Adventures in AwesomeCon 2014

As most of you know I am Fan; sometimes a fangirl, but rarely a fanatic.  In my Fandom, I decided to bite the bullet and attend AwesomeCon 2014 in DC.  I have never been really that interested in meeting the actors of the works that I love because, let’s get real, they did not CREATE them.  And I do understand that they are not their characters.  So as much as I would like to meet Zoe Washburne cuz she kicks @$$; if I get the chance to meet Gina Torres, I might pass.  Don’t get me wrong, I think think she is an amazing and talented actress and I have seen and loved her in everything she does but she is no Zoe Washburne.  

Thus, while I was excited to go to AwesomeCon, my expectations were extremely managed. I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed myself and how much fun the whole experience was. 

I attended this event with two of my oldest guy friends.  You can understand that the things they were excited about varied slightly from the things I was excited about.  Because we are “adults”, and we have been friends for a long time, we compromised.  I agreed to go to the Zombie Survival and Star Wars panels with them and they reluctantly agreed to go to the “Representation is Important” panel with me.  

This "Representation is Important" panel was a discussion about how comics have a reputation for being for white guys of a certain age. And what comics creators are doing to help the increase the representation of diversity in the world of comics.  The session was moderated by Alex Simmons (@blackjackAD), who was fantastic in his own right and who I would like to just sit down and talk to for hours.  The panel consisted of the sharp witted Amy Chu (@AmyChu), soft spoken Alitha Martinez, spunky Laura Lee Gulledge (@WhoIsLauraLee) and Jeremy Whitley (@jrome58), the enlightened white male. I loved hearing the stories and experiences of people trying to bring diversity into comics. I was delighted to discover all of these wonderful new, books, authors and illustrators that I will be following for years to come. 

Later that night, over some beers before we went to go see ‘Captain America - The Winter Soldier’, the boys could not stop talking about the Representation panel.  We all had a very lively and engaging discussion, about representation and diversity in comic books, movies, TV shows and music.  I learned how they see things; I shared how I saw things.  Ideas and experiences were shared all around. 

The thing is that these are guys I have known FOR YEARS (pre-puberty even!).  They are like brothers to me and of course we share the same interests, hence attending AwesomeCon, but we had never had this discussion before or anything like it.  I got multiple thank yous for making them go to this panel. They said it was best, most engaging and enlightening panel they attended.

I also purchased Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge for Sis, the introvert. She now has a graphic novel with a protagonist like her. She is really excited.  YAY! A convert! 

Squirt