C2E2: The Sketches - Agent Coulson by Gabriel Hardman

C2E2: The Sketches - ROM by Skottie Young

C2E2: The Sketches - Skinner Sweet by Sean Murphy

C2E2: What It's All About

C2E2 2012 was the best con experience I’ve had. Period. It was a perfect mix of comics and pop culture goodness, and good friends.

We’d originally planned to stay at the Omni because I have a bunch of free nights saved up from all the travel I do for work, but at the last minute (as in, the day before the con!) we decided to opt for convenience over saving a buck and were able to sneak into the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place. And it was the best decision we could’ve made. Being situated at the hotel attached to the convention center is brilliant, especially when travelling with a kid and when you’re bringing along some hardcovers for your favorite creators to sign. The ability to quickly run back to the room to drop off a weighty omnibus or have some quiet mid-day downtime is invaluable.

As I left Tracy and Jack at the car while I went to check in, Jack told me to get the highest floor I could so he would be able to see the city. At the front desk, I explained the kiddo’s request and he was rewarded when the clerk moved us from our 17th floor reservation to a room situated on the hotel's top-most floor: the 33rd. The city and lake views we were afforded were breathtaking: Lake Michigan, the museum campus, Soldier Field, the Chicago skyline lit up at night. Gorgeous!

I loved being on the con floor with Tracy and Jack, exploring vendor booths, discovering new artists and creators, bumping into friends and acquaintances we hadn’t seen in years and meeting up with folks we’ve only known online up to this point. The ReedPOP group does a great job putting on these shows (they’re the same folks responsible for our Star Wars Celebration V experience a couple years ago), and the venue was great. Nice wide aisles, big artists’ alley, and the one panel I attended was well organized and in a comfortable space.

Equally amazing were the after-hours: Dinner and drinks with good friends. My Chicago comics friends are the most genuine people. No pretention, just hanging out and catching up over good food, even better beer, enjoying great conversation and the love of comics that brought us together.

High-points abound, but most were intangibles. Things like sharing some beer with George, meeting and getting lost in a conversation about movies and music with Rich, running into Joe Quesada on the con floor and giving him a copy of Deus ex Comica and snapping a picture together, attending the wildly entertaining John Barrowman Q&A panel with Tracy (which was equally wildly inappropriate for Jack – thank goodness for iPad distractions), breakfast with Rick and Noelle and Alan, dinner with the Kramer’s and Seewald’s, seeing how excited Tracy was after meeting John Barrowman and telling us how she made him laugh, getting to spend some substantial time catching up with Zack, and hanging with Pat.

That’s not to say there weren’t some cool tangible takeaways from the con. I had Joe Quesada sign my “One More Day” issues and my badge, Jason Aaron signed my Ghost Rider omnibus, and Bill Sienkiewicz scribbled his signature on a couple of my original “Demon Bear Saga” issues of New Mutants. I was able to snag the last copy of Black Heart Billy that Rick Remender brought with him to the show, and pick up a couple of music-related comics (the Bandthology one-shot from my friends at King Bone Press, and the Pretentious Record Store Guy three-issue mini from Carlos Gabriel Ruiz). Zombies were ubiquitous (read: overexposed) at the show, but the only time I gave in was when Jack and I stumbled on illustrator Mike Roll’s table and couldn’t pass up Apooka (“The World’s Most Adorable Zombie”).

Luck put Mark Morales’ table next to Gabriel Hardman’s, and when I was talking with Gabriel about a commission, Jack was understandably transfixed by Mark’s work. When Jack asked Mark how much a sketch was, Mark told him it would be free for him. After some amusing negotiations between my 10-year-old and this amazing inker, they settled on a Punisher sketch. Ripped off in virtually no time at all, Jack was completely blown away by the piece and I was impressed with Mark’s generosity. I believe he knows he’s got a couple of fans for life with that gesture.

Plenty of people and events have been left off this list (Jon, Bobgar, Cam, Lawrence, the list goes on), but only because there were far too many cool people I was fortunate enough to hang with this weekend. (Not to mention all the people I missed. Yes, I mean you, Ryan.) I hope they all know how much I appreciate their friendship and camaraderie. Growing up, I had only one friend who shared my love of comics. Today, I’m fortunate to not only remain good friends with him, but to also have a wife and son and whole host of other friends who share in this remarkable geek culture.

