Wicked Comic Con 2024 Recap

When this gets posted, I'll be in the midst of packing up to head to Terrificon. 

Last week I was able to attend Wicked Comic Con on Sunday. (Work got in the way of my attending both days.) The place seemed busy with lots of foot traffic. 

This con is young but growing each year. There was a very solid stable of creator guests invited to the show including such legends as Adam Hughes and Phil Jimenez. While I had met many of the guests at other shows, it is always good to see them again and bring any new books for signatures. In particular, I got to talk to Jimenez for some time about Historia Book One. That book was absolutely stunning and so chatting with him about process and his approach to the gods was fascinating.

But there were a couple of guests there who I hadn't met before who I was looking forward to meeting - Tom Reilly, Marco Rudy, and Dustin Nguyen.  As I had said in a prep post, I was hoping to get a commission from Reilly. 

Luckily, there was room on his sketch list on Sunday!

Check out this brilliant commission!

It was really great to talk to Reilly about the sketch. He looked through my sketch book at all the commissions and noted how there was only one sketch with Supergirl in the classic headband costume (from George Perez). That was the costume he was interested in doing.

I just love this. First off, it just captures what I love about Reilly's art. It being the headband costume makes it stand out for sure. But the other touches, the stars, the tone effects around her fist. The confident look. That classic curly 80s hair. 

It just sings! I couldn't be happier.

Wicked Comic Con Next Weekend

Wicked Comic Con Boston is happening next weekend!

I didn't think I would be able to get to this convention because I was working a later shift on Saturday the 10th,  making neither weekend day easy to attend. As luck would have it a friend needed a switch and I was able to move to an early shift on Saturday.

While it meant a Saturday con visit was out of the question, it opened up Sunday! 

So I'll be heading to the con! An extra summer treat for me!

I am glad my town has a good comic con. Wicked is young, this being it's third year in it's third venue. But each year they bring in a solid guest list and this year is no different. There are plenty of creators I am looking forward to meeting. Hopefully some of you are heading there too!

Here is a link to the con site: https://www.wickedcomiccon.com/

I don't know if I'll be able to get any commissions given I will only be there Sunday. But I hope I am able to get one from Tom Reilly .

Reilly drew Knight Terrors Superman which included that great Supergirl plot where she was haunted by older versions of herself. Reilly basically had to draw all the big Supergirl costumes in that story (albeit on zombified Supergirls). 

Reilly feels like an up and comer so I hope there is a spot on his sketch list.

But there is more!

Review: Knight Terrors: Superman #2

Knight Terrors: Superman #2 came out this week and was a fantastic story for fans of  the super-family. In particular, this issue really did a great job showing how close Superman and Supergirl are, at least in writer Joshua Williamson's mind. To see the super-cousins working together, talking to each other like colleagues, and saving the day. There's even some fun Lois moments. And Aquaman and Mera are the real heroes!

As I have said recently, the last year has been wonderful for me as a Supergirl fan. The bad taste that Tom King's Woman of Tomorrow mini-series has sort of been cleansed from my psyche by Joshua Williamson and Phillip Kennedy Johnson. Kara often seems wiser beyond her years, 'the smartest person in the room', and a fierce fighter of injustice. We get a ton of that here, as I'll show. But there is an unfortunate downside to all this upside ... more on that later.

The art by Tom Reilly works well with the story. There is something rough and ready with the art which amps up the nightmarish parts of the story. It has the feel of Chris Samnee, very much a compliment. I love his take on all the Supergirl variant zombies. The cover by Gleb Melnikov works well with the cousins getting ready to throw down.

I don't know if I needed Knight Terrors as an event. It makes little sense overall. But the two Superman mini-series have really utilized this little break to explore the characters and their motivations in a way that can only help the main titles. I enjoyed this a lot, especially as a Supergirl fan. 

On to some details.

Review: Knight Terrors: Superman

 Dawn of DC seemed to be firing on all cylinders, at least the books I was reading and I felt like the DCU was finally picking up some momentum. So when Knight Terrors, a 2 month cross-company horror based event that no one asked for, was announced I worried. It seemed like all this was going to do was pump the brakes on some titles that were really clicking. In particular, for this site, both Superman and Action Comics are solid right now. Do I need a break?

Knight Terrors: Superman #1 came out this week and I have to say allayed a few of my fears. You can think about these books in two ways. 

One, you can think about the main title. A villain named Insomnia is wandering through hero's nightmares looking for the Nightmare Stone to rule the world. Frankly, I don't care. I am not sure if this is going to impact anything in such a way that it warrants a two month mega-block.

But the other way you can look at this is it allows creative teams to take a hard look at the title characters. If each book is going to be a deep dive into character's fears, it gives the creators some room to explore. It gives the reader a sense of what the creators think of their charges. We are just seeing what writer Joshua Williamson thinks of Superman in that book. So why not have us see 'under the hood' as it were, learning what Williamson thinks is Superman's greatest fears. We learn it is being alone. And that is interesting. We know family is important to Clark. He loves his world. He loves his friends. Of course, isolation would be terrifying. 

Add to that a major Supergirl subplot and Williamson has created a book that I very much enjoyed as a Superman fan. I don't know if I am a Knight Terrors fan ... yet. But this worked.

Gleb Melnikov gives us a moody cover of Superman of Superman falling through the night sky. Tom Reilly does the inside art and  nails it. Reilly has a sort of Chris Samnee/Michael Cho classic feel to the proceedings. Things are scary when they should be. But his inclusion of some classic DC images made me smile. And, of course, the Supergirl stuff is great. 

So far so good here. On to the details.