In addition to great creators from outside the Midwest, like Black Widow artist Phil Noto (as we mentioned here at borg.com yesterday), the great thing about returning to a Con year after year is running into all our friends who write, sketch, or paint incredible works for a living.  Planet Comicon 2015 was no different.

Take for instance Des Moines artist Ant Lucia (pictured above).  Three years ago Ant was just beginning to put together great genre characters like DC superheroes and Star Wars characters in a unique retro style of poster art.  Flash forward to 2014 and an entire month of cover art at DC Comics was devoted to his creations, and statues based on his DC Bombshell designs are selling off the shelves in every town across the country.  Ant’s beautiful designs are second to none, and there’s not a more deserving guy to achieve such success from his ideas.

Other creators at Planet Comicon this weekend with national success included Jason Aaron, who had his own rock star sized line of fans getting his new Star Wars series autographed, as well as artist Freddie Williams II, drawing sketches for fans and signing copies of his Legendary Starlord series, among other works.

Pictured above are artists Damont Jordan and Bryan Fyffe.  Damont had a new “spirit fox” print available that blew us away, and he churned out sketches for fans all weekend long.  And we noticed other artists at the Con were coming to Bryan’s booth to buy his framed art for their own homes.  Bryan has the best eye for design of anyone we know, and creates a variety of inspired multi-media works.  His most recent commercial illustration was for some major franchise properties, as well as the cover of John Renehan’s new novel The Valley.  Check out some of his work at his website here.

Here we caught up with Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore (pictured above with author Elizabeth C. Bunce and apparently a bit wary of her crossbow), known to Star Trek fans for their many Trek novels.  We could have spent the entire show chatting it up with these guys.  If you’re not following Dayton’s blog The Fog of Ward, you should be.

Artists Nathen and Keven Reinke were back again this year selling prints of their sketch work.  Known for their Topps sketch cards from Star Wars to The Hobbit, this year they added even more characters to their catalog of works.  Firefly fans in particular should grab up their framed cast portraits.  We ran into other Midwest artist and writer friends at the Con who have become fixtures at Planet Comicon, too, including Ande Parks, Jai Nitz, Phil Hester, Greg Smallwood, and Darryl Woods.

And your borg.com writers were back again for another year at the show.  Above is author Elizabeth C. Bunce (pictured with the far-too-good looking Kris Holden-Reid, star of Lost Girl).

And here is writer Art Schmidt with your humble editor.  Our other writer, Hollywood writer and actor Jason McClain, couldn’t make the show, but you can see him on last week’s episode of Fresh Off the Boat on ABC.  Check out prior writings at borg.com from Elizabeth, Art, and Jason at the links at the right side of our home page.

Tomorrow come back for some more cosplay from Planet Comicon 2015.

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com