A Super Day:

Inside the World of a Comic Book Convention

By DJ Haffely and Maggi Stivers

Progress Center, the home to Fallcon 2011. 

 Around the corner of the Progress Center at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds and about a football field away from the one entrance, the line slowly moved. People of all shapes and sizes shifted back and forth; a small woman in a black hoodie, a tall man of large girth with an impressive beard, two overweight guy friends with matching Captain America shirts, and many more stood nervously talking. They tapped their feet and waited with anticipation. The line inched a little further. The guys behind us seemed to be walking encyclopedias on this event. They spoke of heroes, villains, and stories that no common person would know. The line inched again. The people who just got to the door were greeted by people in costume. They were referred to as “Blackhawk Soldiers” by the guys behind us. The line moved again and we approached the door. Displays and people in costumes could be seen inside the gateway to the convention. Finally we got through the door and saw everything.

The "Blackhawk Soliders" welcome

guests to Fallcon 2011. 

Fallcon was a convention of superhero stories and the event archives back to August of 2009. People dress up, baught comics, movies, posters, action figures, and much more. Quickly, we emerged ourselves into this new world that neither of us had experienced before. We would find out for ourselves why people came here and why this is drew so much popularity.

DJ: I veered to the right side of the building, as I passed booth after booth. Comics, action figures, and posters lined all the walls of the building. A giant sheet of paper sprawled one of the walls. Here people drew characters to put on display for all to see. People drew demons and heroes on this giant sheet of paper. I even added a drawing of my own. Drawings covered the surface from top to bottom. Some drawings were innovative, some not so much such as mine. The sketches revealed some truer intention of bring together these unique individuals from around the state and beyond.

Comic book artists working hard at Fallcon 2011. 

Maggi: As soon as I paid my entrance fee and donated a canned food item to save a dollar, I headed into the building and found myself surrounded by tons of different tables all displaying several different types of artwork including sketches of characters, comic books, buttons and even puppets. One thing these tables had in common, their artists sitting behind them, proud of their work.

Several boxes of comic books filled the

Progress Center. 

DJ: What was next? Rows and rows of comics. Everywhere you looked comics could be seen. They varied in cost. Some expensive, and some for only 50 cents sat there on the tables and in boxes. Hard core collectors and people there just to see, walked around aimlessly. Many companies of comics could be found there; Marvel, DC, and independent comics. The booths displayed new comic books and old comic books; one box labeled, “straight out of a collector’s attic!”

An attendee dressed up

as the Joker.  

Maggi: One man took the term “costume” to a new level. He looked exactly like the Joker, making funny and creepy faces at all those who looked his way. He seemed to be the best dressed there. His friends also dressed up in costumes like a pirate and a “Watchman.”

The father and daughter looking at

boxes of comic books together. 

DJ: A father and his daughter that was no more than six or seven years old, stood by the action figures. The girl dressed like Storm, from the X-men. She wore a long white robe that had yellow trimming and displayed the “X” logo on her left shoulder.  She begged her father to get her a Wonder Woman doll. She held the doll like her life depended on it but was careful enough not to damage it. She jumped up and down as she pleaded. I could tell by the way he smiled at her that he wanted to get it for her but it costed too much. She walked away disappointed but not discouraged. She continued to flip through the rest of the figurines and some comic books with her dad.

Maggi: I stood near a table filled with boxes and boxes of comic books, pretending to know what I was looking for. A man in his mid-twenties walked up next to me, determinedly looking at the comics in the box beside to me. He seemed to have found what he was looking for. He turned around, showed his friend his discovery and immediately paid for the comic book. He walked away gasping the book so tightly, it looked as if he will never put it down. A smile spread across his face from ear to ear.

DJ: Some tables displayed explicit content. Half naked super women posed on the covers of the fanned out comics. It definitely gave me a clue to why so many grown men attended. 

Maggi: Besides, the grown men, I noticed several older women dressed as  “Cat Woman,” a costume that included tight leather pants, tops and heels some could barely walk in.

DJ: Once through the maze, I ventured to a booth where an artist drew some pictures. His face was round and perched on his nose were rectangular glasses that he kept adjusting as he hunched over his work. He made single paper cartoons. One featured a bird next a campfire in the middle of winter whose wing had gotten caught on fire. The caption above read, “Why birds fly south for the winter.” Another, presented a cartoon Mars and a cartoon Earth. This drawing included Mars talking to Earth saying, “eww, you have people on you!”

The table displaying the puppets, along with several

Fallcon attendees listening. 

Maggi: The table that I most enjoyed seeing included a couple whose display included puppets. They also presented a television playing a DVD of a television show that starred the puppets. I overheard a discussion about them searching for a station or a place to air their product, but of course copies could be purchased. 

DJ: A lottery drawing attracted my attention.  I didn’t exactly know what it was I was trying to win but I knew I wanted to win it. I threw my name in the box with my fingers crossed, and a little kid in a Spiderman outfit was smiling next to me as he inserted his name too.

A poster displaying Fallcon 2011. 

