Official poster. Click for full image.

Where are you going to be this Sunday?

I know where I’ll be: at the Holiday Inn on Wolf Road, along with a throng of fellow eager, excited, and pathetic geeks for the Albany Comic Con. It runs 10:00am until 4:00pm and, in addition to all the great talent and swag assembled, it will help raise some much needed funds for Japan. From the website:

Professionals and dealers will donate items to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. The proceeds will be donated through Catholic Relief Services (CRS) to Caritas Japan, from St Ambrose church to help the people of Japan. 100% of all proceeds from this auction will reach the people of Japan. The massive effort to relocate and house people who have lost everything, in the tsunami disaster, will be ongoing. Please bid generously to help support this effort. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Japan, in hopes they can recover fully, and quickly from this horrible disaster. Thank you in advance for your support in this effort. (2-3pm). Click here to view the items for the auction.

In addition, writer Ron Marz (who’s actually a local) will be selling an exclusive print for $10, all of which will go to Japan disaster relief.

Not bad for a form so frivolous, no?

All joking aside, I’m a huge fan of the form and excited for this Sunday. The last time I went I walked away with some fantastic stuff from the seventies and early eighties, walking away with stuff ranging from stories involving the Justice League investigating the murder of Santa Claus(!) to one of the more intelligent treatments I’ve ever read in the medium. I also had some fascinating conversations with not only artists and dealers, but also passerbys and fellow enthusiasts at the bins and boxes assembled on the various tables. The real shame is that it only runs six hours, as I could literally spend an entire day talking to people and sifting through the great stuff available withot getting bored.

I’m a bit passionate, if you haven’t caught on yet. I was reared on comic books and, contrary to popular opinion, credit the genre exclusively with cultivating my love of words at an early age. Despite preconceptions that the books are dismissively written for children, comic book writers are known and sometimes notorious for writing above the heads of children to make the books accessible to older folk, much like Pixar does with its animated films. As a result, comic books expanded my vocabulary far more than any other book, newspaper, or magazine could. If some writer used a word or described something that was alien to me, I was likely to either just take a guess using the context provided or just ignore it completely. If those same words or descriptions were used by Captain America, on the other hand, I needed to know exactly what the man in red, white, and blue was saying. After all, the fate of the world literally depended on it.

So I’m going to celebrate and give back to an industry and genre to which I owe a great deal, and to meet – again – those people like Ron Marz with whom I grew up admiring and have since developed a good rapport with and further appreciation for.

So check it out, because you won’t regret. And feel free to come find me. I’ll be the guy with a smile a mile wide.

THE ALBANY COMIC CON
Sunday, April 17th
@ The Holiday Inn on Wolf Road
http://www.albanycomicbookshow.com/

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2 Responses to Albany Comic Con on Sunday, April 17th to celebrate the form and give relief for Japan

  1. Matt says:

    I had a great time at the last one in the fall. I was happy to pick up two sketches by the storyboard artist from Venture Bros. I keep forgetting to get them framed.

  2. llcwine says:

    nice meeting you yesterday Kevin, thanks for the plug and we hope to see you at the toy show in June and the fall Comic Con in October!!!

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