Limited activities for students to partake in overshadows the event
By Ben Hercik
Cleveland has played a very pivotal part in comic book history. The city is the birthplace of both Superman and is the inspiration for Metropolis, as well as being a filming location for films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When it was announced that Campus Activities Board (CAB) would be holding a Comic Con at Cleveland State University, students who are fans of comic books were excited to see what exactly this event would entail.
When students walked through the doors of the Student Center Ballroom on Sept. 24, they were met with a very underwhelming event. Entrants were welcomed with tables of games like Dungeon and Dragons, Catan, Jenga and more. There were three televisions set up, all of them with a plug and play version of the arcade game Pac-Man. At the back of the room there was an airbrush tattoo station along with a character drawing station. There was also a table with a spread of comic books. However, these books weren’t for eventgoers to buy; they were for people that answered periodic trivia questions correctly.
Tabletop and video games like the ones mentioned above are very common at these events; they are in rooms that are full of the same games. At the Cleveland State Comic Con, all the games were in the same room and with loud music playing, so many of the eventgoers opted to not partake in the tabletop games.
The Pac-Man games were competitive, with the player setting the high-score winning the machine. A lot of people were gathered around the airbrush tattoo and comic book character portrait drawing tables for the entire event. While it was nice that all eventgoers were able to get a comic book for free, there wasn’t a wide variety of choices and very few comics that non comic readers would know.
While this wasn’t an official comic con, this was still a very disappointing event. It had limited activities that the attendees could participate in, a small variety of arcade games that people could play and there were very few comics that trivia players could win. The few highlights were where most of the crowd was at, that being the airbrush tattoo and character drawing area. The event itself wasn’t heavily advertised, as it only appeared in one email for students. That email also mentioned that pinball and facepainting would also be at the event, which was not the case as both were nowhere to be seen.