Mr. Monster attended the First Annual Southern California Comic Con (aka SoCal Comic Con) on Saturday, November 6, 2010 and it was a nice little show (actually a bit bigger than the one held monthly at the Rose Bowl…more dealers here).

Photos courtesy of SPDREYCER, more here.

Getting To The OBGC!
Arrived around 11:00 a.m. expecting slim pickings of vendors and guests since it was being held at the Oceanside Boys & Girls Club (Northern San Diego Country) and saw the parking lot a bit packed. The place was busier than I was expecting which was cool and a lot more dealers than I thought would be there. Cost to get in was $3.00 which was fair and you could also buy $1.00 raffle tickets for three drawings held in the afternoon for comics and comic-related prizes.

On their bare-bones website it stated you could get in for free with a flyer from one of the local comic shops, too bad it didn’t list which shops you could pick them up?

Selling The Wares
There were good amount of sellers with CGC and GA/SA items as well as two to three smaller sellers letting go from their collection with .25 and .50 bins that I was able to picked up a few fillers from. Not any rare finds in the cheap-o bins, though I was able to finally get The Demon Annual #2 (First Hitman appearance) from a dollar bin.

If you’re into pre-modern comics then this was a nice little show to attend since those were the types of dealers you would find setting up the longer tables for along with CGC graded items. A few sellers were there with the usual 40-50% off TPBs and some comic-related toys. I was able to pick up a Hot Wheels Batmobile (first Keaton film) for $2.00!

Show Me The Art . . .
Now I stopped by the show since I was going to be in the area anyways and what got me to attend was a couple of artist attendees that were going to show up there.

First off was Mr. Bob Layton who was the Iron Man artist from my days of reading that comic. I was able to get Bob Layton to sign some of my Valiant books he wrote and/or inked and an Iron Man comic as well. He had a table with some of his prints and was doing commissions as well. He had a portfolio with some original art for sale including art from the un-published Iron Man: The End. Unfortunately Mr. Monster’s budget wouldn’t allow for the purchase of Iron Man art that day, one day though!

There were a group of Wildstorm artists in the alley there and I was able to pick up an OA from artist/inker Richard Friend of a piece from the Batman/Superman comic and got him and Whilce Portacio to sign the piece as well. Wish I had more disposable cash to get some Iron Man OA from Bob and some other OA from the alley artists.

Show’s Over Folks
For a first showing it turned out pretty well and if the event producers decide to continue hopefully they can attract even more vendors and industry people. The only thing I could suggest is to give paying attendees at least a raffle ticket as part of the admission price instead of buying it separately. Since I didn’t expect to be there during the three raffle times (starting around noon to the end of the show at 5-ish) there was no particular incentive for me to buy one if I had to stick around to win something so when there was a drawing I didn’t even pay attention. Give attendees some raffle tickets along with their entry purchase to keep the audience excited and they can buy additional tickets if they want to increase their chances.

Overall a nice small con and hopefully they repeat it and get some other cool artists like Bob, Whilce and the Wildstorm team too in the future!