XCon 2010 – Myrtle Beach’s Comic Book Convention

Starting tomorrow and running through Sunday Oct 24, the 3rd annual XCon comic book convention will be held at Springmaid Beach Resort in Myrtle Beach. The con was the cover story of this week’s Weekly Surge, so hopefully that will help bring some locals in. I did like the cover with it’s Marvel style cover including Steve and Robin as superheroes launching off of Springmaid Pier.

I’ve been to all of them so far and am looking forward to this one as well. It’s a no brainer, occurring in my area as it is. I tend to focus on filling in my wishlist from the cheap comic boxes. Last year there were several vendors with 3/$1 boxes and I’d be delighted to see some more of them this year. I’m also planning on getting a lot of stuff signed by area comics creator Jonathan Hickman. I met him at the first XCon and bought everything he had published at the time, which was mostly his Image work. Since then, he’s come on strong as a hot ticket writer for Marvel Comics. I just recently bought and enjoyed his Ultimate Thor so I’ll be getting that signed and chatting with him about it for sure.

One of the nice things about this con is that its the opposite of Dragon*Con or Heroes Con. It’s growing but still a pretty small regional con. You have plenty of time and room to shop, and lots of chances to talk to and interact with creators. As much as I enjoy those larger cons, they exhaust me with the bustle and size of them. I don’t mind having one at the opposite end of the spectrum in my year as well. Hope I see you there!

“Dave Slusher, Local Comic Book Fan”

I can live with the label in the title. I was interviewed by Roger Yale for this weeks cover article in the Weekly Surge (the Surge is weird about permalinks, follow that link quick if you want to see the actual article) about the XCon in Myrtle Beach. I was highly worried when I talked to Roger that I wasn’t giving him anything useful. It turned out alright, which is more a testament to Roger than me.

I won’t get to attend the second day of the convention but the first was surprisingly good, especially being a kind of odd 3 PM to 6 PM deal. My main hope was that the thing made enough money (or lost little enough) that they’d do another one and make this an annual event. That appears to be a realistic outcome based on what I saw yesterday and what I read in the article. It certainly wasn’t huge but I was there for a few hours and had a great time. It’s going on today until 7 PM. If you can get yourself there, I’d urge you to do it.

My only problem was that as I get older, digging through long boxes of comics located underneath folding tables for 15 minutes at a time while kneeling on cement floors has become an arduous physical task. There has got to be a better way.