CGC's Wizard World Texas Report

The halls of CGC were looking bare on Friday, November 16th when a quarter of the CGC staff left to set up in New York for the National and another quarter flew to Texas for Wizard World. This event set into motion a small CGC "Civil War" of sorts, when one army of CGC employees in the North and the other in the South created a friendly competition between the two groups to see who would have the most successful show weekend. All wagers aside, for the author of this article was one of the employees in Texas; from this point on we will only write about the winning weekend at Wizard World Texas.

You know you are off to a wild start to your weekend when you look up from the submission form you are helping a customer fill out and see one of the many visitors to the Arlington Convention Center get thrown off of a mechanical bull. Wizard World Texas 2007 was not your typical comic convention and it shows in it's willingness to be different and more spontaneous than other shows.

One of the special guests at Wizard World Texas (who at one point climbed onto the mechanical bull for a quick impromptu photo op; but wouldn't ride it, causing a few boos from spectators) was the new Smallville actress Laura Vandervoort who plays Supergirl on the show. The addition of Vandervoort to the cast has caused a renewed interest in the character in D.C. Comics. We got a taste of this popularity by the many copies of Action Comics #252 (Supergirl's 1st appearance) which were submitted at the CGC booth, along with many of the Modern Supergirl issues signed by the actress submitted for the prestigious CGC Signature Series label.

Many famous comic writers and artists attended the show such as J. Scott Campbell, Humberto Ramos, Arthur Suydam, Angel Medina, Greg Pak, Michael Golden and Marc Silvestri. The great thing about Wizard World Texas is that the lines for these super stars aren't always very long and can go very fast. Because of this, fans get a lot of face time with their favorite artists and writers. Many fans took advantage of these accessible super star guests, using deputized CGC Signature Series Witnesses to qualify their signed books for the popular gold label designation, thus making CGC Signature Series submissions once again very popular at the show.

At a show like Texas where anything can happen, you learn to expect the unexpected. So when super heroes Fat Momma and Major Victory of Stan Lee's "Who Wants to be A Super Hero" tv show visited us at the CGC booth we all were very excited . After a short chat, and a few photo oportunites, even they took advantage of our convenient submission drop-off and filled out submissions of their own!

Wizard World Texas is a great show for independent creators to showcase their work. Many creators even hired people to walk around the convention floor in costume to promote their characters that would otherwise go unknown. In the end, Wizard World was a successful show for everyone; from the small creator, to the big dealer, from the average collector, to the teenager dressed in the Superman suit. Even when your in a friendly competition with a bunch of your coworkers as far North as New York City, you can't help but sit back and just enjoy the convention itself. After all, we're all in it for one thing - the love of the hobby.