A Tour of Wizard World Chicago

This past weekend one of the largest comic book conventions in the country took place in Chicago. I’ve attended the Wizard World Chicago convention for the last 9 years. 5 of those years I was attending as a fan and the other 4 I was attending as an exhibitor selling my comic book and photography. Most of my family and friends know I go to this show, but they don’t really know what goes on over the weekend. This past show I decided to take my camera with and take some images to help give an idea of what the Wizard World convention is like.

I’m going to start at the beginning. Here is an image of what you would see when first entering the show.

All of the big comic books companies (Marvel, DC, Image, etc.) set up booths right at the front doors to promote any upcoming movies, large comic events, and hold signings by some of the most popular artists and writers who work on their books. Farther in the distance are smaller booths for independent comic book publishers and an autograph area with minor celebs like Lou Ferrigno, Johnny Fairplay and any number of former pro wrestler and/or star wars actors.

The next major area at the convention are the vendors. Half the show floor is dominated by a variety of booths selling comic books, movie posters, toys, swords, knives, bootleg movies, patches, collectibles, t-shirts and much much more. The show tends to not focus on comic books, and covers pop culture, science-fiction, and cult tv/movies.

Fans looking through boxes of comics.

Variety of t-shirts on display.

Pez at one of the collectible booths.

The last section on the main floor is Artist Alley. This is where a variety of professional and aspiring artists come to sell their art, comic books, prints, and to do commissions and sketches. Personally this is my favorite area of the show. There is wealth of talent here, and a great opportunity to chit chat with the artists and find new things.

By now you’ve walked around for a couple hours. Hunger is setting in. There are several places around the show to buy over priced, poorly cooked food that’s been sitting out under the heat lamp too long. Best to bring your own food.

Ok, I’m bringing up the food just to show that photo of storm troopers eating. We thought it was amusing. At any show you can pretty much expect to see a small army of storm troopers walking the floor.

Along with the storm troopers there are lots of people in costume. Just an other reason I love to go to this show. I’ve gone in costume several times in the past. It’s a blast. Although it’s a bit difficult to get around the show if you have a really cool outfit because people will stop and take your photo every 20 feet. There are a lot of people dressed up this year. I took a ton of photos of people I saw in costume this year, and I’ll be putting those up in the next few parts.

After all of this we have more show! In an other section of the convention center there are a lectures, discussion groups, and movies held in a series of ballrooms. I didn’t take any photos of these, I don’t normally head to this area of the show. Outside the ballrooms is a signing area. this is where they hold signing for some of the top names in the comics business. The line of people waiting to get a signature from painter Alex Ross is below.