I lived out by rosemont and completely agree, it’s a wasteland and does nothing to attract people.

1. A measurably larger crowd, especially in Artist’s Alley. Last year, I had a table in the separate side area of Artist’s Alley, and there was less than no foot traffic. The main Artist’s Alley area had almost two full rows of empty tables, and the parts that did have artists would see isolated heavy crowds (particularly the Image back corner) but it was by and large pretty empty, too.

This year, Artist’s Alley was much more crowded, both with artists and with attendees, up and down virtually every aisle. I think this was helped by the presence of guys who would normally be at company booths signing in AA instead (J. Scott Campbell, Arthur Suydam, and especially David Finch, whose line went halfway down the dealer’s area on Friday morning).

2. A LOT more young kids. There were constantly members of the under-12 set underfoot, and most of them seemed excited and eager to be there. (I saw a brother and sister dressed as Captain America and Wonder Woman, the WW doing Linda Carter’s patented spinning move….it was adorable.) This also caused one of the more unfortunate moments of the weekend at the Mondo Marvel panel, though, when Joe Quesada was talking about Spider-Man having sex and downloading porn as a mom and dad dragged their 5 or 6 year old son out of the room. Good goin’, Joe!

3. People actually showered! Maybe I was just congested or something, but I didn’t end up humming “That Smell” by Lynyrd Skynyrd more than a couple times all weekend.

After an absolutely horrible year last year, I thought this year’s Wizard World was a vast improvement, and I hope the momentum continues into the earlier summer date next year. I understand people’s hatred of Wizard, but remember for those of us who live in the Midwest (St. Louis, here), it’s the only game in town. I’d rather encourage continued improvement of a con I can drive to than hope for its replacement by a con in NYC that’s three times as far away and well out of my price range.

I’m curious to know if there was any substantial manga presence at Chicago. There was none in Philly, which was very disappointing. A manga retailer would have cleaned up in Philly.

The general consensus seems to be that San Diego is almost too big to do meetings and certainly too big for impromptu connections to lead into much of anything besides deciding to follow up after the show. And Chicago has become less and less a “must attend” event. There are fewer publishers there and fewer editors from the publishers that are.

For myself, I’ve been going to the con in Chicago since well before I was a published writer and well before it became Wizard World. I’d hate to give up on a longstanding tradition. But I’m seeing that the schedule for next year is Philly May 30-June 1 and Chicago June 26-29. I mean, they’re practically competing with themselves! They’re certainly stepping on Heroes Con’s toes again.

There’s a good chance that I’ll just skip Wizard World Chicago next year and head down to Heroes for the first time. I’ve heard great things about the show and to my knowledge they’ve never scheduled a show right on top of someone else’s.

PDS