Wizard World Anaheim Comic Con 2011 - April 29-30, May 1

[Baron]

I just noticed Friday is only 5 PM - 9 PM... Did that change recently? I thought the doors opened earlier.

 

Last year I went on Friday, but it was open starting at 2 p.m.

[Comicdey]

Hello all,

 

Please everyone who went to this show last year said it was the worst comic book show of the year.

 

Especially since last year the brains behind the operation put it on the same weekend as C2E2 in Chicago.

 

I will be attending this show just because it is close to my house in San Diego.

 

I am hoping to see some new West Coast dealers, but I doubt it.

 

IGood luck, and I hope I see more comic dealers in the room even if they are selling junk.

Shamless Plug, Bunkybrothers will be there with massive 8-10 copies each of SA keys, AF15 ASM ASM, you know the titles, and some other GA goodies, we just picked, Timelys even, (thumbs u

 

I'm actually in town, might have to break away and go look, if I knew Cgc was taking subs, I would have brought my tos 39 down with me for a walkthrough.

 

 

[Dark Knight]

Any updates on whether it is worth going? If only it were closer, Id do a day so I can drop off a couple of books to CGC. Oh well

[PokerKid]

At the convention - apparently because I am a masochist.

 

People who bought and printed their ticket in advance have to wait in a long line to get in. People who do not can walk straight up to the window, buy a ticket and go in with no wait. The have two people helping the paid customers and three stationed at the empty windows.

 

I love Wizard just a little more every day.

[Kirk Kenobi]

At the convention - apparently because I am a masochist.

 

People who bought and printed their ticket in advance have to wait in a long line to get in. People who do not can walk straight up to the window, buy a ticket and go in with no wait. The have two people helping the paid customers and three stationed at the empty windows.

 

I love Wizard just a little more every day.

 

I'm sure wizstephen would say that this is an innovative line management strategy designed to provide a memorable experience for Wizard World attendees and follow up with "stay away if confusing lines are not your thing."

[PokerKid]

If anyone is considering going:

 

If you are looking for a variety of comics stay away. I was not impressed with the selection and saw very little GA or keys from the SA.

 

If you are looking for original art, this is an excellent show with some great options from a wide range of artists.

 

If you love D-list celebs, this is nirvana. The great lineup of Batman actors plus tons of other random actors, wrestlers and strippers.

 

Overall a vast improvement over last year, but it is still not remotely a convention focused on collectible comics.

 

(Despite all my gripes about the show, I did drop about $1k on art, books, and a few new comics with card covers. The Tommy Castillo commission did most of that damage.)

[Wampler]

Man I was kind of bummed at the show this year, the Highlight of my day was geting my Uncanny X-men Signed and CGCed by Michael Golden. No one in line just walked right up to him. It was nice to get a pic with a few of the Known Actors but Other then that and some Origial art, I was out the door in 5 hours. Not many Collecter Dealers or old school books, Was busy but felt as if was as at the Long Beach Comic Con.

[BeachBum]

I went to the show Friday night, got in just before opening, dropped off 300 submissions at the CGC booth then picked up some Moderns. Total time about 30 mins. After that I headed to LAX to get on the red eye to go to Boston show. Thank god I didn't pay $30 bucks for about a half hour of show time.

 

They had a really nice selection of has been actors and models though... I didn't see Tricia Helfer (BSG) but maybe she was only the weekend... That would have been worth it maybe.

 

By the way... note to Wizard - 5 PM start time on a Friday night? What? You think it's a "preview night" or something. Seriously - Opening a con at 5 PM on a Friday night in the Los Angeles area? Don't you know rush hour starts around 2-3 PM on Friday afternoon - everyone trying to get home or out of town for the weekend... Charging full day price to boot. Yeesh.

[Wampler]

Yeah I got Tricia Helfer to sign an auto for me on one of her pics. But it was for a friend, She was really nice. Shame I only had about 20 secs to talk to her. But I did talk with a few other people. I wanted to see Dan Foglar but he was not there today, unless he went there after I left at 4pm. Other then that I was still blah about the con.

[Baron]

At the convention - apparently because I am a masochist.

 

People who bought and printed their ticket in advance have to wait in a long line to get in. People who do not can walk straight up to the window, buy a ticket and go in with no wait. The have two people helping the paid customers and three stationed at the empty windows.

