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Mid-Ohio-Con - Sunday Walkabout - 2008 Page 1 of 3   Next Page Since this site last traveled to Mid-Ohio-Con in 2007, the event was sold, the date moved ahead nearly two months and the location switched in the big Columbus Convention Center. Sunday in 2008 in the Ohio capitol might have been a little quieter than in 2007, but otherwise we saw few differences in the event. This is the focus of a comic convention, the booths crowded with boxes full of back issues where fans shop for for their favorites from past years. To the eyes of this observer, the comic store booths look much the same and seem to offer the same merchandise, with the same size of collectors' boxes. One of the exceptions was the booth of Star Trek memorabilia that was selling autographed plaques from the original 1967 case for more than $2,000. This was the competition in the convention center, and the place you needed to go to experience the youthful enthusiasm you'd find at an anime convention. The cheerleaders were of the same age as most anime convention fans, and they enjoyed themselves in a way the older, more dour adults didn't - or wouldn't - at the comic book event. The older comic convention crowd came for older, seasoned, credentialed industry veterans such as Joe Kubert, the Eisner-award winner who has been in the comics industry for at least seventy years, and has outlived the genres - such as war comics - that were popular when he began creating stories. Kubert is old enough to be the grandfather of the cheerleaders next door, but he outworked the younger artists, spending the entire day meeting with lines of fans who love his work. Another gray eminence at the convention was Chris Claremont, the writer who was one of the leading figures in the renaissance of the X-Men series in the 1990's. In a way, you can trace the X-Men movies of the last few years to his stories, which revitalized the characters from the days of the blue and yellow uniforms. Claremont also chatted with X-Men creators and fans at a panel discussion. This was for the people who wondered how Marvel kept track of the many X-Men characters and found a way to use them in the multiple series; Claremont said it wasn't easy, especially when some characters died, then came back to life and places had to be found to use them. Page 1 of 3   Next Page Mid-Ohio-Con Main Page