HeroesCon 2018

I look forward to Father's Day weekend each year for many reasons. 1) Well, it's Father's day, 2) My birthday usually falls on or near Father's Day and 3) the annual Heroes Convention in my hometown of Charlotte, NC.

For years this has been one weekend where I get to spend some quality time with my older brother and hang out and talk comics. It's time I look forward too each and every year. In the past few years however it seems I've started a new tradition of taking my two daughters with me for one of the 3 days of the convention, usually on Friday. While my wife is sitting Friday out this year due to rolling her ankle on our recent vacation to Maine, my girls none the less are super excited about going.

From birth my wife and I have put books in their crib and now beds. They go to bed each night with books. Now that they are almost 7 and 9 and their reading skills continue to improve, I find each year's trip to HeroesCon w/ them that much more fun. Plus Shelton Drum and his crew do a GREAT job at making the convention family friendly. Usually each year there is a passport kids get at the admission booth where they can go around the floor and collect stamps from different booths and vendors. In exchange for a filled passport, they get free comics. To this day one my youngest daughters favorite was an Uncle Grandpa trade she got for free a few years ago!

We stopped in at Target this evening before seeing The Incredibles II movie and got them each something new to wear to the convention. My oldest, 9 (in October) was more worried about what she would be wearing to the convention than anything else! Love it!

While my girls may not have the same passion for comics that I do, I'm glad they enjoy going to the show with their old man. I'll miss not having my wife in tow this year, but I'm looking for some good quality time spent with my daughters and my brother this weekend...all thanks to comic books.

HeroesCon Day 3

Day 3 - the final day of HeroesCon 2012 has come and gone.  It was a great weekend and personally one of my favorites. 

Sunday always brings smaller crowds and better deals than Saturday.  The deals were so good in fact that I was so wrapped up scoring some cheap bronze and silver age comics for pennies on the dollar that I forgot to take pictures!

There were plenty of good photo ops too so I hate that I missed out, but as I just mentioned I was on a mission to seek out all of the reduced prices to score some deals.  Speaking of deals I walked away with some very impressive Avengers and Captain America books from the late 70's for as cheap as 25 cents.  These were torn up, ragged books either.  I'm not a grader so I can't say they are in Near Mint condition, but they look fantastic.

On the toy front I continued to see several toys for sale...but most of them weren't moving thanks in part to the high prices.  Several vendors had those Walmart exclusive Avengers movie figures that are Marvel Legends scale, but who is seriously going to pay $50 for Hulk or $45 for Hawkeye?  One dealer may have gone as low as $30 which is essentially double retail - so that I can see.  Anything higher to me is crazy.

As far as 80's toys go again I saw plenty.  One dealer where I was browsing had a nice loose (and I think complete) G.I. Joe ARAH Rolling Thunder vehicle.  I didn't see a price nor did I ask.  I saw two different dealers that had a decent selection of Transformers.  I was surprised I didn't see more honestly.  One guy was asking $250 for a loose, complete G1 Jetfire.  Seriously?!  Closer to reality was a MOSC G1 Stranglehold Pretender for $100.  I've seen him go for $75+ loose, complete so I thought he would've sold. Another dealer (it may have been ToyNK.com) had a few Masterpiece TFs including the sought-after MP-10 Convoy.  $230 was too rich for my blood so I just looked.  He also had a few Hasbro Prime First Edition figures of Cliffjumper and Arcee for $30 a piece.  And I think I saw a Prime: PRID Vehicon at one random dealer for $25.

I didn't buy any toys this year which really surprised myself - but I did find one little toy related treat before leaving today in one of the many 50 cent boxes.  Behold:

I love these old Marvel Star Comics of the 80's toy properties.  I have the whole Visionaires series and this makes the 2nd issue of Inhumanoids that I now own.  One dealer had just about all the Star Comics Thundercats, but they were way overpriced in my opinion.

Assuming my schedule is free next June I plan on attending the show again.  Unless Botcon comes back to NC or somewhere within relative short driving distance the HeroesCon will be my summer convention of choice for the foreseeable future.

A quick shout out to Shelton Drum and his amazing staff for organizing and hosting one of the best, if not THE best comic book conventions in the country.  I never cease to be amazed each year and somehow they continue to improve the show year after year.

HeroesCon Day 2

Day 2 at the Heroes Convention brought lots and lots of people into the Convention Center.  I haven't heard any attendance numbers yet, but I overheard several dealers early this morning talking about the disappointing crowd on Friday.

I for one enjoyed Friday thanks in part to the smaller amount of people in attendance.  Let's face it the price of the dealer's tables aren't cheap and not everyone setting up is "professional" - as in they do this for a living.  A lot of the smaller dealers had to get creative in how they set up their space and a lot of them utilized the space under their tables w/ 50 cent or dollar boxes.  That said its already hard enough to browse these cramped selling environments and boxes on the floor, but add in a LOT more people to the mix.

That's not to say the day wasn't fun or deals couldn't be had, but I bought far less today.  I think I walked out w/ 33 books.  Several of these however were key issues that I've been searching for for a long time.  Always a nice feeling when you finally get the chance to cross off on your list that issue(s) that has been eluding you for quite some time.

