Hey, kids! Comics!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, plush dolls, variant covers, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. We missed a couple of past installments since their inaugural 2010 gala, but more often than not, whenever they send out the call to convene, we’re happy to answer…
…and one of my favorite aspects of C2E2 is Artists Alley, one of the largest and most diverse of its kind in all the Midwest. Maybe it’s hard to tell by looking at my last several months’ posts, but comics have been my primary hobby since age 6. Sure, jazz hands with famous folks are cool, but graphic storytelling is my bag. This year was no exception, though nigh-impassable aisles posed a serious challenge to getting in, through, and out.
Creators who convinced me to stop ‘n’ shop on Friday after a late lunch, as evidenced by their wares in our lead photo:
Jorge Corona! Currently killing it on Image’s Transformers, a grunge-metal robot-war spectacle of surprising emotional heft (with major props to writer Daniel Warren Johnson) that’s held my attention even though I didn’t own that many of the ‘bots as a kid.
Sarah Becan! As an old fan always excited to see new uses for the medium, I love that she’s illustrated a series of cookbook graphic novels. Apart from the culinary exotica of Rare Flavours, I was at a loss to think of any other precedents. Brilliant idea.
Caitlin Yarsky! After racking up credits at DC, her creator-owned Living Hell is serializing now from Dark Horse. I caught her work a couple weeks ago on a twisted Cinderella send-up in Oni Press’ EC-imprinted Cruel Kingdom #4.
Kenny Porter! I’ve seen his name on numerous DC solicitations (The Flash, Superboy, DC Mech, et al.) but somehow we’ve been ships passing in the night till now. I grabbed a copy of his Image collaboration The Schlub.
Not pictured: Sean Peacock, whose stylish existential race-the-devil road-trippin’ Peppermint Desert fairly flew off the table at me.
I wish I could say I bought tons more goodies from the 26 rows of tables compacted into 13 aisles, but a lot of those packed rows didn’t make it easy to brake without gumming up everyone’s foot traffic. I’m also not one to stop for prints or anime, seemingly a bigger percentage of the Alley community than ever. Which is fine! Not everything has to be about me. It just means I have a smaller loot pile at the end than I used to.
Saturday morning, we actually made Artists Alley our first stop of the day. Several years ago C2E2’s guest list included Tom King, one of the sharpest writers of the current age. Fandom at large knows him best for his lengthy Batman run, plus spinoffs and that one time he came this close to marrying Catwoman. He’s also made a mark on other non-Bat titles like the current Wonder Woman ongoing, Human Target and Black Canary, bringing influences from outside comics, conducting formalist experiments and committing the occasional fourth-wall breach. This November will mark the tenth anniversary of the first time I ever read his work, when I picked up The Vision #1 on a lark at a comic shop in Manitou Springs, CO.
Last time he was at C2E2, I begged off the long line of VIP fans who’d already mobbed his table by the time we reached him. By the time we got around to Artists Alley this year on Friday afternoon, his line had to be broken into sections to accommodate walkway flow. So, Plan B, then: first thing Saturday morning when general-admission ticketholders were unleashed upon the show floor at 9:50 a.m. (yep, early!), a sizable chunk of the crowd immediately darted left and headed upstairs toward the Main Stage at the far end of the fourth floor to attend the loudly publicized Breakfast Club reunion. We let them go have their fun and darted toward the way-back corner of the exhibit hall and Artists Alley table B-10. Lo and behold, we were like fifth or sixth in line.
King shared a table with frequent partner Mitch Gerads, who’s worked with him on The Sheriff of Babylon, Mister Miracle, Strange Adventures, and more. The duo showed up ’round 11:20, once they could penetrate the already-bottlenecked row. For signing I’d brought my copy of his debut novel A Once Crowded Sky, which I’d read a while back and figured might be a fun rarity to bring along. Trust other sharp-eyed comics collectors to outdo you every time: another guy ahead in line also brought a copy, and his was hardcover. Advantage: him. No worries, though: as it happens, King is quite the gregarious talker.
We chatted about his non-superhero work like Babylon (which began as a novel!) and his recent fantasy book Helen of Wyndhorn (basically, “What if a Robert E. Howard hero survived and had offspring, but nary a parental bone in his body?”
I picked up the Mister Miracle trade so I could have them both sign a thing together. Mitch Gerads sketched a li’l Scott Free head in it!
