In One Week: Heroes Con!

Heroes Convention, usually shortened to Heroes Con, is arguably the most beloved comics convention in the US, and is fast approaching. For over 30 years Shelton Drum, the owner of Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find in Charlotte, NC, has been organizing Heroes Con and has made a legendary reputation for his convention. Known for presenting itself as a small and well organized event, it is favored by diehard fans and creators for the laid back atmosphere. While Heroes Con doesn’t call itself a news convention, it does make a ton of news each year with stories of fans and creators having fun the whole weekend.

So why would you, hard working fan that you are with so many conventions to choose from, pick this convention? The guest list. But Alex, surely you’re mistaken, SDCC or NYCC can easily overpower any con guest list with their titanic multimillion dollar reputations alone. Typically, if you compared them by spacing and the amount of publicity each con throws around to arrange an event, you’d be correct. Except this time. Heroes Con is built strictly on putting all it’s resources into gathering the best talent in the industry on one floor for a whole weekend; Eisner Award winners to brand new talent to local favorites to Stan Lee. Here are my picks from this year’s list:

This year’s Heroes Con exclusive shirt, made by We Love Fine and designed by Robbi Rodriguez!

Phew! I’ve got my work cut out for me… But this is only a fraction of the total guest list. And there are many folks that show up to this convention over others, sometimes even exclusively. For example, Brian Stelfreeze, Day Men, is a rare find on conventions floors because he sticks closely to the South East and of the few conventions there, he always visits Heroes Con.

OK, OK, so they’ve got a list and tons of people OK, fine, but that just means I am going to get bulldozed the instant I get off the plane. Wrong again, friend. Not only do Heroes Con staff and volunteers run the best ship outside of Emerald City Comicon, they have access to some magic that grants easily surmountable lines and hassle free registration. Sure lines can be long, depending on who you are seeing, but there are no jerks with Staff shirts capping lines for nonsensical reasons. If there is a long line, and the talent permits it, the line will persist. Kevin Eastman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, visited last year, and his line ended up snaking around the floor. Go ninja, go ninja, go!

The point is, going to Heroes Con is more than just going to get some stuff signed. It’s about making a story for yourself, and hopefully one that you feel happy about telling for many years after going. I went last year, and I’ll never forget the walk-along I took with Kelly Sue DeConnick, Captain Marvel, before the convention started or that time I got Phil Noto, Black Widow, some coffee and he drew me a Black Widow even through he was slammed with commissions. Ah, the power of coffee. Let’s not forget that panel with Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky, Sex Criminals, where a cosplay Suzzie and John hijacked the scene and John surprised Suzzie with a proposal. I am so excited to go again this year and see what’ll happen!

To learn more about this event, the Heroes Con website has useful knowledge on how they run the convention as well as various other things to do around the convention. The convention staff are also a big fans of using Twitter and Facebook to push out information, you could easily keep up with news and events real time via the Twitter account. A fun thing they like doing via their Twitter account is Retweet attending artists Tweets in reference to Heroes Con, it’s very helpful for finding commission information and locating artists!

So pack your bags, and go make your own stories!

Alex Añé
@aganej2
Contributing Writer