Last Two Comic Book Conventions of the Year

Star Wars Days Table for Kids

 I’ve had to slow down on the number of comic book conventions I attended in this last year. I work a regular day job Monday through Friday with a long commute. And as much fun as comic book conventions are, they are work too and they often involve travel time. I need my weekends to catch up on house cleaning and errand running and sometimes hiding in a corner with a cat on my lap, a cup of coffee at my elbow, and a book in my hands. So sometimes I’ll tell my husband to go on without me and have lots of fun. Usually, our son will go with him when given a choice. I can blame him for picking to get up early and work a table over whatever chores he knows I’ll lay on him if he stays.

 

My son with his newly purchased headband

I did go to the last two of the year though. The first one, Star Wars Days, is organized and run by a local Boy Scout Troop. This particular Boy Scout Troop petitioned to be the 501 Troop and then contacted the 501st Legion in their area to be involved with their event. The 501st Legion is a worldwide cosplaying group dedicated to Star Wars. And the convention that the Boy Scout Troop puts on is amazing. They have standees of many characters for photo ops. There are droids zipping around. The 501^st Legion is there in full get up. And they have a Jedi training center in the gym. The young men are running around the whole weekend taking food orders from the vendors, providing directions, and helping out with every little task that they can. It's so much fun.

We go as part of the Artway Alliance team. At the con, we provide classes throughout the weekend that kids can attend. My husband did a class on drawing aliens. Since this wasn’t a regular table gig and space was limited, I found an out of the way place and worked on edits and writing in between a little Christmas shopping with the vendors and catching up with some friends that I haven’t seen in a while. My husband has been with Artway Alliance for about four years now. They provide afterschool artistic activities and classes to local schools as well as attending cons like this all over the place.

Holiday Cosplayers

The second con was the Richmond Comicon at the Raceway. Our very first comic book convention as vendors was this con. Over the years the people there have become family. My son is one of their volunteers. We almost always have our podcast Role With Us as one of the panels where we run a live game. My husband either has a table where he sells his artwork or run’s a kid’s section where kids can come and sit and color or draw for a bit. Sometimes he’ll have classes, sometimes he’ll do commissions or both. They had a scavenger hunt for the kiddies and we handed out prizes. In addition to the podcast panel, Gary Cohn asked me to be on a panel with him Robert Sodaro, James Noll, Ray Felix, and Chris Otto on Self-Publishing.

Despite the snow and the fears that so many in this area seem to have when it comes to that stuff we had pretty good attendance. And the afterparty was so much fun. It was neat to see holiday themed costumes. So until 2018. I’m conned out. LOL.

Coming soon. Wow, cover art. The most amazing cover art for A Little Side of Geek.