Planet Comicon has been around for years. It is easily the most unimpressive con I have ever attended. But this year promises to be different! This year Planet Comicon is getting a well deserved make over. Instead of being located in Overland Park, Kansas, it is being relocated to a much larger venue in Kansas City, Missouri. The guests are bigger, the panels are better, there will be a Quiznos! Did the new Planet Comicon trump all the other years or was this just another crappy con that is more miserable than fun?
The agenda this time around didn’t include grabbing anything in particular. This time around it was all about checking out what Planet Comicon had to offer. Just from looking around I could tell that things had taken a turn for the better. First thing to see when you walked into the Convention was the DeLorean from Back to the Future. Okay, we are off to a pretty good start. Never in past years did the Delorean show up. As I kept walking I saw a TARDIS from Doctor Who. Another new addition, although in past years plenty of people dressed like the TARDIS. It helped that Daphne Ashbrook was one of the celebrity guests, you may remember her as Grace Holloway. I was hoping to get to swing by and talk to some of the guests but I just had too little time to stop and talk to the Special Guests but I want to give a big round of applause for Ray Park who gave people FREE photo ops. That is a pretty cool thing to do. George Takei smoked the competition as his line far exceeded everyone else, even Wil Wheaton to my surprise.
Lunch time was going to be different from every other year. No hot dogs and nachos. No sir, this year we were going to be
getting Quiznos! Only problem was the line was a mile and half long. I debated for awhile and saw the other line was about half the size. This line however went into an unknown area, an area that was closed off with magical curtains. What lay behind these enormous wonders, I asked myself. Odds are it was the usual hot dogs and nachos but this time around we were in Bartle Hall! This place was enormous, who knows what other food items were going to be unleashed upon my fellow comic reading friends!? The other side of the convention (near Quiznos) had these glorious tables, tables you could sit and enjoy your food at. What kind of tables were these glorious curtains hiding? The suspense was almost too much to handle!
As it turns out the curtains were just there to be there. They weren’t hiding anything except maybe disappointment. As you can see on the picture to the right we didn’t get any tables. Hot dogs and nachos, and another year of sitting on the floor. I don’t know if I will ever quite understand the logic of not getting tables for your eating area. This place was jam packed full of people. If each person paid 30 bucks per ticket that was definitely enough to grab some tables. I could have done without some of the celebs in exchange for tables to eat at. You need to cut some cost? See ya Warner Bros. Table who didn’t even give away Man of Steel tickets, instead they gave away tickets to some other movie with Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman, whoever they are. The worst part about no tables is that you have to awkwardly sit with people you don’t know. I don’t mind chatting it up at social events but there is one huge problem. We are at a comic book convention! These people have the social skills of an eraser. And then those people with absolutely no social skills bring things they have spawned (aka children) and they have the worst social skills on the planet. So next year can we please get some tables PCC? Please!!!
But PCC had more good than bad, though. Comics were at an all time low price, even though every vendor slapped “Movie”
on anything that had a movie adaption in the works. I had been wanting to read Secret Service for awhile, but now there is a movie attached to it and suddenly issue one is twelve bucks. And the panels were great. Especially the comic panel featuring Scott Snyder, Jason Aaron, C.B. Cebulski, Kevin Mellon, and Georges Jeanty. These guys had some really stuff to talk about. They discussed what comics and events in comics really changed the way they wrote or drew comics. they discussed Dark Knight Returns and Kraven’s Last Hunt as some of the most inspirational pieces anyone has ever wrote. Seeing as J.M. wasn’t there I tweeted him and he loved that people are still talking about it. Go figure Frank Miller was too cool for school to comment. One of the most powerful things they discussed was DC and Marvel being a Gateway drug into BETTER comics. These guys write for these companies and they still said there are much better comics out there than anything from Marvel or DC. They also discussed how much they would like the bitter DC vs. Marvel stuff to end. Did you know DC writers and Marvel writers have lunch together every week? So take that DC and Marvel fanboys, they love each other. Stop trying to start shit.
Overall the Con was definitely much better than in the past. This wasn’t the most putrid display that I had seen in the past. PCC had hit a new level of greatness. Maybe greatness isn’t the right word, maybe maturity? It was nice being able to see everything I wanted and then some. All I ask is you get some tables to eat at. For the love of God.
Glad to know it's getting better.