(All photos by Adam and Tracy Besenyodi.)

C2E2: The Non-Con Report

My job regularly takes me to Chicago these days, and it just so happens that I had to be in town last week when C2E2 was scheduled. It has almost become cliché among comic book convention goers (but that doesn’t make it any less true) that the best part about “con season” is meeting in-person and getting to hang out with all our online forum friends that we only get to see at these shows. So I decided to put it to the test last week.

Many of my online comic book friends are actually local to Chicago, so I knew they’d be fired up for C2E2. I also knew a few of my out-of-town friends would be coming in town early. Knowing I wasn’t going to be able to attend the con itself because of work and travel plans, I redoubled my efforts to get out Thursday and Friday night with my comic brethren.

I had a great time out both nights with friends I had met previously, folks I had been looking forward to meeting, and people I had no idea I’d be spending time with! It was great to see Dave Mathis, Chris Neseman, and (unfortunately far too briefly) Zack Kruse Thursday night. And I finally was able to meet David Price and Jason Wood in person, and also met Will Pfeifer, Tom Fowler, Conor Kilpatrick, Ian Levenstein, and Brion Salazar (who I’d met briefly last year at Wizard World Chicago). There was good, if tardy, bar-b-q from Honky Tonk and a crazy-amusing cab ride from the restaurant to the Challengers party with an ever-entertaining and very drunk Chris. And you haven't truly felt vertically challenged until you've waited for a cab on a street corner standing between Dave Mathis and Tom Fowler.

After work Friday I was able to meet up with the guys in time for dinner again, this time at Spring World in Chinatown. David, Wood, Will, Tom, and Sal were there, along with Vince Bonavoglia, Hilary Barta, and others. Hilary, a Chicagoan and familiar with the restaurant, took care of ordering, and soon one delicious dish of food after another was brought to the table for a comic geek family style dinner.

I didn’t have a lot of time to chat with David or Wood the night before, so I made a point of making time for them Friday night. Wood and I ended up next to each other at dinner and had a nice time chatting about everything from family to comics. It was great getting to know him better and hanging out. On the other side of me at dinner was Will. We were introduced to each other the night before at Honky Tonk, but didn’t have an opportunity to chat. During the course of dinner at Spring World, we realized we’re both from Northeast Ohio (he now lives outside of Chicago). Really nice guy, and I’m looking forward to getting together with him next time he’s back home visiting.

When I think back to the origins of my book Deus ex Comica: The Rebirth of a Comic Book Fan, I have to lay a lot of credit at David’s feet. If it hadn’t been for his encouragement of the project and the way he welcomed me into the Marvel Noise online community, I don’t know if the book would exist as it does today. That’s what made the time we spent hanging out later Friday night at Kroll’s, where the Marvel party was being held, so special. We have spoken on the phone and emailed for years, but this was the first time David and I were in the same city at the same time.

It was interesting to be in Chicago, a city I have loved for years, and have my mutually exclusive worlds of work and comics collide. A few weeks ago, I was sitting in an all-day session at work, and on a break one of my co-workers said she was perusing Amazon and found a book written by someone with the same name as me. She asked if I wrote it. For the life of me, I can’t imagine what this woman would have been searching for that might have led her to my book, but it is always surprising to me when someone who either I don’t know personally or someone who I know who doesn’t know about my comic book enthusiasm approaches me.

When I was growing up, I had one friend who I shared my comic book habit with (and I’m fortunate that Mark and I are still friends to this day), but outside of that friendship comics were very much a solitary pleasure. I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted to while in town for C2E2 – I only got to say hello to Steve Bryant briefly outside of Spring World, and I never did connect with Chris Marshall, Scott Cederlund, Ryan Closs, Michael Moskop, or Rick Hansen among others, but that’s simply more incentive to attend future cons.

Would I have liked to have been able to attend the con itself? Sure. But being able to get together with friends really is what it’s all about. I know the internet spawns a lot of garbage and in niche communities there can be a lot of rotten apples spoiling the reputation (and fun) of an entire population, but on the other side of that coin is the way the web can bring together a group of geographically remote friends over the passion of a shared pastime.