Comic Con 2012 Chicago: Where popular culture, art and costumery meet commerce
By Tim AkimoffComic Con 2012 Chicago: Where popular culture, art and costumery meet commerce
By Tim AkimoffTo enter the Comic Con 2012 Wizard World convention in Chicago, you must first line up with hundreds, if not thousands, of people sporting an array of popular culture costumery spanning decades.
On one end of the massive Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, you can rifle through stacks of new and aging comic books selling for $2 each. Look up and you’ll see framed classics for upwards of $60,000 or more. Collectors hold notepads or printouts of their wishlists in one hand and stacks of comics in their other.
Eventually you’ll find rows of people sitting at tables drawing on large and small pieces of paper. They are the artists. Some are well known and popular for their art or their collaborations with writers or other artists. Some have Marvel and D.C. on their calling cards. And some have their own private booths where fans stand in long lines to get their favorite comic books signed. Popular superhero co-creator Stan Lee tends to fit this description, and fans young and old line up holding Hulk, Spider-Man and X-Men comics for the mustachioed patriarch of comic books to sign.
He says he’s an inker.
“It’s enhancing pencils and giving it a style and a look,” Ramos said of being an inker. “Think of it as a cinematographer in film, he brings life to the scene in color and texture.”
Ramos has worked for Marvel and D.C. comics for 25 years. He’s been attending Comic Con events for most of those 25 years as well.
Ronnie Dukes, who uses quill and ink on hand-made paper from Nepal, is attending his first ever Comic Con. He draws a series called the Vitruvian Hero, based on Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
Beyond the artists and the sci-fi celebrities, you’ll find find the kitsch. The Gandalf keychains, Tron-style plates and Uruk-Hai scimitars are available along with gaming dice, plush toys and life-size action figures.
Comic Con is at once entirely familiar and at times a double-take in terms of costumed conference-goers. A winged creature flutters by followed by a black-suited woman and characters I can only assume are still imaginary, just waiting for their turn as art on the pages of a comic book or a screenplay and a show.
Tim Akimoff is the digital content editor at WBEZ. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook