about how he cannot find the batgirl year one anywhere, and he would trade any number of commission drawings for it. we got it for $30. it was our constant thing that we were searching for all day, and finally found it in the last table of boxes we went to. they were $4 each, but the guy gave it to us for $30 instead of $36 since it was late, and it was a full set. he clearly didn't know what he had on his hands... :D

so that was that. it was beyond fun, and i cannot wait to go to another one of these things. comics and the community is really addictive, and i want to thank bigger nerds than me on tumblr for getting me into reading comics. it is really enjoyable... now if only i could turn this into a job...