This past Saturday, I went to my third Comic Con which is always a lot of fun. If you aren't familiar with comic con, it's basically an event to celebrate all things fandom and comic. People dress up in amazing quality costumes, actors from T.V. shows and movies (usually minor actors and actresses at my state's comic con) sign autographs and take pictures with fans, people are selling comics and tshirts every where, and artists sell all kinds of art. The comic con in my state is much smaller than say the San Diego Comic Con, but it's still a lot of fun.
I thought I would show you what I picked up this year for art and comics because I'm pretty excited about my finds.
I got two small art pieces this year, both by the same artist. I was really excited to see this Ms. Marvel art, as this was the only time I had come across her on any art at the convention. Oddly enough, right before I saw this art, I saw an actual girl dressed up as Ms. Marvel and I was so happy to see that because I love this new series and the way women are represented in the comic. I was on the hunt for Wonder Woman art that day, but everything I saw was pretty generic and was just copies of original artwork, so I decided to go with this smaller piece until I found a larger one I really like in the future. I also picked up this metal Rey bookmark with a print of someone's original art, and I am soooo excited to use it in my next read!
These are the Wonder Woman comics I picked up (featuring my sleeping cat.) I used to read and buy comics all the time as a kid because my dad was (and still is to some extent) a huge comic collector, but it's been years since I have read one or picked one out. I just picked these up pretty randomly, I have no idea of their place in a bigger series or timeline, but I'm not really too worried about that as I'm just picking them up for fun. I would have loved to spend more time at the comic booths and get a ton more, and I think next year I will! These comics have quite a range of dates, and I would love to display the covers of a few of them because I love the art. I will be displaying the top right and bottom left corner covers for sure.
I also picked up this Robin collection in hardback for five dollars (the original price on the back is fifty dollars) with original comics from the late 40's. These should be a lot of fun to read, as the premise of some of them are so cheesy (for instance, the atom bomb gets stolen and must be recovered by Robin in one issue.)
Being at a comic convention made me do a lot of thinking about women in comics, particularly as I was skimming the cover of hundreds of Wonder Woman comics. Obviously male superheros dominated the comic selection, white, male superheros that is, and they also dominated the art work at the vendor booths, but many of the Wonder Woman comic covers were quite interesting to me. Even though Wonder Woman is the main hero of her comic series and kicks some major behind, many of the covers portrayed her at moments of weakness while fighting an opponent, I found that quite interesting when placed side-by-side with say Batman and Superman covers where they almost always appear to be concurring evil with minimal effort. I think comics have come a long way, and the New 52 does a great job with the woman characters, the ones I have read anyways, and that's really great to see. Here's a couple example covers that I saw at comic con and thought were quite interesting.
1968 Text bubble on both: "Next to these Wonder Men-- I'm not a Wonder Woman"
1975 bubble: "Take a look at your beautiful face Wonder Woman. In a moment, I'll have it."
I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on women in comics, comics in general, (where do you buy them, do you read them in order, etc,) and Comic Con! I really want to start building a collection of recent comics in graphic novel form and older comics in single issues.
