Wizard World Chicago 2008 Recap

Originally published at EricAdams.net. You can comment here or there.

WIZARD WORLD CHICAGO 2008 was a strange, but good one.

The first four hours of the drive weren’t so bad, but that last hour took about three. Seriously, Chicago. What the fuck is wrong with your traffic? Still, I was in the good company of Joanna Estep and suffering is always better when it’s with a loved one.

By the time we reached the far side of Chicago, only one hour of ‘Premiere Night’ remained. We dropped our stuff off at our tables without even setting up and quickly took off to meetup with some of the ComicMix people.

Then we drank cucumber water.

Then a loud, crazy guy showed us gigantic pieces of meat.

And a lobster that looked like something out of the Dark Tower.

He called me “Chief” a lot.

The guy did.  Not the lobster.

I could explain all of that and it would make complete sense, but I prefer keeping it ambiguous as it makes my experience sound more interesting and mysterious.

Big, big thank you to Myke Amend who unfortunately had to cancel his trip to Chicago, but donated his table to me/us. I was able to relocate to what would have been his excellent position and it was far superior to my original position in that crappy, hidden, offshoot Artist Alley.

Big, big, sarcastic non-thank you to the WWC person that sticks a four (five?) year veteran of the show in what I would call the ‘freshman area’. To be fair, that spot did turn out okay for Joanna who braved it while I was in the greener pastures of the Artist Alley proper.

Friday was excellent. That’s normally a fluke, but I’ve always had strong sales on Friday at this particular con. The weekend was lining up to meet with my expectations of success. Then, Saturday happened. Sales didn’t surpass Friday’s numbers and that’s strange as Saturday usually blows Friday out of the water at any given con. Sunday, expectations were again turned on their ear as the day started off strong and bumped my total numbers from the pits of ‘Meh’ up into the heavens of ‘Good’.

So yeah, my sales were a little under par from year’s past - about 80% of the usual for Chicago. Now for all those interested in the business aspect of my small pressery:

All the regulars following LACKLUSTER WORLD came back for the new, fifth issue and my number of customers for the weekend was almost identical from last year despite the lower cash total. It gets strange when it comes to new readers. I spieled my little pitch to the same amount of people and it was just as effective as usual, but instead of buying the full run of available issues, they only bought the first one or two. That’s very new.

I think all the hubbub about the economy/recession has finally caught up to me and to be honest I think I’ve been lucky up to this point.  LW sales overall are up from this point last year, but I suspect that in order to maintain the sales levels I’m historically accustomed to, I may need to shift my present convention strategies before things get worse. My next shows are BALTIMORE COMICON and MID OHIO CON later this fall so I have some time to plot. My instinct tells me ‘more variety’.

Anyway, I would love to show you photos of the con, but I never think to take photos at these things. Instead, allow me to direct you to ComicRelated.com and it’s photo galleries along with excellent coverage of the entire show. Grand maestro, Chuck Moore, runs that place and he does a hell of job with it.  He even produced a new podcast each night from his hotel room.

So that’s another WIZARD WORLD CHICAGO come and gone. I vote that next year, they change the name to LACKLUSTER WORLD CHICAGO.