Baltimore-Comic-Con-2018

Sometimes I walk through Artist Alley in Baltimore Comic-Con and see some promising talent. Other times I walk the floor and see fully-developed talent that just hasn’t broken through to the mainstream yet. I believe that Tainted Love and the guys behind it are in the latter group. They have an idea for a vampire comic that is neither “me too” nor campy and a great art style that really compliments the story. I had one my longest ever interviews with them as we jumped back and forth between the differences in creating comics and film as well as discussing a lot of the background of the story. ...

I went to the Brian Azzarello Spotlight panel for two reasons. First of all, he is responsible for an awesome Wonder Woman. In fact, during the original iteration of Comic POW! Dan selected it for two different challenges: Week #4 and Week #17. Second, I went to see if there would be any talk of the controversy around Batman: Damned #1. There was, but everyone was very polite about it and kind of talked around it. I was very glad I went, because the panel became the best of what Baltimore Comic-Con panels can be - audience question free-for-alls because it’s not as packed as San Diego Comic-Con or New York Comic-Con. ...

After I was done speaking with the creators at Multi Verse Madness, they said I should check out the booth of one of the advertisers in their magazine, Bleed Geeks. I walked over to the booth. I’ve been covering Baltimore Comic-Con for about 7 years now (including my time at Player Affinity before starting Comic POW!) and I’d seen lots of booths selling geek patterned pajamas, socks, bathrobes, and snow hats. This was the first time I’d ever seen a geek patterned pad… as in an object used during menstruation. But what intrigued me and made me want to talk to the creators was the fact that it was more than just the geek factor found in those other clothing items, it was also a pad geared around sustainability. As in, it’s made of cloth and instead of throwing it away daily, you launder it and reuse it. So I had to learn a bit more. ...

Through various books I’d read, I already had an idea that Batman had two creators, Bob Kane and Bill Finger. I also knew that Finger had received the short end of the stick when it came to acknowledgment for his contributions. But until I attended this panel by Marc Nobleman, author of Bill the Boy Wonder, I had no idea just how thoroughly Mr. Finger had vanished from the world because no one really knew about him until it was too late. So, watch this panel and enjoy the roller coaster ride that was Mr. Nobleman’s attempt to obtain scholarly proof and artifacts from Mr. Finger’s life: ...

When I walked by the Multi Verse Madness table I was drawn to the magazines on the table. What in the world was this? It turns out it was a fan zine. That’s right, they’re still being created in 2018! But unlike the Xerox’d, stapled fan zines of yore, this one was nicely printed like a commercial magazine. Thanks to technology and print-on-demand, these kinds of professional magazines are now available to amateurs. But what actually propelled me from talking about the zine with them to wanting to interview the creators was the focus of the magazine. First of all, it was focused on inclusivity on all the dimensions of fandom - age, race, gender, even transgender. Second, many of the articles in the magazine are around similar themes to Comic POW!, such as the articles focusing on the psychology of Harley Quinn. So enjoy the interview where we explored the origins of the magazine and why it’s so important to these creators. ...

Baltimore Comic-Con has always had a healthy prose showing in artists alley. There was the year I was introduced to Coral Hare. And, as I mentioned in my interview with Tom King (and he mentioned the same story at Saturday’s Ringo Awards), I first met him when he debuted A Once Crowded Sky at Baltimore Comic-Con. So I always like to check out what kinds of books are represented at Baltimore Comic-Con. Rod Van Blake was at the show with a book called Ancient Illumination that was a military science fiction and space opera. During our interview we discuss his qualifications for writing military fiction and some of the metaphors encoded in the races represented. ...

The second annual Ringo Awards, named after Mike Wieringo, were a BLAST. If you’re in town for Baltimore Comic-Con you really should look into getting a ticket. It’s an Emmy’s-style event where dinner is served at the award venue and you get to share a table with some of the comic book industry’s greatest talent. The organizers once again hit it out of the park with their keynote speaker, Katie Cook. Her speech was so much fun and really resonated with me as someone who loves both web comics and retail comics. I think you’ll enjoy the various speeches given, particularly Denys Cowan’s story about Denny O’Neil and Tom King’s increasingly hilarious speeches as he won award after award at the show. ...

Noir has been a part of comics since the beginning of the medium. It has waxed and waned in popularity since its heyday in the 1930s and 40s, but there’s usually at least once book being published in the genre. At Baltimore Comic-Con this year, three noir comic creators were brought together to discuss what it means to them and how they use it in their work: Christy Blanch, Brian Azzerello, and John K Snyder III. This was a highly interactive panel, taking lots of audience questions (one of my favorite aspects of Baltimore Comic-Con). Enjoy! ...

As I was looking at the programming guide to see which panels I was going to attend, I saw The Liberty Brigade. The idea of using a bunch of old, out of copyright characters from the Golden Age of comics sounded very interesting. Then I saw that Mark Waid was the editor. Waid is practically an Encyclopedia Britannica when it comes to Golden Age comics, so that meant I had to see just what this was about. Well, the panel revealed that this graphic novel ( currently being funded via Kickstarter), was even more interesting than it seemed from its description. Take a look: ...

One of my favorite things about walking around the floor at Baltimore Comic-Con is getting to discover new and interesting series. As I walked around on the first day, I ended up striking up a conversation with Marty LeGrow about Miraculous (a French kid’s show licensed to Netflix in America), Ninja Turtles, voice actor Rob Paulsen, adults enjoying ostensibly kids’ fare, and, eventually, the comic she writes and draws, Toyetica. I found the world of Toyetica so interesting, that I asked Ms. LeGrow if we could chat about it: ...