Mid Con Comic Show 2014 -- Initial Post-Con Reaction

I wrote earlier about the Mid Con Comic Show that debuted this weekend in Iowa City (here and here). A little over 250 people arrived for this local con, including me, Husband Mark, our youngest son, and one of his friends. I spent a little more than Mark would have preferred, but the boys had a good time scurrying around, looking at old comics, and checking out the various cosplayers. Unfortunately, there were some attendance issues at many of panels -- but that is something that can be remedied for next September's Mid Con!

I volunteered to lead a panel titled "Archie's Dead and Other News from Riverdale." I've been equally excited about and dreading the actual panel, but spent a lot of time developing a discussion plan, drafting a PowerPoint, rehearsing, and editing. That's seemed to work well for me! I ended up getting a lot of positive feedback from pretty much everyone who attended and those same folks passed on the good word to the con's organizer. I may post the content of the panel on the blog later, but not today.

I was volunteering today at the con and decided to commission a drawing of what I like to call "Pughead" from artist Mike Norton on my convention t-shirt:


While chatting with him, I realized that he created the "Zoo-Pendous Variant Cover" of ARCHIE #659, which just came out this past week. Such a great artist!

There were a few things I didn't like about the con. I think that the panel scheduling could have been done more effectively on Saturday. Some were scheduled on the hour. Others were scheduled on the half-hour. It made it difficult to attend certain panels because you either had to leave one panel midway through to attend another or else you had totally skip out on panels altogether.

I also would have less time set aside between panels. Basically, there was a half-hour between panels. I'd probably ask panelists to plan for 50 minutes and then allow for 10 minutes to transition to the next panel.

But it's easy to come in and critique others. There was a lot of planning and work that went into Mid Con and it shows! I want to thank Noel Burns, Mitch Thompson, Nick Maida, Ike Lewis, Aaron Gillespie, Ryan Smith-Burns, and a whole host of others for doing tons of work over the past several months to pull this together. I want to thank all of the artists and writers who came to the show to teach their craft. And I'd like to thank cosplayers Alexa Heart and Mimiru Riley (as well as a host of other incredible cosplayers!) for putting themselves out there and showcasing their talent and imagination. I'd like to thank Mike Norton again for "Pughead." And I'd like to thank D'Angelo and Diego for (im)patiently sitting through my panel.

Now I think it's time to rest!