So, as I mentioned previously, a little while back, I bought a kilt. Since then, I’ve been looking for excuses to wear it. I’ve done the local Celtic Festival and the ladies’ Irish dance competition, and got many positive comments. Based on the enthusiastic encouragement of some friends, I went unbifurcated to this weekend’s Virginia Comicon “Big Two-Day Show.” But more on that in a bit. The show itself deserves some unqualified praise first.

I’ve become a big supporter of this show over the years, the local promotion that’s been around forever, and has been steadily growing momentum for the last five years. This year is significant, given the entrance of Wizard World, the big nationwide juggernaut, into the market. Having been to both shows, I can say that despite the star power that Wizard brought, the VA Comicon really shone this year; the show really felt BIG, bringing in a tremendous volume of creators and artists (and yes, a few celebrity types…well, a Power Ranger anyway), really staking out the territory that that celebrates the creativity and talent that goes into creating comic art. Hat’s off to the promoters and organizers for creating a great venue for fans and creators to come together to celebrate the stuff we love.

I ended up acquiring some neat stuff as well, picking up a couple of gorgeous retro prints from Jeff Lonnett; Collections of Chris Flick’s Capes ‘n Babes strip (finally – I was way overdue jumping onto this train), a copy of the clever (and somewhat purile) card game cockFIGHT! from Charm City Games, book one of Gabriel Dunston’s Purgatory Pub (a clever concept that you can support via kickstarter – book 2 is currently working toward funding!), and speaking of Kickstarter, I got my fresh-from-the-printer copy of Dan Nokes’ The Pistoleers remastered omnibus edition I “executive produced” via the crowdfunding service a while back.

And finally, I posed for a picture with my kilted brethren, Nick Davis, of Alt World and The Teddy Bear Tales and Chris Otto, creator of the excellent A Dog’s Life:

The other big event carrying through the weekend was my kids’ high school production of Annie, which closed to a sold-out crowd on Saturday night. Given that I went straight from the con to the school on Saturday, I ended up chaperoning (such as it was) the cast party/carb blowout at IHOP in my kilt, which got a few strange looks from audience members, but also earned me the “Cool Dad” tophy as voted upon by a pack of theater kids (who I’m told may be launching a kilted revolution in the hallowed halls of TDHS one of these days). It was quite a bit of fun.

As the cast party ran until a little past midnight, you can say that I wore the kilt the whole weekend (which I am totally going to say).