After another few hours of celeb shenanigans and a bit of wandering the exhibit hall rows we hadn’t yet traversed, we also made Artists Alley our final Saturday stop. I always like to take a second pass and see if anything sticks out to me that I missed the first time around. Unfortunately by mid-afternoon much of the area was claustrophobic gridlock, making it next to impossible to stop. I did break my personal rule and bought one (1) print: a Severance fan poster by artist Jenny Park, who had a couple reps staffing her table in her seeming absence. I’ve been shocked at how extremely little fan-made merch I’ve seen at any cons these past few years, and was gratified to see our favorite Macrodata Refinement innies get some love.
Just as I finished paying, a happy voice yelled behind us: “That’s us! You’re buying us!” I turned and was stunned to meet the Helly and Mark cosplayers shown off in our lead photo for Part 2. I’m pretty sure they weren’t just hanging out at the table for hours and waiting to ambush everyone who bought that same print among Park’s couple dozen other pieces. They just so happened to show up at the same time we did, in a lovely bit of serendipity. Praise Kier!
Beyond that…what’s largely left to share are the framework fragments and outtakes in between all the other stories and photos.
* * * * *
Our weekend began Friday morning when we left Indianapolis shortly after 6 a.m. EDT — an ungodly hour for night-owls like me — and dodged more than a few semis swerving in their lanes and making the I-65 journey slightly more perilous than usual. Despite their Duel-ish threats we arrived at McCormick Place a few minutes after 9 our time, 8 a.m. CDT, two hours before showtime per our usual procedure. Somehow we caught the usually horrid Dan Ryan Expressway in a rare moment of smooth rush-hour flow, even with accident cleanup in the left lane shortly before the I-55 exits. Apparently the past several years’ worth of frustrating road construction finally made a difference.
Less conducive to smooth flow: C2E2’s new security scanners. Some cons don’t bother screening for potential mass murderers, but Chicago isn’t prepared to be quite so relaxed. The old scanners were no big deal to us, but this year’s models hated me. First time through, I set them off. I stepped to one side, left my camera bag and portable phone charger on the table, and walked through again. I was sent through a third time without either of my bags, and then they certified my official non-gunman status. Their best guess is the couple dozen buttons on my Bag of Holding set it off. I mean, I guess I could cause serious damage with those, but I’d need my victims to hold still while I struggle to remove a few buttons and then poke them really hard. Meanwhile, Anne sailed right through unopposed, a fair reversal of fortune from our Disney World airport experiences.
* * * * *
Friday morning before the big Lord of the Rings reunion panel, I was surprisingly entertained by the pre-show entertainment, one of those impromptu games where audience volunteers are recruited to come onstage and do goofy things. Such time-fillers are hit-or-miss, but this time I was entertained. The game at hand was a sort of “dramatic hero-pose contest” — participants faced off two at a time, each striking and holding a distinct character pose, with the winner determined by applause-o-meter.
Our contestants included Galadriel, The Eye of Sauron, a pink Sauron, and a bunny.
Our Muppet-jacketed host whittled the field down to two finalists: a flight attendant dressed as a potato in a Hobbit cloak…
…and, given the extra ruffles on their white shirt, not a Han Solo cosplayer. Both finalists were tremendously imaginative and agile.
Apropos of the Shire, the potato won.
* * * * *
At Michael Ironside’s table, right before posing with him for a pic, he asks our names. Upon hearing mine, he turns to Anne and quietly kids with a smile, “Is he randy?”
She smiles back. “I’ll never tell!” I pretend my hearing is worse than it is while the volunteer takes the pic with my phone.
Such is the curse of having two adjectives instead of a first and last name.
* * * * *
The exhibit hall, deserted after closing time.
Patton Oswalt’s Friday night set lasted till shortly after 9 pm. After a thirteen-hour day at McCormick Place we were beyond exhausted and more than ready to go check into our hotel off the Magnificent Mile. Among the budget cuts we made, we only reserved one night’s stay, so we barely got to enjoy much about the hotel itself. That’s just as well — our arrival at their front curb was accompanied by a streetside ranter babbling at top volume in the doorway of the yoga center across the street. The view through our window was mostly the white bricks of the building next door, though we could peek around it and see the flashing lights of police cars parked below to one side, overflowing dumpsters to the other. Several outlets didn’t work, but we found just enough to recharge all our devices. Periodic sirens, that Chicago nightlife staple, rang throughout our sleep attempts.
