Wizard World New Orleans - the first big Comic Con of New Orleans

I hope everyone made it out to Wizard World last weekend. It really did turn into a great show.  Wizard was able to bring in a number of big names like Adam West Billy Dee Williams, and Ernie Hudson from the Hollywood side of things, and then people like Phil Jimenez, Rob Liefeld, Mike Grell, and Micheal Golden from the comic industry.  Hopefully Wizard World comes back next year in and even bigger event, but for the first one it has already been the biggest comic con to come into the city.

It started off on Friday at Media Underground Comics in Metairie, LA where Phil Jimenez came in for an hour or so to do a pre-show signing and giving away a number of free comics and art by him.  He talked to everyone and joking around a bit.  For midday on a Friday, it was a good start to the con with about 30-40 people showing up.

The next morning, I got up earlier than planned, so just went ahead and drove down to the Convention Center.  I got there shortly after 9:30 and see someone walking up dressed as Marty McFly, and lo and behold its my friend Stephen ready to go find the DeLorean as soon as we get in.  By that time the line has to be around 100 or so deep and there is a still a line behind us still forming. 

Once 10am hit, the line flowed very smoothly into the hall, and after a first step through, and walking by Ernie Hudson in his Ghostbuster's uniform, we quickly found the DeLorean, and the people working the booth loved that Stephen was dressed up. I loved that this thing was in working condition and even the buttons to set the date you wanted to go to worked great.








Stephen got the full Back to the Future treatment of them showing how everything worked, he even got a video of them setting his birthday as the date.  This was one of the highlights of the show.

After that it was time to just walk around and take in the show. Running into other friends and just taking in everything else.  All of the costumes (which were actually fewer than expected) were great. The first one here to the right are a couple of friends dressed at Joker and Harley Quinn.

One of the panels that I was really looking forward too was the Chew/Sweets Panel on Saturday with Rob Guillory and Kody Chamberlain (pictured Chamberlain right and Guillory left).  They talked and took questions, and one of my favorites was Guillory talking about the origin of the term "Graphic Novel". It started with Will Eisner trying to get the first book solely based in comic art published, and he knew that the publishers would not accept it if he used the words "comic book", and thus the term graphic novel was born. In case you were wondering that book is "Contract with God" which on a side note, I have an original copy.

 Another favorite thing of the show for me was the 2 kid Batman's fight against each other when their Robin father's were standing around talking. We were just sitting around, and all of a sudden a bat fight broke out.

There are just 2 shots of the crowd and 

 My friend Rhea and her brother Mage (real Mage not listed).















Finally a Saints K-9 from Doctor Who and another friend Damon dressed as bone claw Wolverine.