The dealer hall was not as crowded on Sunday and much like the previous day most of the action took place in the dealer hall. This made it much easier to visit the Elvira and Stan Lee Museums . The Stan Lee museum featured movie props, toys, and busts of popular Marvel characters. It was fun to see everything and it was much easier to go through the area with the smaller crowds. The Elvira museum had horror props and was a fun trip for horror and cheesy horror fans. The museums are a nice addition to the dealer hall and a great way to take a break from the usual rush of the convention.

Not all comic publishers are in New York , some are local and one of SoCal’s great local companies had a chance to show off their wares at ComiKaze. Aspen Comics had a booth that featured their popular titles like Executive Assistant Iris, Fathom, and Lady Mechanika. However, the big treat of the booth was artwork by deceased company founder Michael Turner. The one that caught my eye was a beautiful print of Supergirl, sadly it was out of my price range. We were also very lucky to get an interview with Vince Hernandez Aspen’s editor in chief, the interview can be found here.

If you read Star Wars books in the 90s then you will likely remember the name Kevin J. Anderson. He is the author of the Jedi Academy Trilogy, The Dune Prequels, and numerous other sci-fi and fantasy books. His booth not only featured his books, but Kevin J. Anderson himself was there to talk with fans, sign books, and show off his new projects. He was very friendly and welcoming to questions. If you are a fan of his books then you really should meet him when he makes an appearance.

ComiKaze also made room for video games. Not too far from the main stage was the Activision game booth. They were primarily showing off Transformers: Fall of Cybertron with several screen set up for live demo. However, the announcer did remind everyone that Activision does have the Walking Dead game, but we could not find it anywhere on site. The game booth was light and it really could have used more to entice visitors.

Old school gaming also had representation at ComiKaze. There was a booth showing off a new high quality collection of Intellivision games. The games looked great and there was actually a line to play. It is surprising that so many people were interested in playing old games from the early 1980s. The nostalgic feeling continued with the Far Sight Studios booth that was showing off their hit game Pinball Arcade. The booth featured a classic Elvira pinball machine, but it was roped off. However, everyone could play the digital recreation of that table on Pinball Arcade. It was great to see a company that was going through exacting detail in order to make a digital recreation of classic pinball machines.

Sunday also had a good share of panels one of the most heavily attended panels was the Breaking into the Industry panel. One of the key points of this panel was persistence and not giving up as many aspiring writers do tend to give up. Other advice included taking any job you could find, not to worry about an agent early on, and to have as many scripts as possible. It was nice to get advice from professionals to help writers move forward in their careers.

The convention had booths for fans of all ages. On the mature (immature?) side there was Deepcut Productions and their newest project the revamp of Stripperella. The booth featured the artist Anthony Winn and a very attractive Stripperella booth babe. There was plenty of art posted and you could pick up autographed copies of the new book. We were told that Stan Lee stopped by on occasion, but we did not see him.

For the younger demographic there was the WE Comics booth. They were promoting their all-ages books including “Jimmy Brass: 2nd Grade Detective”. It was great seeing an independent group bringing comics back to the early days of family friendly books. They also showed off their superhero comic “Triage” about a paramedic that becomes a superhero. We gave them an interview and a review of Jimmy Brass will be completed soon.

There were some great independent production groups that were pushing their books on Sunday. One of the more interesting projects was Contra Alliance. Not only is Contra Alliance a novel, they are beginning a trans-media project including comics and web animation. The art looks great and the project sounded very interesting.

On the note of interesting ideas there was also a booth dedicated to Jurassic Con. The booth had an archeologist and a paleontologist. The scientists were friendly and able to answer any questions giving by attendees. The booth had two old power wheels that were driven around as a form of promotion. The booth also had fossils and it made the convention look exciting and fun. It is nice to see a convention that combines fun and education. The convention will also be free to attend and Scarlet Rhapsody will be there to cover this fantasy/educational convention.

To close the day out the team decided to hit the Animation Writers panel which featured writers from hit shows like Darkwing Duck, X-Men, The Real Ghostbusters, and Ben-10. They talked about how they got into the industry and the difficulties that come with the modern process of animation writing. They also gave advice including the importance of knowing the script formats, keeping tone with the show, and using final draft as it is the most commonly used script program. It was a fun panel and the quick wit of the writers made for many funny moments.

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