A whole room packed full of people who share similar interests, dress up in amazing Cosplay, and different artist and stars available to meet. For some of you Comic Con isn’t anything new. Those from large cities like LA are used to having a local Comic Con. Those of us in the middle of nowhere typically don’t have events like this. Lucky for me, a few hours away we do have the Mid-Ohio Comic Con once a year. Alex and I took the day and went down to check out what it was all about this weekend. As you can expect, we came back with lots of photos of the Cosplay and just maybe a few story’s as well.
Written by: Wes
Pictures by: Wes and Alex
After about a 2 and a half hour drive, we hit the city of Columbus. We parked the car and hit the ground running, excited for the show. The show itself was at the farthest point in the convention center, so we actually spent a while walking before even getting to the show itself. But we did find out that Linuxfest was running at the same exact time right next door. What an interesting blend of geekyness! We didn’t need a map to find our way to the show though, even from the parking lot we just had to follow everyone dressed up in their cosplay. I actually saw a guy in full medieval gear dismounting from his trusty Honda in the parking lot even!
In the show at last
We dropped by and picked up our press passes and then after that went right in. Neither of us were really sure what to expect going in. We had studied the map and read the website, but being our first Comic Con we still weren’t sure. As you can see in the pictures below, the first thing you see when you come in are venders, venders, and more venders. We started walking up the isles and were just blown away at everything for sale. Most of my exhibition time is spent at places like CES, so seeing so many things for sale was a little bit of a shock at first. I felt more like I was at a gun show or a flea market at first. Then I realized that for that special kind of geek, there just aren’t many places anymore that you can walk in and buy all of your old toys, art work, and old and new comics. This really is a once in a year chance to buy what you couldn’t all year round, at least not without worrying about it being damaged in shipping.
After reflecting on all of that as we went down our first isle we were pulled back to reality as we walked past the Cyanide & Happiness booth. My wife and I are both big fans of explosm.net and their C&H comic, because of that we were excited to see that two of the guys were at the show. With the internet being such a big forum for up and coming artists to be able to do their comics and make money without ever having to worry about having their comics printed and all the risk and troubles that brings I was actually worried that the move to online comics might hurt Comic Con’s in the future. Seeing these guys out at the show selling plushies, posters, and shirts was a major relief. Even though we came by early, there was already a line at their booth we decided to finish looking around before coming back. There was no way we would miss out on it though.
Something else I found interesting while walking around in the venders section. We saw at least 4 or 5 different tattoo booths. As it turns out, it is big business tattooing people right at the show. We could hear the buzzing our entire time there.
Cosplay
Almost all of our event photos are of the cosplay, because of that we couldn’t fit them all here in the write-up. But we have put together a full gallery for you guys to check out at the following link
The cosplay was amazing; I was blown away over and over again by all of the different costumes. Where else are you going to find gorgeous girls dressed up in the scantily clad costumes from your favorite video games, comics, and movies along with costumed that people have clearly spent months and sometimes years perfecting.
On top of that, we saw many situations that you would just never see in any fantasy world due to them being on different platforms or being owned by different companies. For example, we caught this gem. Master chief teabagging a storm trooper!
Link and a female Loki
The sexiest Iron Man ever!
We even saw Preditor and Captain Ohio battling it out!
And of course, we ran into the sexiest group of ghost busters this side of the country. Most of you will notice that a few of these guys can be found at your local LanOC LAN as well. I guess we should reconsider doing a costume contest like we did in the past! What do you guys think?
So what else did you guys miss out on by not making it?
Steampunk Pyro!!
A real life lego man
We found Waldo!
Quailman from doug! (thanks everyone for helping with this one)
This has to be the cutest cosplay family ever!
Amazing Girls
I mentioned it before, but the amazing girls were all over. So much so that we had to make another section just for them to fit them in the article.
Cyanide & Happiness
Like I said before there was no way we were going to leave without visiting the guys over at the Cyanide & Happiness booth. After waiting in line for a long time we picked up a plushie as well as a signed poster. With each of those we got a chance to meet the guys and have them draw a picture for us. Alex could hardly contain herself as we slowly inched closer. By the time we got up to the front of the line she didn’t even know what to have them sketch! I suggested something to do with her cat obsession and they jumped right in. I was impressed with the way they work together as a team one on each side of the paper. Here is the video of Kris and Shawn drawing her video.
She got her photo with the guys as well and as you can see, we learned a little something about the guys as well. I think we maybe should have called the cops or at least mentioned something to the girls who were there with them, but oh well. They sketched a photo of Alex standing over me here in my office beating me telling me to get to work. This was a surprisingly accurate drawing as well. Big thanks to the guys for taking a few minutes to talk to us. I’m planning on hanging up the signed poster and my sketch will be getting framed and placed in view of my desk as a reminder to get to work as well.
Before we say goodbye
Before we took off we did swing by a few of the tables just outside of Linuxfest as well and talk with the guys. With Steam inching closer and closer to having Linux support, here soon enough the one issue stopping me from going Linux all of the time will be gone. Because of that, I figured I better be ready and picked up a copy of Ubuntu as well as Fedora.
A big thanks to Wizard for letting us come out and check out the event. We had a great time walking around. What I noticed the most were the smiles on everyone’s faces as we walked around. We did read a few complaints on the Ohio Comic Con Facebook page about the price of the event. To a point I would agree as it is a little expensive to get in and then on top of that you have to pay for photos and autographs. But on the other side of the fence they are paying for what has to be a very expensive convention space as well as bringing out all of the equipment and staff. It’s a fine line between paying the bills and losing money at most of these events. Personally, I’m just happy that Ohio gets an event at all. Hopefully it will continue to grow and bring in people. The more people who come out, the more star power the event will have the following year! See you all next year. I think maybe next time we will try to dress up as well.
As I mentioned before, check out our gallery for ALL of our photos. We couldn't fit them all in this article.
