By Cat Wyatt

BookCon is heaven on earth for books and comic fans; there’s no other way to put it. It occurs once a year – immediately following BookExpo – and lasts for two days. Publishers, authors, and avid fans come from all over for this event, to make friends, find book swag, get autographs, and have a fantastic time.

I was surprised to see how many comic book publishers were there. They were on the listing of attending publishers, but it was still a surprise to see the scale of things upon arrival. Most of them had surprisingly large booths, especially in comparison to some of the other publishers.

BOOM! Studios had managed to land a decently sized booth in the center aisle of the floor. It was pretty much guaranteed that they got a lot of foot traffic, so here’s hoping they got a lot of nice sales.

Oni also had a center aisle booth, though theirs was much smaller. They attracted plenty of attention though since they were quite literally handing out swag bags at regular intervals. And really, who can say no to free comics?

Dynamite, Diamond, Image Comics, and Lion Forge were all clustered around each other in one aisle of the floor. This worked out well, and since it was slightly less busy than the rest of the floor made quite a comfortable reprieve for browsing and shopping.

While wondering around this section, I found a few fantastic scores. The first was Image Comics giving out free signed ARCs of Perdy. I didn’t get a ton of time to talk with Kickily, but he seemed funny and friendly, happily bantering away with the small mob of people waiting for his autograph (which included doodles).

I also managed to track down Sebastian Girner and get him to sign my copy of Scales + Scoundrels vol. 1. He also included a fun little doodle, though he teasingly reminded me that he wasn’t the artist so I shouldn’t expect too much from it.

One of my highlights of the day was getting to meet Mariko Tamaki and Brooklyn Allen. They were both wonderful people and happily put up with my gushing about Lumberjanes and She-Hulk respectively. They also signed three graphic novels each for me without complaint. Needless to say, I was a very happy girl by the time I left their autograph session.

My final destination for the day was the Brandon Sanderson autograph sessions. Sounds kind of weird that I’m mentioning that, right? I’ve been talking about graphic novels this whole time and all. But remember that Brandon Sanderson has a graphic novel series – White Sand. I couldn’t resist bringing both volumes to BookCon to get them signed, and I even used the opportunity to gush about them. Brandon Sanderson wasn’t terribly specific, but he did promise that he’ll be having more adventures in the graphic novel world. So I think that’s good news for all of us!

In total, I had a blast and wound up with a surprising amount of swag to bring home. Here’s all of the free comics and comic swag I managed to grab with minimal effort: