Come out and visit me at Lethbridge Comic Con

By J.W. Schnarr
Taber Times
jwschnarr@tabertimes.com

This weekend, fans of all things comic book, science fiction, horror, and fantasy-related will be descending on the Lethbridge Comic Con at the D.A. Electric Barn on the Lethbridge College campus.

I’m planning on being there myself, as I’ve booked a table with another author and will be meeting folks and selling copies of my short story collection, “A Quiet Place”.

Last year I was at the first ever LCC and really had a great time. My book had only been released a week or so before the convention, however, so all I had were bookmarks to hand out (along with some of my other books). This year promises to be much better, for obvious reasons.

No convention is complete without a star-studded lineup of guests who are available over the weekend for fans to meet and collect autographs. This year’s big draw for LCC will be Dirk Benedict, who played “Face” on the original A-Team, and who played Lt. Starbuck on the original Battlestar Galactica.

Comic book artist Nat Jones is also going to be there, a really cool guy I’ve been to conventions with before (he was in Lethbridge last year and was a guest for the past three Calgary Horror Cons, which I also attended). Nat’s work includes Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer, 28 Days Later, 30 Days of Night, and Hobo with a Shotgun. This year, the convention will feature something I’ve never seen before, as Alberta Quidditch will be hosting free, low contact, try-it-out sessions for ages eight to adult. Quidditch is something pretty familiar to fans of the Harry Potter novels and movies, I’d imagine, and from what I’ve seen online looks like a great time. I’ll probably be staying on the sidelines for this one, but it should be a good opportunity to get some photos.

I’m also looking forward to hanging out with the folks at Edge Publishing, probably the nicest people in the publishing industry, as well as the guy who will be holding down the other end of my table, Calgary author Michell Plested. Michell (Mike) is the author of a series of books involving a boy superhero, and last year was in the running for an Aurora, Canada’s genre fiction awards handed out by SFCanada. Mike is a great guy and his books are really good stocking stuffers for the young readers in your life.

And of course, there will be a ton of awesome stuff by local and visiting businesses for you to spend all your hard-earned cash on, from costumes to video games to books (ahem!) and just about anything else genre-related you can think of. Conventions have a lot of programming as well, usually, meaning you will be able to check out an event between rounds of shopping and meeting all your favourite stars and artists.

If you’ve never been to a convention before, consider this your chance to check it out. And you are a longtime fan of all things in geekdom, why would you miss out? And by all means, stop by my booth and say hi. The event runs Friday to Sunday. That’s like three days of awesome!

For more information on LCC, visit http://www.lethbridgecomiccon.com.