Maggi: I also entered the drawing, but the last question on the entry form asked,  “what’s your favorite comic book?” I had no clue how to answer this question; I never read comic books but, I wrote down “superman” seeing a man walk by with a huge letter “s” on his shirt and figured that would be a good enough of an answer. 

DJ: After the completion of the touring, there was one thing left to do. . . buy something. Being a fan of Archie I walked away, happy with my fifty cent Archie comic book.

Maggi: After walking around the entire building, I realized that there was nothing in room that I would consider spending my money on, not even a comic book for a quarter. However, I did enjoy a free sucker that I picked up from one of the tables.

Leaving the Fallcon Convention was like stepping from a bizarre of supernaturalism back onto the streets of our everyday lives. The place sells people stories where good always wins and there’s always someone to catch you when you feeling down. They sell them worlds that they will never see. All these escapes were sold here and now that it’s over, all they can do is wait until the next one and then dust off their spandex costumes once again.

All Photos Taken By Maggi Stivers

Blog #6

This week for literary journalism we started reading a new book, it is called “True Stories: A Century of Literary Journalism” by Norman Sims. Each chapter in this book starts by talking about some specific part of literary journalism and then provides an article written in literary journalism style. Chapter 1 introduction included details of how literary journalism has evolved throughout history. Examples include some authors who were not one hundred percent honest in their articles, including James Fry’s “A Million Little Pieces,” the book was so well written Oprah had made it part of her booklist. However, on air on Oprah’s show, he confessed that he had made up several different parts of the book. The introduction also includes names of several literary journalists who were known for their work. Lillian Ross is one of those people who was an  American journalists who has worked at The New Yorkers magazine since 1945. In her writing, she tries to make the narrator invisible.

The literary journalism piece included with this chapter was called “The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy” by Michael Paterniti who wrote a piece regarding a plane crash. He started the piece in a very unique with discussing what other people were doing that lived where the plane crashed when the plane went down. He then went back into the past and discussed different people who were all going to be boarding the plane later in time, but were completely disconnected at this time. There were very few names given to characters (real people) in this article. People were identified either by physical description, occupations or family members. The hard part to think about a story like this is that the reporter and author had to talk to so many different people to figure how exactly what took place that day because he himself was not there.

The next week we had to read another chapter from the same book, Chapter 4. The introduction discussed how newspaper during the depression did not report on what was going on. The only places stories were published about the depression were the different magazines. Although this chapter started off and later used a quote that I think really sums up literary journalism. Harry Hopkins told this to his reporters before they set out, “go out around the country and look this thing over. I don’t want statistics from you. I don’t want the social-worker angled. I just want your own reactions, as an ordinary citizen…Tell me what you see and hear. All of it. Don’t ever pull your punches.” I think this quote can be applied to my own literary journalism writing because I need to add more detail and explain exactly what I do see and hear and feel is going on with what I am doing a story on.  The article included with this chapter was titled “The Jumping-Off Place” by Edmund Wilson. The first two and a half pages are describing a hotel; there is so much description and detail in this article. This article also links back to the quote and can inspire me to write with more detail, and there is no much thing that too much detail.

We as a class opted to read, “Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town” by Nick Reding. After reading the Prologue and the first two chapters, I really was not too enthused to have to continue to reading. There were so many facts about meth that I had to force myself to continue reading. Also lots of events described that took place regarding meth were terrible to think about. An example of this would be the story of Roland Jarvis who to avoid going back to jail and to cover all evidence of his meth lab in the house of his mother, poured everything (all his chemicals) down the drain and then light a cigarette. This led the house to catch the fire. Jarvis kept running back into the house and even started to help. At the end his has lost his fingers and his nose. However, he still  found a way to smoke the meth rather than inject it because without his fingers he didn’t possess the physical ability to inject it into this body.

For my own ideas, I have been seriously considering something that would actually be possible and fun to read for my own literary journalism piece. I would really love to do a piece on my dad who has been in the military since he has been 18, but my dad is not a very talkative guy when it comes to this kind of us stuff. Over the years, I have heard bits and pieces of things that he has experienced but I think it would take a lot of persuading of my dad to get those details.

Great examples of literary journalism can be found in the dining section of the New York Times. In this weeks paper, there was a great article titled, " There's the Wrong Way and Jacques Pepin's Way." The article is a great example, the article started on the front page of the section but later on had a full page of several photos of the chef and even a few of his recipes.  The article starts with a very catching unique topic of how a the kitchen sounds when this great chef is cooking. Then he moves into the topic of knives being used for cooking, which I learned than several amateur cooks tend to keep their knives to dull for proper use. He also explains the proper way that a knife should be used, then the author mentions that he himself traveled to the the chef's house. I found this aspect to be very unique because (even thought at this point I have read several literary journalism sample pieces) I still find it hard to believe that this would ever be okay in a news article, but literary journalism is about breaking the rules. Next, the author mentions that the chef has a new book coming out, which is the overall point of writing this article. I also learned that most literary journalism pieces need a lesson learned or have a reason for writing.  Overall, this was an awesome example of this kind of writing.

  

PHOTO LINKS:

True Stories: http://robaroundbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/True-Stories-by-Norman-Sims.jpg

Methland: http://www.emorycfde.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/methland1.jpg