I had a great time at Wizard World Philly! If you want to read the full write up click through!

My family and I had a great time at the 2009 Wizard World in Philly a few weeks back. We entered the area and the first thing we noticed was the lack of the large Marvel and DC Booths from previous years. It was always cool to go around and collect a ton of pins from DC. No swag didn’t stop us, onward we travelled.

From the corner of my eye I saw a cool video game booth. We went over to it and my son Josh shouted “Castle Crashers”. I thought the artwork looked similar but he found a working copy of “Castle Crashing ‘The Beard’”.It was a demo game that theBehemoth had developed while they were working on Castle Crashers. The programmer of Castle Crashers, Tom Fulp, had vowed to not shave his beard until Castle Crashers was complete. His beard apparently got pretty long and in the demo game you get to jump around as the blue knight and attack Tom, his laser eyes and his beard. Josh had fun and I was able to talk to a developer for a few minutes. Sounded like they were just getting their brand out and didn’t have anything overly new to show off. If they had one of the Castle Crasher figures for sale my wallet would have been a little lighter.

The very next booth we stopped at was Fear Werx. What an amazing booth with a great set of people. The energy level for the Con was pretty high and this table was filled with some friendly people. They were doing face painting for $20 which seems pricey until you see the result of their work. I didn’t get it done but my son did (Kids 10 and under are free). He started off asking for a zombie but later changed it into a random monster. The child before was Chewbacca. Their booth and their website have some really awesome products so I suggest you give them a look.

The rest of the Con was meeting people and seeing celebrities. They had Yancy Butler, Lou Ferigno, Jerry “The King” Lawler, Honkey Tonk Man, Virgil, Raven, Greg “The Hammer” Valentine and a very good Battlestar Gallactica contingency including Edward James Olmos (Admiral Adama), Michael Hogan (Colonel Tigh), Luciana Carro (Kat) and Nicki Clyne (Cally Henderson). Everyone was nice and approachable although the only ones I really had a chance to talk to were Raven and Tom Kane and unfortunately Michael Papajohn. een

I’ve been a fan of Raven’s since his ECW days and he was great in person. Michael Papajohn is the actor who shot Uncle Ben in Spiderman and he reminded me a lot of the guys in the mall that want you to do a survey. He pitched and pitched and tried to get my 6 year old to want his $30 autograph. This is the guy who was in Spiderman for 3 minutes. Very annoying.

Tom Kane was the opposite, he was fabulous and super nice. Tom does the voice of Yoda in the video games and cartoons, Mr. Herriman from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Magneto, Professor Ultonium (Power Puff Girls), Darwin (Rugrats) and countless others. He hopped from voice to voice on request and he was one of our highlights. There were tons of other guests but I didn’t get to really see the rest..

While we were casing the show floor, the wife went to see some of the horror guests do a panel on film making. She liked it but I didn’t get enough details to talk much on it.

My favorite part of the show is always the independent artists. I was able to buy some amazing Avengers art from Jay Brant. I picked up the hard cover of Se7en from David Seidman who I’ve been seeing there for the past 4 years. His art always blows me away and he’s a great guy.

Two of my other favorite tables are always Teddy Scares which sells crazy looking teddy bears. The story is that abandoned teddy bears get scary and plot revenge against their old owners but once they get together they just form a little community and forget their plans. They just came out with a graphic novel and are supposedly they’re working on a movie deal. The other table I make sure to check out is Kaiju which is basically godzilla monsters wrestling in a ring. Greatness and super fun.

This was the first year Wizard World Philly teamed up with The Video Game Expo in Philly and that was a major disappointment. It was a definite tack-on. Far in the corner there was a few tables selling old video games. None of the old uprights you would see at the old Video Game Expo. They had a lackluster tournament that had some interest but not much. Call of Duty 4 and Super Smash Brothers seemed to be the major tournament titles being played. There were stands there too but they seemed to mainly be used by tired people trying to figure out what was going on. Disorganized and not needed. It could be great if they get a bigger presence next year.

Had another great year at Wizard World! Can’t wait to for next year’s!