C2E2: Uncloseted Geekery at its Finest

h, C2E2, a comic convention embroiled in debate long before its McCormick Place doors’ opened this weekend.  Before C2E2, Chicago only had one annual comics convention:  Chicago Comic Con, produced by New York-based Wizard Entertainment.  In recent years, Chicago Comic Con declined in popularity and attendees complained that the convention was being poorly managed.  This year, C2E2 swept into town and established itself–which the support of major comic producers such as D.C. and Marvel can attest to–as Chicago’s number one comics convention.

We attended this year’s first annual Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo to get the lowdown on the world of comics as they made the McCormick Center their home for an all-too-short weekend.

We began our journey early on Saturday morning with a surprisingly long drive from our West Loop home to McCormick place; we were halted for around fifteen excruciating minutes on Roosevelt as the road split over the river to allow inland-moored sailboats to pass along the canal to their Lake Michigan summer homes.

Cue the McCormick Center:  Chicago’s enormous convention hall (building? complex? small city?).  We entered the far side of the building (from the convention) and meandered our way through several long passages on the way to C2E2, our companions being business men and women in trim suits heading to the kitchen and bath convention that was also housed in the Center that weekend.  As we neared C2E2 we started to spy other comic book fans making the pilgrimage, and the contrast between them and the costumed, kilted, unshaven, referential-t-shirted crowd headed toward C2E2 was quite fantastic.

After gathering press passes and waiting in the early visitor holding-tank-cum-snaking-line (in what I imagine must have been the bowels of the McCormick Center) we rode the escalators up to the convention hall and C2E2 more or less exploded into our vision.  It was bright.  It was big.  It was a convention hall covered with booths of various comics moguls, shops, and artists.  Banners featuring the Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and other famous comic superheroes and heroines loomed over the larger booths.  Glass encased props from the set of Ironman waited for auction.  Artists sat in long rows of booths and patiently, almost religiously sketched, colored, and signed comics, their heads bowed.

Most attendees I saw struck me as hardcore comics fans.  Though I don’t have accurate statistics, I would conjecture that the majority of attendees were male and also that the majority of attendees tended to be a little overweight.  And this only strikes me as important because I specifically remember a moment from early in the day in which I spied a standard attendee standing in front of a giant Green Lantern banner.  The attendee wore baggy jean shorts; white socks with black, worn athletic shoes; and a baggy t-shirt.  His hair was long and tousled; he was slightly overweight.  Above him Green Lantern towered, his chiseled abs outlined even through his costume.  His active stance accentuated his flexed muscles, his razor sharp, clean aesthetic.

To say that superheros are fantastic is not particularly interesting, but what is interesting is to examine the way in which they interact with the people who read about them, worship them.  Oftentimes superheros are the creations and loves of people who look nothing like them–and could anyone really look like them?  could anyone really perform like them?  I am not a particularly huge fan of superhero comics, and this is largely based around this highly fantastical fact.  The fact that Spiderman is your average kid from a shitty neighborhood does nothing to extinguish the fact that he is simply nothing like a real human being.  Real humans fall and break bones.  Real humans are deafened by explosions and blinded by blows to the head.  Yet superheroes are immune to this, thus setting them apart.  WHich is, in the end, the point.  It’s not an aesthetic, I must admit, that holds a great amount of appeal to me.

My love of comics arises from those that are more literal than fantastical, those that play on already existing themes.  This ultimately lead to me being happier in the online comics section of the convention, where I found Jeph Jacques the author of Questionable Content, and Curtis was happy to find Evan Dahm the author of Rice Boy.  I was sad to see that the author of Order of the Stick wasn’t at the Erf World booth, but life goes on.  My appreciation for web comics knows no bounds–here are artists giving away their art for free online, all for the sake of their readers enjoyment, and maybe the few bucks they can make off of a t-shirt.  The serious work of a serialized daily, biweekly, or even weekly updated comic is more travail than most of us could imagine performing outside of a regular 9-to-5 job, yet these artists do it.

Our trip down Artist Alley was equally inspiring–artists of all kinds were displaying their work, and it was fantastic.  While plot-wise I may not be that excited by superhero comics, I have to say that the artwork associated with them is really top-notch.

During this tour of the convention, we spied many comic, video game, and movie characters meandering around.  I posed with some Storm Troopers, Chewbacca, and even Captain Jack Sparrow (whose character acting was particularly good).  We also glimpsed an aged Carrie Fisher autographing pictures inside a canvas-enclosed booth.  As the day progressed we saw more and more costumed attendees, including a large number of military-based video game characters, Darth Vader, Princess Leia, some Ghostbusters, and even Neytiri from Avatar.

We also attended the Women of Marvel panel, which was an excellent choice.  Four women from Marvel, including superstar writer Marjorie Liu, spoke about what it’s like to be a women working in the comic industry, which is often dominated by males.  Their insights were both obvious and poignant–when asked, “How can I get my girlfriend into comics,” the unanimous response from the panel was, “Women are people too.  How would you get anyone, regardless of his or her gender, into comics?  Think about that.”  The panel debated about the roles of already existing female superheroines, and whether or not more and newer female superheroines were needed.   When asked if she preferred writing for female characters, or if she ever struggled with writing male characters, Liu stated clearly that she finds herself perfectly able to write for either gender, and that she is more drawn to a character if their are interesting and well-articulated, rather than being drawn to them because of their gender.  Perhaps the most interesting part of the panel was the discussion about how these women found their way into jobs in the comic industry.  The answer?  They all had built rather eclectic paths that eventually led them into comics.  There is no one way to end up working in comics–but possessing determination, a love of comics, and a work-based background are key components.

We left the convention fully elated by what we had seen and heard.  I think C2E2 highlights just how important stories and various story-telling mediums are to our culture.  The fact that George Lucas sat down almost fifty years ago and created a character that was so evocative that last weekend in Chicago someone put on an expensive, heavy, difficult to stand in costume to imitate that character, and that upon seeing someone in a Chewbacca costume, people lined up in droves just for a shot with him highlights the power stories have over us.

C2E2, I’ll be seeing you next year.

Full-sized photos and video from C2E2 can be found in our picasa albums.