THREE RIVERS COMICON REPORT:

As mentioned a few pages ago before things got somewhat political, yet everyone managed to keep things civil, I took my two daughters to the stripped-down, outdoors Three Rivers Comicon on Saturday. This show is usually a much bigger affair, but with the pandemic not quite over yet, the host store, New Dimension Comics, elected to hold the show outside in the parking lot of the large open-air mall where one of their stores is located.

We headed out right around 11:30 on Saturday morning to get there when the "doors" opened at noon, and we couldn't have had a better day for it. Yeah, it was a little on the warm side, with some humidity, but there was some breeze throughout the afternoon and it didn't rain, so that's a win for Pittsburgh in May.

We elected to walk the entire length of the show first to get a lay of the land and see what we might be interested in checking out further (and spending money on), which took about 30 minutes or so while sort of poking our heads into all of the various tents and booths that were set up. From the outset, it was apparent that this show was light on comics and heavier on toys and pop culture stuff, as well as a good number of crafts dealers and local artists, but no real industry names like previous shows (one guy, whose name escapes me, had done some work for Marvel in the late 80s/early 90s on books like Nick Fury and MCP, but he was about it).

I posted my comics purchases over in the usual place, and I will say that my prediction that my daughters would spend more money that I did was completely wrong. They each got a Perler-bead magnet from one of the craft booths (my younger one got one that looked like Snow White, because of her obsession with the TV show Once Upon A Time, while my older one got the Water Tribe symbol from Avatar: The Last Airbender). From one of the local artists, my older daughter got a Kylo Ren print, and they both picked up some Lego Mini-Figures from a dealer that had THOUSANDS of them in all different styles.

Highlights:
1. There was a guy cosplaying as Winter Soldier (it was pretty good), and my older daughter kept trying to get the younger one to go up to him and ask him "how much for the arm" (ala Rocket in Infinity War). She wouldn't, so my older daughter texted the younger one's best friend (who lives in the Bahamas now) about it, and all she sent to my younger one was a text that said "Man up and do it!" She didn't.
2. My younger one saw her first Furry in person, to which she stated rather matter of factly: "I'm scarred".
3. The both of them were also a little traumatized by a...Rubenesque...woman in some kind of bumblebee costume that had approximately 75% of her rear end hanging out, as well as a Black Widow in movie costume who was roughly three Scarlet Johanssons, and a pirate girl in leather pants with quite ample booty. While they appreciated that these women were comfortable enough to go out in public like that, they were also a little bit "yeah, but should they" about it.
4. They learned that if both of them go to a show with me, they can hang out together and check out other booths while I scour my way through the comic boxes. I think I may have my new partners in crime for these kinds of things.

It was a great time and we are looking forward to our next opportunity to do one of these, hopefully later this year and indoors at a larger event.