Baltimore Comic Con 2015

A comic con from a fans point a view. 

I love comic books. My husband loves comic books. My brother loves comic books and some of our friends love comic books. The rest of our friends just roll their eyes and chuckle at us.  My husband and I decided that we were going to go down to the Baltimore Comic Con with a group of friends. Prepping the night before, we pulled out all the comics and graphic novels that we thought would be really cool to have signed.  Then we debated on what we were going to wear. My husband had two new tee shirts that were contenders.  Should we go with Free Hugs with Leatherface or Welcome to Mordor. Welcome to Mordor for the win.

Then in the morning we double checked to make sure we didn’t forget anything while listening to Wordburgler rap about comics and drink coffee. The trip down to Baltimore was not that bad. I love looking at every one that dressed up. It is fun and there are all sorts of extremes in costumes. I thought I would join in the dressing up in a small scale and had a Black Widow dress and some knee high boots on. If I were to ever to dress up as Black Widow again, I would forgo the boots and wear something more sensible.  There is a price for cute boots and I am not entirely sure it was worth it. 

We barely go through the doors and make our way into the center to try and get out of the fray and I spot Jeremy Bastian at a table and there isn’t a line yet.  He wrote and illustrated Cursed Pirate Girl, which is one of most beautiful books I own. I could sit there and look at the art for hours. It is incredibly and intensely detailed. I had hoped to have my booked signed, but he did one better and drew a picture that you wouldn’t know wasn’t there originally and signed it. Inside I was squealing while I stood there in awe. 

Not to long after we wandered over to Justin Jordan’s table. Justin is a great guy and signed everything that was shoved in front of him while we chatted about cats. I don’t know if that makes him sound like a crazy cat man or me a crazy cat lady.  Maybe a little of both. Either way it was great to see him and I regret not bringing Tom Waits a cat toy. 

It takes a special sort of person to come up with God Hates Astronauts, and Ryan Browne completely blew me away. I could not stop laughing as he and my husband traded compliments with each other as he drew hats and signed almost a dozen issues and then drew a picture inside of a graphic novel.  It shouldn’t  have surprised me that he was a cool guy with a neato personality  considering the number of mind bending things that go on in his comic, but it did. I know it was one of the highlights of the entire convention for my husband.

My brother is a big fan of Ben Templesmith. I will be honest, I haven’t read a single thing by him yet, but I do have all of my brothers Wormwood issues, so that is an easy remedy. Trying to be the good sister, I brought some issues to be signed. Ben was a striking figure dapperly dressed in black and oozes dark comedy that had me trying to unsee the loincloth man walking around the convention. The unfiltered commentary left me chuckling. It was only hours later that I wished I could  have gotten my brain moving to get something commissioned while I was there and picked up his SquidGirls. I regret that my brain was on overload. 

In between getting issues signed there were boxes to go through and vendors to visit. There is something for everyone there. I wish I had more money or at least had the ability to be more whimsical financially, because if I had that ability I would buy at least one of those mystery boxes and then perhaps a game or two at some of the tables and have some stuff commissioned. Despite my non ability to be whimsical, I think we still did pretty good on adding to our growing comic collection. I am looking forward to next trying to attend next year and am completely thankful to the artists and creators that gave us the time of day.