You can spend hours on end, hitting your head against a wall to come up with the perfect sentence to open a blog post about inexcusable items for sale at a convention. Or you can open with this picture:
This sign really captures the essence that is the Wizard World vendor floor; a no holds barred gathering of ‘hey, you gonna finish that?’. Yes. Yes, I am going to finish this. That’s what I’d tell them anyway, if I weren’t avoiding eye contact at all costs.
Over three days I saw: a combover that gives Gene Keady a run for his money; a guy selling dirty lego pieces in bulk; and Stan ‘The Guy’ Lee.
There really is something for everyone at this convention, including those hard to please ‘just give me a wrastlin toy that sweats and I’ll shut up’ curmudgeons.
Done.
The talk of the convention this year was the…searching for a non-explicative…unorthodox…nature of the floor layout. They moved the entrance to the middle of the show floor, left the traditional entrance as an exit, pushed artist alley outside of the convention center and into a seedy gas station, and doubled the size of the champagne room. I had no problem with the last modification.
Here is an actual image of the show floor:
All in all the changes were a big win for abstract painters everywhere that hope to one day design convention floor layouts. My experience with it, on the other hand, was one of malcontent. As I’ve pointed out on many occasions, I prefer the highly sophisticated ‘Spiral’ method to survey the floor. The natural enemy to the spiral method is the dead end and this particular layout was not short on these. Fortunately I’m good at math and was able to quickly devise a pattern that was both A) effective (though not as effective as the spiral method) and B) incredibly infuriating to anyone walking the floor with me.
Luckily for you, I was able to assemble the usual rogues gallery of items that hope to one day be The Single Worst Thing For Sale™: Wizard World 2012.
First up, from the table that actually had the ‘trade’ sign earlier:
I was this close to buying the X-Men grooming kit before I realized that I had no taste, and my bathroom is already X-Force themed. Honest mistake.
The next item was a fan favorite:
What’s more useful than a 1991 diary in 2012? Everything. Literally everything.
Something that I had a hard time with: the text on the front specifies that this is a 1991 Swimsuit Diary. Does that mean that I’m supposed to write about the swimsuits that I wear (apparently daily!), or does it just mean that there are girls in swimsuits throughout the diary? If only someone had the forethought to point us in a direction…
Did he go out on Feb 23rd? Did he ever get that haircut he so desperately (conjecture on my part) needed? These are questions that need answering.
These are both worthy items, but sometimes The Single Worst Thing For Sale™ isn’t about the worst financial decision you can make at a con. Sometimes it’s a gut feeling; an instinct. Sometimes you are standing around while your friend looks at merchandise and you spot Alf raping a seal.
Did I mention that this is a comic book that was printed on actual paper and sold at actual comic book stores of Alf raping a seal? You know how I know that this was The Single Worst Thing For Sale™: Wizard World 2012? I legitimately thought about buying this. And I’m terrible.
Alf raping a seal comic, you are The Single Worst Thing For Sale™: Wizard World 2012!