RobCon 2012

RobCon was held this past weekend in Bristol, TN about an hour away from my hut in the shire.  It is a small regional comics show which had previously been held in a mall.  This year it was held in a bigger venue.  Viking Hall is a small civic center but is still a big room for a comic book show.  I have seen bands like Megadeth and Stone Temple Pilots at this place.  I was worried that it would feel empty.  I feared that the show would not get as much walk up traffic as it did in the mall.

So, when I showed up with my kids Saturday Afternoon to find all of the parking spaces filled I was pretty surprised.  The show had a big turn out.  The aisles were packed with people and there were a lot of cosplayers.

They had the cosplayers broken up into two age groups for a costume contest near the end of the show.  It drew a huge crowd and people were cheering for their favorite costumes.  It was a lot of fun.

The dealers had a lot of great old comics and toys.  I get the feeling that many of the dealers were not comics retailers but rather guys sitting on big collections that they pulled out a few times a year for shows.  I actually prefer that kind of dealer.  No offense to my comics retailer pals but I can get most of what they have to offer at their fine stores.  What I'm into are stinky stanky old yellow comics with coffee stains and cigarette burns.  And this show had plenty.  I bought almost everything in the pic above, 43 comics and a trade paperback, at about 25 cents a piece adding up to around $15.  My kids bought toys and posed for pictures with Ecto-1 from the Ghostbusters.  Good times.

One of the really neat things about having a comics show in a civic center like this is the stadium seats.  At a lot of shows it is really hard to find a spot to just sit down and take a breather.  But in Viking Hall you have that whole arena of stadium seats from which you can still see the whole show so you do not feel like you are missing anything.  If I had brought binoculars I could have shopped the tables while sitting down.

You can find tons of pictures at the RobCon facebook page.  See ya there next year.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.

p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.

p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.

p.p.p.p.s. I'll tumblr for ya.