One of the perks that came w/ my 3 day advance ticket was early admittance to the convention and today I took advantage of it.  While my brother sat upstairs waiting for the doors to open to everyone else at 10:00 am I got to head downstairs early.  The line to get in this morning was ridiculously long so I headed over to the elevator for a little short cut!  

I was on a mission.  Late yesterday I found a dealer that had just reduced his dollar books to 50 cent.  I only bought a few because he said he was going to mark the books down again to 25 cents just before closing today and for all day Sunday.  That said I grabbed 2 issues of the old Marvel series Super-Villain Team-Up.  I couldn't believe they were in a dollar box much less marked down to 50 cent.  I grabbed issues 6 & 7 yesterday thinking issue 6 was the first appearance of the character The Shroud.  I was wrong.  So I headed back to that table to grab issue 5 (which was the first appearance) and the rest of the books from that title.

When I hit the sales floor this morning however I was surprised to see how empty it was.  I just saw this incredibly long line to get in today so where was everyone I thought.  

They where here - in line for a chance of an autograph and or picture of the legendary comic creator Stan Lee.  While it's cool that he was there and a host of many other creators that has never been my cup of tea.  I may try and get Mike Zeck to autograph an issue of Captain America tomorrow, but I won't go out of my way.

On the way out to drop off our comics in the car and grab a bite to eat we saw that the Ghostbusters' Ecto-1 was parked outside of the Convention Center!  These guys are local so I've see the car at other comic related functions, but I've never had my camera on me before.

I saw them pull up late Friday and the guys were posing in front of Ecto-1 w/ all of their gear on, but for whatever reason I didn't snap a picture.

The cosplay people were out in force today.  I saw a lot of great costumes and I'd love to have gotten pictures of them, but I still feel weird going up to them and asking for a picture.  Some of the more notable costumes I saw today were of Iron Man, the Black Widow, Spider-Man, a Umbrella Company soldier (Resident Evil), Sub-Zero (Mortal Kombat), Cobra Commander and Storm Shadow, Dr. Fate, several different Cat Women and I'm sure I've left off a few.

By the end of the day I was tired of the crowds so when we headed upstairs for the Stan Lee panel we purposefully sat in the very back of the room...so I apologize for the crappy picture!

The Stan Lee panel was basically a thirty minute Q&A session.  This was the first time I've seen Stan in person so it was cool, but the panel wasn't anything spectacular...at least to me.  I admire what the guy has done for comics, but I wasn't gushing over him like so many of the people that stood up to ask him a question.  I will say that Stan's wit and humor was fully intact and it made the short panel entertaining.

Two days in the books.  One day left.  I'm ready to seek out some deals tomorrow and sit in on the afternoon Marvel Comics panel.  I don't anticipate staying until the convention closes at 6 pm as my body is already feeling the effects of these last two days.  Plus I'm ready to pick up my little girls as I've missed spending time w/ them this weekend.

HeroesCon Day 1

I feel very lucky to have such an awesome annual convention such as the HeroesCon held in my backyard each year.  There are no shortages of great comic book conventions across America, but one of the best is held in mid June each year in Charlotte, NC.

I took a day of vacation and made the short trip uptown to the Charlotte Convention Center w/ my wife, older brother and a friend of mine. With my mom watching our two girls this weekend my wife and I were excited to "get away" a bit.  Even though comics aren't really my wife's thing, she graciously agreed to come along and help me look for comics.

Beforehand I made her two lists.  A text list and a list w/ thumbnail images of the covers.  She doesn't really get the differences between Captain America vol. 1 and vol. 3 and I wanted to make things as easy on her as possible.

I like attending on Friday as you get first dibs at thumbing through all the boxes before the masses swarm the sales floor on Saturday.  It all paid off today as I set my wife loose at a booth that had all of their 50 cent books in alphabetical and numerical order!  I believe she found about 60 books for me at that one booth.

I think we spent a total of 6 hours today at the show and even though my body is tired I'm ready for more tomorrow.  I was unable to take many pictures today, but I'll work on that tomorrow and see what I can upload.

It's hard to believe this convention is as old as my wife!  This is the 30th anniversary of the HeroesCon and to celebrate the event a very nice Rocketeer print was made and given to people that bought a 3 day advance ticket.  The prints weren't ready this morning so I'll have to pick up mine on the way out tomorrow.

Also to help celebrate the anniversary this weekend they brought in the legendary Stan Lee!  I didn't pony up the extra cash to buy a ticket that had special privileges for autographs and such, but we do plan to attend his panel tomorrow.

This is just a very small sample of what I brought home w/ me today.  I still can't believe we found all of these books in the 50 cent boxes!  Well the Nova Essential TPB wasn't $.50, but still a good deal at $5.00.  I could've knocked out a big run of The Defenders, but I settled w/ issues #61 & #62 for the time being.  I know a lot of dealers will start marking things down late tomorrow and going into Sunday so I have to practice some patience.  I couldn't believe that my wife pulled out Avengers #188 & #189.  I'm getting ever so closer to have a consecutive run of 250 issues of the Avengers!

My brother is the one who found this Captain America Annual.  The cover artist Mike Zeck is in attendance this weekend so I might have to take this book back w/ me to have him add his autograph to this iconic cover.

All in all it was a great day and I can't wait to see what day 2 and day 3 has in store for us.  Keep checking back for more updates, pictures and to see what else I bought.