Our truncated time frames outside the con left almost no time to explore anything else in Chicago, nary a tourist attraction nor cool dining experience. While in town we subsisted almost entirely on convention-center concessions and the prepackaged snacks we’d brought from home. As you can imagine, the prices were more outlandish than ever. Robinson’s Ribs remains my favorite among the precious few choices, but Chicago has so, so much out there for the taking if only McCormick Place were across the street from any of it. $14 for two scoops of ice cream topped with rainbow brittle is not my idea of a good time.
The lone exception was our Saturday 7 a.m. walk just around the corner to Stan’s Donuts and Coffee, that sainted L.A. chain that established a Chicago beachhead years ago. It wasn’t the same location we visited last year — this one was next door to a large medical building, with at least two other breakfast-carb shops within another block or so.
Clockwise from lower left: chocolate pocket with nutella and banana, Le Stan cronut, biscoff pocket, lemon pistachio old-fashioned, brown butter glazed with salted caramel drizzle, and chocolate toffee cake donut.
Not pictured: my mushroom latte, made with oat milk — the first time I’d ever seen such a concoction. I could definitely taste the mushroom.
We checked out at 7:30 with hopes of arriving back at the con two hours before showtime again. Alas, when I tried calling the phone number on our valet ticket — which said we could also contact them for our catering needs — it was no longer in service. The curbside wait was consequently a bit longer than I’d hoped. At least I’d purchased a one-night package that included said parking, helping further defray the high costs of a downtown Chicago visit. We regained some of that lost time with our quiet drive down Michigan Avenue, which is far more pleasant when it’s deserted while the city is hungover.
Doggie statue in front of the hotel next door.
Once again the new security-screening rigmarole meant I had to walk through three times. I tried leaving all my stuff at the table and skipping the second try straight to try #3, but no, they insisted I had to go through all three ways for, I dunno, the good of the community or whatever. All because I collect buttons.
* * * * *
Shout-out to other fans we chatted with in lines:
- The young lady engaged in an electrician apprenticeship, which wasn’t her Plan A, but it’s one of many fields that pay well yet fewer and fewer people are checking out.
- The woman from Kansas whose very first-ever con was the legendary San Diego Comic Con (still on our bucket list!) but who’d been to few others.
- The resentful older gent who spent six hours Friday in the Lord of the Rings cast’s separate autograph lines and was only slightly mollified as he sped through Patton Oswalt’s VIP line.
- The young couple we’ve met at a few other shows who remembered us again and said hi. Someday we should probably exchange first names. We’re kinda lousy at introducing ourselves or prying for very basic info.
…and more, more, more.
* * * * *
So that exhibit hall, then! A sampler of sights and shopping:
Making their C2E2 debut: AMC Theatres! Selling off surplus of unsold merch — e.g., The Monkey popcorn buckets.
The 501st Legion’s latest collection of droids.
An RC Landspeeder with its own Pit Droid.
Purple astromech!
Giant Coraline!
Groovy llama!
Wigged skeleton at McNoodle Crafts.
Pricey sugar hits at Moonshine Chocolate.
Typewriters from the collection of The Breakfast Club‘s late writer/director John Hughes, on display at the table of Chicago’s own American Writers Museum.
Loot pile part II: Jenny Park’s Severance print, a giveaway sampler from Bad Idea Comics, and other items accumulated throughout our weekend.
…and that’s about the size of things. We could complain about other aspects on other people’s behalf, but those are their stories to tell, not least of which would be the extremely long lines for actors we didn’t meet — the Breakfast Club quintet, the voice-idols of Baldur’s Gate 3, and others. Quite a few first-timers came to C2E2 this year, many of whom had unrealistic expectations of the long waits and efforts that such experiences require. Then again, some longtime con-goers weren’t thrilled with waits that were long even by their more experienced standards. In that sense, every con is a land of contrasts. As we’ve said before: it takes a lot of hard work to have this much fun.
The End. Thanks for reading! Lord willing, we’ll see you next con.
Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:
Part 1: Friday Cosplay!
Part 2: Saturday Cosplay!
Part 3: The Stars in Our Galaxy!
The traditional pic of our final photo as we leave the exhibit hall in the South Building, head back to Lot A in the West Building, and depart Chicago for the seasons.
[THE GOLDENS WILL RETURN FOR FAN EXPO CHICAGO 2025.]