Boston Comic Con 2011

Another year, another Boston Comic Con.  This year the promoters went all fucking out and it was a blast. I went on Sunday, May 1st, the second day of the Con.

There were plenty of vendors, all who wanted to give you the best experience.  Almost every vendor was having a 50% off sale on comics.  I jumped at this and got Invincible Iron Man #5-7 of the current volume. Even better, many of the vendors had deals on the blank cover variants.  While a great price (many were around $1.00), many of the artists were charging WAY to much for sketches.  There were also a great selection of t-shirts.  And not just comic book t-shirts, but t-shirts for almost any type of nerd.  A friend of mine bought a shirt with Angel as a puppet, and I was rather tempted to get a Mutant Enemy shirt.  Midtown Comics had some great shirts, with their exclusive Iron Fist and Future Foundation shirts.  I caved and got the Iron Fist shirt.

Unlike last year, I never felt cramped in the vendors area.  Last year suffered from a small convention area, so it was impossible at some points to walk through the vendors area.  With this year's being in the Hynes Convention Center, the area was spread out, and the people running the Con smartly put the headliners in a different section.  This kept the eventually long lines free from interfering with people trying to shop through the vendors

The list of writers and artists were great.  The legendary Joe Kubert made an appearance, and was kind as ever.  J. Scott Campbell showed rather late, but apologized to everyone and stopped to chat with everyone giving autographs.  Frank Quietly surprisingly never had a line, which I took advantage of.  Art Adams couldn't resist telling a joke with anyone around.  Other included Frank Cho, Khoi Pham, Christos Gage, Neal Adams, Tim Sale, Adam Hughes, J.G. Jones, and Ryan Ottley to name a few.

There were a couple of panels on the day I went, but no news was announced.  Joe Kubert answered questions in one panel.  While it didn't bring the event down by any means, some announcements would be welcomed at next years.

As I said before, some of the artists were charging WAY TO FUCKING MUCH for sketches.  J. Scott Campbell, who is a great artist, was charging $200 for a blank cover sketch.  Are you serious?  He would do a small square sketch, but was charging $50.  Still to much.  All the other artist were charging around $50 for a blank cover sketch, or even less.  Ok, that I can understand, as their time is valuable.  Sketches were going for $20, which I think is completely reasonable.

Overall though, Boston Comic Con 2011 is a huge success and it's a step in the right direction for making Comic Cons in Boston a major event.