 

I love Wizard just a little more every day.

 

This same issue happened at the 2010 Long Beach Comic Con. The Saturday morning event has a long 30-45 minute wait for those that pre-ordered ticket online while the walk-up tickets had zero people in line and still had two people manning the booths while the pre-ordered was all backed-up.

 

Hopefully the October event is set-up like the 1-day expo where the tickets were able to be picked up way before the event started to help prevent the back-up.

[Comicdey]

I went Saturday

 

Brought my sister who was in town too.

 

Met Tom (nostalgic a the show) for a drop off of a few purchases I made and visited for a bit. That's the highlight. Great guy.

 

Found a few inexpensively SA And GA priced a 50% that I wanted to look through.

 

Best deals, B&B 30 in vg- or so for $45. It was with the dealers JLA's so probably mismarked. Later found his #29 priced at $400 in similar condition in his "big $ books box"

 

He had some nice early tos 41-47 but they were priced like slabbed 8.5's and wouldn't make the grade. Should have been priced at 50% off to be in lIne but no real budging there so I didn't try.

 

Dr strange 1 marked as Vf that's 9.2+ for a reasonable price :-)

 

No real comics to speak of but still interesting for a couple of hours. $35 one day entry fee ::

Won't be bringing anyone back with that pricing. I was in town, I came, I saw, I wouldn't come back.

 

I've been to

San Diego con in 1991

Seattle around 1999

Anaheim in 2011

 

It's got to be up from here

 

Maybe Chicago or Boston in the next 3-5 years.

 

 

[Joel Elad]

Well, I gotta say, I ended up being much busier than expected at CGC this weekend. I think we shipped out something close to 15 boxes of books, which was more than expected.

 

I know CGC took in some nice Silver Age books at the show. I personally saw a Showcase #4, most of X-Men #1-10, Avengers #1, 2, 4, and many other Silver Age Marvels. We had lots of submissions all 3 days, on top of BeachBum's 300 books.

 

Big kudos and thanks to Nicole, Vince, and Dan (thanks for all that running around, Dan!) for running the CGC booth and helping me coordinate all the SS stuff, as well as Jesse (Fingerprint.ink) for helping me get stuff done. We took in a lot of books for Rob Liefeld (1 guy had 35+ Liefelds for himself), Whilce Portacio, Michael Golden, Arthur Suydam, Paul Gulacy, Mike Mayhew, Joe Benitez, Ethan Van Sciver, Mitch and Elizabeth Breitweiser, Zeb Wells, Paul Mounts, Greg Horn, Mike McKone, Bill Sienkiewicz, Ale Garza, Jerry Bingham, Eric "eBas" Basaldua, Joe Rubenstein, and others.

 

I handled at least 15-20 sketch covers over the weekend, we'll see how many pics surface here.

 

Not many celeb signatures: Ray Park (nice guy), Tricia Helfer (HOT and nice), Amber Smith, Torrie Wilson, Charles Fleischer (the voice of Roger Rabbit), and yes, one of the Power Rangers. Unfortunately, they moved a bunch of people around, both celebs and comic artists, so a few people were hard to find (Kevin Sorbo) and others like Harry Hamlin were around for what seemed like a very short time to sign.

 

There were several cancellations, like Joe Jusko, Phil Jimenez, Jolly Blackburn (Knights of the Dinner Table) and some others. Sadly, a lot of artists did not return on Sunday, but I had time on Sunday to walk around since 90% of the books got signed on Friday and Saturday.

 

No pics to show, unfortunately. I counted about a dozen comic dealers, about half were comic stores or vendors from OC (GoDaddyO, Ace Comics, Alakazam, Illusive Empire, TNT Liquidators, Comic Madness, Amazing Comics) as well as R&K Comics and Angelo with their Silver/Bronze, Mike Carbonaro from the East Coast (Neat Stuff Collectibles, Big Apple con that's now Wizard World NY), Jay Company Comics with their wide array of comics, variants and hardcovers, and a few others. I spent a little money on Friday and Sunday.

 

All in all, I am exhausted. Between WonderCon, Monsterpalooza, Long Beach, and this show, April was a busy con month in California.