The Midwest Comic Book Association is hosting the 23rd Annual MCBA FallCon “Comic Book Party” at the Progress Center located on the Minnesota State Fairgrounds on Saturday October 15, 2011 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Twenty-three shows is a long time for any convention so if you’re in the area this may be a great way to spend up to six hours today pouring through more than a half a million comic books for sale and meet more than 100 comic book creators scheduled to attend.
Although the MCBA does not appear to be officially pronouncing any single event headliner today, a quick look at the long roster of guests will likely reflect someone you want to meet or someone you want to catch up with again.
Comic book artist Keith Pollard is scheduled to attend, best known for his work for Marvel Comics in the 1970s and 1980s on Thor, The Amazing Spider-man and Fantastic Four. Other familiar attendees include Patrick Gleason, fresh from his work on the new Batman and Robin, midwest artist and writer Phil Hester (Green Arrow, Ant Man, Green Hornet, Bionic Man), Christopher Jones (Young Justice as well as artwork in Batman Strikes with writer Jai Nitz), and Tom Nguyen (straight from his recent work on the new Green Lantern series).
Along with other comic book creators, Christopher Jones says he will be talking to fans, doing commission sketches, and selling comics and art, according to a post on his website. He’ll also be showing off his new event banner:
Artist Steve Kurth (who has some stunning original art pages posted on his website), best known for his New Mutants work, is also scheduled to attend. (Hopefully he and the rest of these creators bring some original art to drool over). Check out this great Iron Man page from his website:
Tickets available at the door for $8.00 and $1.00 off with a canned food shelf donation. Kids 9 and under get in free. Check out the MCBA website for more information.
C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com
In 1982 Roger Stern wrote for Amazing Spider Man one of the most beautiful story arcs I’ve ever read. It is rather short (it starts in issue 226 and ends in the following one), but every single panel of it is pure awesomeness.
Spider Man and Black Cat were the leading characters of that arc.
In that period Spidey had started to become more and more similar to Batman: the series passed from a sunny setting to a dark one, Peter started to cooperate with a female version of Commissioner Gordon (Jean De Wolff), and, most of all, he developed a detective approach he never had before. His relationship with Black Cat was a part of this project: Black Cat is Marvel’s Catwoman, so the affair between her and Peter deliberately reminded of the one between Batman and Catwoman.
This magic period ended with the death of Jean De Wolff. She is one of the Spider Man characters who should have been employed more and in a far better way, along with Eddie Brock, Cletus Kasady, Betty Brant and so on.