What makes a great Comic Con?
Wizard World Des Moines combined all the right elements this past weekend to create a new annual Midwest destination tradition. A mix of big name celebrities, comic book creator icons, fanboys and fangirls attending in costume, a variety of vendors, gaming opportunities, current genre properties, the unexpected, taking along family and friends (and meeting new ones and catching up with old ones) and taking in some good food. And thanks to the success of its first effort, Wizard World will be back again next year at the Iowa Events Center, May 13-15, 2016.
If you missed it, check out our coverage at borg.com yesterday here.
A comic and pop culture convention is even better when your own favorite character seems to have his own theme at the show. Take our own favorite, Green Arrow, for instance. This weekend you could have met the artists for the three best Green Arrow series ever produced, including artist/writer Mike Grell:
Artists Milton Bunce and Mike Grell at Wizard World Des Moines 2015 Sunday.
And as luck would have it, Mike found a lost piece of original art he brought to the show, a cover prelim/rough for a 24-year old annual issue he created:
There’s no place better to pick up original comic book art than a Comic Con, whether it’s a sketch commission or original pages that artists bring to the show to gawk at or even purchase. (Thanks for bringing this one, Mike!).
And there’s one of the other of the three major artists known for his Green Arrow work (he’s done Batman and a ton of other characters, too), Neal Adams:
