"It's like San Diego," says Carla "Speed" McNeil with a smile, "only 15 years ago." Her soft spot for the show no doubt owes something to the fact that she is a Marylander herself, but the Finder cartoonist is also on to something.
Baltimore's con is as hectic and cacophonous as any of its brethren, with its celebrity signings and roving bands of overzealous Deadpools, but 15 years after its inception, the event has managed to hold onto something that many comparably sized cons have abandoned in a rush to embrace the pomp and circumstance of mainstream geek cultural acceptance.
It's a comic book show that's actually about comics.
It's a strange sentiment, perhaps, for the uninitiated, but the focus of most mainstream conventions has largely shifted over the past decade and a half, as the perception of comics has evolved from fringe object to primary source material for popular culture, shifting the rows of longboxes to one corner of the convention center to make way for big-name film studios.
There's something about Baltimore, however. Perhaps its the influence of Diamond Distribution magnate Steve Geppi, whose Entertainment Museum hosts the opening party in the space it shares with Camden Yards. There is, after all, something to be said for a city where the geeks not only win, but get to buy up a share of its major league baseball team.
Or maybe it's the focus on the medium's history that's far more often the realm of a small press show. Here, however, the comics legends are the superstars, a fact no more apparent than at Saturday night's Harvey Awards, a ceremony named for Mad Magazine legend Harvey Kurtzman.
Sure, the awards themselves are handed out for the contemporary work, but it was the older artists who stole the show, from cartooning polymath Jules Feiffer, who was both inducted into the Harvey Kurtzman Hall of Fame by Abrams publisher Charles Kochman and who later accepted the award for his mentor, the late Will Eisner (also the subject of an concurrent retrospective at the Geppi Museum).
But it was journeyman artist Russ Heath Jr. who won the night. The 88-year-old, who had to be helped up to the podium, was glassy-eyed and visibly emotional as he accepted the Hero Initiative Lifetime Achievement Award, calling the honor, "truly biggest surprise of [his] life," leaving few dry eyes left in the house. (Artist Dean Haspiel's impromptu honoring of the late comic photographer Seth Kushner also struck a decidedly emotional chord during the otherwise celebratory occasion.)
Outside of the awards, it was the veteran cartoonists who attracted some of the biggest draws, with pioneering Marvel artists like Walt Simonson and Jim Starlin [above] pulling in signing lines that snaked around neighboring booths.
It was my first-ever Baltimore con – in years past I've opted instead to attend the small-press expo SPX, which is held the week prior in nearby Bethesda, Md. And while the smaller show is more my speed in terms of the content and guest list, Baltimore has a similar spirit, albeit on a grander scale.
The show is largely devoid of the Hollywood factor (save for a few actors like Edward James Olmos, who are relegated to the autographs area) and the huge city influence of places like New York, where the con-going audience scatters to the wind when the show floor closes. Rather, it's not an uncommon sight to see Transformers and Doctors Who roaming around the town in bands during those three days.
There's a sense among the veteran crowd that Baltimore harkens back to a simpler time where nerds could be nerds, geeking out with creators and flipping through rows upon rows of back issues. It's not a perfect show, but it's the kind we need a lot more of, where movies and TV are secondary, and the comic book remains king.
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