Wednesday Comments – The Baltimore Comic Con Afterglow

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The Baltimore Comic Con has come and gone but I’ve got plenty of things left to remind me of the weekend.

The Soreness in My Body – I grabbed a ton of comics. On the first day I managed to snag a few hardcovers at reasonable prices and some trades too. I got the first Secret Society of Super-Villains hardcover as well as a hardcover that collected Neal Adam’s work in the DCU. I also got The Creeper by Ditko, which was a real coup.

And the second day of the con was devoted to issues and runs, which was pretty successful as well. I found some issues I’d been looking for forever, like Valor #14 & 16. Now I’ve got a complete run of that Eclipso: The Darkness Within spinoff. I’m so pumped about that. Like, that one find made the con for me.

I was also impressed that I came up on some solid Milestone purchases. I’m very close to having a full run on Hardware and I’ve made some serious headway in my collecting of both Icon and Static. I’ll be very excited when I get a full run of Milestone comics and I’m almost there.

On Sunday I managed to scrounge up a nearly complete run of Darkstars, literally in a couple of hours. And Darkstars wasn’t even really on my Con radar, until suddenly it was.

The Sadness in My Heart – I was totally bummed that for the second straight year DC didn’t have a booth at the Con. That bums me out for a couple of reasons.

Firstly; I love swag. I’m not lying when I say that I’ve got posters for Final Crisis from my first year being back in Baltimore and attending the con. I’ve got the poster version of the cover to the final issue of Planetary. I’ve got the pins and the fake tattoos that they handed out the first two years I was back in town. I’ve got the promo books too.

Hitting the DC table was my first stop every Con but lately I’ve just been looking at the list of companies in attendance to see if DC even showed up and the last two years I’ve been disappointed.

And say what you will about Ian Sattler’s annoying and abrasive personality, but when he was Story Editor at DC, there was still some sort of DC presence at the Con. This year no DC staffers or freelancers even showed up for the DC Sunday Conversation panel. It was solely a fan held and driven event.

For shame DC.

Still, I could be worse; I could be a Marvel Zombie and have to live without a Marvel presence for an even longer period of time.

The second reason is that it seemed like the perfect time to build on the momentum of the DC Comics Relaunch and they completely fumbled the ball. Instead of building buzz they got bad press.

I’m also saddened that I could get complete run of some of my favorite titles for dirt cheap. I swear I could have cobbled together a complete run of the 5YG Legion for less than a buck an issue, and I almost did it. I also saw Major Bummer and Resurrection Man runs at one vendors booth. Both were tempting enough that I seriously contemplated grabbing them up before I decided to a) share the wealth and let someone else discover them and b) spend my money on book that I just wanted, not wanted again.

All in all, it was a successful Con. The turnout was impressive and everyone was very cordial. I literally can’t wait until next year.