After the Expo

Well, the first annual Lubbock Comic Book Expo is over, and I think it’s safe to say that this event exceeded our expectations. No, it didn’t just exceed — it completely blew our expectations out of the water. I really don’t think I’m engaging in any hyperbole here. I was really floored by how wonderfully things went, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t alone.

Before it started, I thought to myself that I’d be really happy if we had an attendence of 300 people over the course of the whole day.

We had way more than that. Final attendence numbers? 777. Yeah, just like the jackpot in Vegas, baby. Lemme put that in bold and italics: The Lubbock Comic Book Expo was attended by 777 people. That may not seem like a lot, compared to huge conventions like San Diego or the Wizard World cons, but this was the Expo’s very first year of operation. And there were only a few months of preparation before the event.

We had kids. We had teens. We had college students. We had young adults. We had middle-aged adults. We even had a few folks who were in their 70s, if not older. We had people of all races and all cultural backgrounds. We had people who showed up looking perplexed. We had families show up, leave, and then come back with more people. We had entire families who showed up in costume.

We had people lined up to get in and pay their entrance fee. The exhibitor room was jam-packed almost the entire time. We had some sketch tables set up so kids (and a bunch of grownups, too) could sit down and draw pictures, and they were incredibly busy almost the entire time.

Heck, I’m rattling on a bit. Let’s take a quick break and look at some pictures, all taken by Jennifer Adkins. (And if you want to see even more photos from the Expo, just click here.

 

Okay, let’s get a little blogger egotism out of the way. That’s me up there. I gave a presentation on “Lubbock’s Comics Connections,” about people from Lubbock who’ve worked in comics, cartooning, and animation. You’d expect that to be about three or four people, wouldn’t you? We found about a dozen. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see another few names added to that list next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. Mark my words, Lubbock is on the verge of becoming a genuine comics hub.

More pix, more pix…

 

 

 

 

The above picture is from the “Iron Artist” event — a bunch of guest artists had to draw a comics page suggested by members of the audience. In this case, they were told to draw a llama buying a Slurpee… IN SPAAAAACE!

 

This picture really summed up a lot of the Expo for me — a family comes out, the kids dress in Superman and Supergirl costumes, everyone gets some free comics for Free Comic Book Day, and everyone has fun. I saw so many people who just looked like they were having so much fun — attendees, volunteers, artists, vendors. So many folks who came out to indulge their love of comics and general geekery, and who ended up having a blast.

And I got surprised by so many things. There was a little kid who was free-hand drawing Transformers and DC Comics logos — his dad said he was in awe of the kid’s talent, and he was really happy to hear that Lubbock had a resource like the Sketch Club to help encourage artists. There was an elderly couple who really seemed to enjoy just standing in our entry hallway looking at all the DC and Marvel posters we’d hung up. I don’t know how many times I’d pegged someone as a disinterested attendee — fratsters killing time on the weekend, harried parents, seemingly-bored girlfriends — who came out of the exhibitor room clutching sacks filled with old “X-Men” comics.

Now that it’s all over, I’m exhausted, my feet are in absolute agony, I think my back is gonna tie itself in knots by morning, and I got all the way through the day without having enough time to go through the dealer room and pick out a comic or two for myself — and after all that, I still feel absolutely inspired by what went on there. Is it possible that Lubbock is a far more comics-friendly city than we’ve ever suspected? I can’t tell you for sure, but I can tell you that 777 people came down to the Science Spectrum this weekend and had one heck of a good time. That’s gotta count for something.