By Megan Donohue
I’ll admit it – I instantly love anyone who draws a Doctor Who poster of David Tennant with his sonic screwdriver and will give it to me at a price less than my monthly rent, so I may be biased in favor of Columbia’s first DoDeca-Con. Still, poster already in hand, I wouldn’t turn down tickets to next year’s Con.
The artists at the tables had mixed opinions. Some said they had talked to a fair amount of people as the crowd trickled through during the day and others who had been to larger conventions said it was unbearably slow. Still, it was the convention’s first year in a smaller college town, so all things considered it had a decent turn out with decent tables.
If you missed it, here is a run down of the basics.
Three best things
1) Variety
There was a really good variety in the vendors at the tables. There were independent comic book writers, artist and publishers selling their own work, poster artists with posters depicting everything from Harry Potter to the Avengers to Doctor Who that they had drawn, comic book vendors with book on sale four for a dollar and then vendors with collectors books upwards of $100, figurines, costumes, cosplay accessories and even squid and cuttlefish plushies. My favorite purchase would have to be my Shrinky Dink Tardis earrings for $2.
2) Pricing
Tickets ranged from $7 to $25 for the weekend depending on when you bought them and how much of the Con you wanted to participate in. Considering the fact that it was a first year convention the prices were pretty reasonable.
3) Activities
The activities were spaced pretty evenly, so there were a lot of things to keep you busy. Plus nothing says fun like Renaissance re-enactors fighting with fake weapons. As miserable as it must have been for the re-enactors to run around in the over-80-degree weather with metal helmets and layers of padding, the crowd definitely enjoyed watching them hack each other on the heads with wooden axes and swords.
Three things that could have been better
1) Location
Kemper Arena is small. Even though there was good variety of products at the tables, personal space suffered because there were so many. If there were more than two people walking down an aisle at the same time, everyone in the aisle had to do an awkward, sideways tiptoe shuffle to keep from grinding on each other.
2) Activities
The activities were well spaced and some of them were good, but others were a little slow. The two events with information about costumes were interesting, but they could have been summed up into 10 minutes instead of 60.
3) Wrist Bands
So yes, this doesn’t exactly have anything to do with the convention directly, but no one has ever put an event wristband on my arm so tightly. By the time I had reached the first event table my right hand had lost circulation and the rest of my arm was pounding. Luckily I was able to peel it off and loosen it, otherwise I might have lost my hand.
© Vox Talk 2011
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