Boxing Clever geeks out at Wizard World Chicago

Some of us from Boxing Clever headed north to the Windy City to take in the lycra-clad geekfest that is Wizard World. This comic convention was held at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont June 27 to June 29. One could say that we were conducting "research" for some of our clients but research simply isn't this much fun. With an estimated crowd of 70,000, Wizard World cast its spell with some fresh music (Oreskaband) and cool appearances (Todd McFarlane - creator of Spawn) and the usual smorgasbord of independent comic artists and publishers.


I arrived on Saturday morning, fighting the heavy traffic as it slowly snaked its way into the convention parking garage. My first costume spotting was only seconds after I got out of the car, as a team of X-Men came walking up behind me. This band of youngsters pulled out all the stops with their getup. Seriously, it looked like they spent a few hundred bucks each for their leather replica outfits and they had the looks to pull it off. Of course, when going to these things you expect the occasional badly put together Batman or Joker (which there was) but most of these fans had a good eye for style and detail. I was going to say I saw at least 20 storm troopers, but I'm sure I would be corrected that there were actually just a few storm troopers, a couple of sand troopers, and a handful of clone troopers. Don't know the difference? What's the matter with you? I never saw Darth Vader but Dave got a chance to run into Boba Fett. As you can see he was on [Bespin] Cloud 9. Sorry, had to say it.






Character-spotting aside, Alienware and Intel teamed up to create a huge presence at Wizard World with their "Extreme Gaming Tour". This event marketing attraction is a custom tractor trailer rig full of gaming systems for all to enjoy and interact with. Alienware is touting their latest gaming notebooks and desktops that feature the Intel Core 2 Extreme processors. Each system was loaded with a promotional form for you to sign in with your email for a chance to win an Alienware system, after which you test your skills on some high-performance action-packed games like Crysis.