Douglas Otto
The third time’s supposed to be the charm. For Wizard World Comic Con’s third swing through Madison, it felt a little less like charm and a lot more like churn.
Start with the volatile guest list. No less than nine of the scheduled celebrity guests for the Madison show that wrapped up at the Alliant Energy Center Sept. 24 ended up bailing out. The list of no-shows include Michael Cudlitz (the dearly departed Abraham from The Walking Dead), Ray “Darth Maul” Park and John “Q” De Lancie from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Even with the last-minute replacements (Young Boba Fett!) what we ended up with was one supernova-level guest — legendary Marvel Comics creator-turned Marvel movie cameo artist Stan Lee — and a warm bucket of C-listers. When your most omnipresent, um, celebrity at the con is none other than Kato Kaelin, the house guest whose height of fame expired three full decades ago, something’s more than a little off. Wizard World blamed travel and filming -commitment fallout from the recent bout of hurricanes for the sparse lineup; it could also have something to do with the parent company’s ongoing financial issues. Wizard World is staging fewer events, and sales at several of the more recent cons have been disappointing.
Celebs weren’t the only thing that was scarcer at this year’s con — artists’ numbers seemed down, too. The previous two events were shoulder-to-shoulder affairs, with tightly packed vendor booths and queues to view artist sketchbooks reaching a few folks deep. This year, there were cavernous open spaces on the con’s main floor. Steve Geiger, the former Marvel Comics art director assigned to give a video-assisted Saturday drawing lesson from a stage surrounded by one of those cavernous spaces, might have nailed it when, as he waited for a tech issue to be resolved so he could start his demo, sheepishly told the audience, “It’s been a very rushed morning.”
Douglas Otto
But the empty feel didn’t tamp the vibe for the attendees, many of whom were clearly having a blast showing off their cosplay creativity. Middle-aged dudes decked out as Deadpool and Wolverine were striding around pushing baby strollers (thankfully, neither was demanding a fiver for photos, unlike the opportunist with the “Saw” Billy doll). Marvel’s Taskmaster could be seen snarfing a slice of pepperoni with Spider-Gwen. Rick and Morty T-shirts were as copious as dudes dressed up as the heroes from the CW’s successful lineup of DC Superheroes-based TV shows. There was even some guy rocking cosplay for Mountain Dew Kickstart’s horrifying mascot, the Puppymonkeybaby. The boundaries of pop culture know no limit.
But the most apt cosplayer might just have been the dude striding around gussied up as Forbush Man, the somewhat less-than-superheroic goofball Lee dreamed up back in Marvel’s Silver Age to parody his own company. Like this year’s con itself, the cosplayer’s Forbush getup was both beautiful and cobbled together, with his cooking-pot mask, red union suit and oversized galoshes. The hordes — and I do mean hordes, as yea, verily, their numbers were legion — of fans who forked over upward of $150 for the chance to snap a photo with Stan Lee may not have known who Forbush Man is, but they totally grooved on his look.
They also grooved on everything Stan, filling the seats in the Arena Ballroom to hear and applaud the man who dreamed up the characters on everyone’s T-shirts and cineplexes. And although some of the Madison fans failed to bring their A-game to the Q&A session — seriously, you’re face to face with one of the most famous and storied comic book legends in history, and you want to know his favorite flavor of milkshake and favorite type of wood? — the affable nonagenarian never once took offense, eventually revealing the origin stories of how he ended up publishing Spider-Man and the X-Men over the objections of his small-minded publishers.
Lee also dropped a few clever nuggets about one of his most famous bad guys.
“It’s not a crime to conquer the world,” Lee quipped in defense of his hot-take theory that Victor Von Doom is no villain. “Dr. Doom is just a very ambitious man.”
Three years ago, Wizard World Madison felt ambitious, too. Now it just seems there’s a lot less there there.
