By Jamie Miller
Well, friends, the day has come, Comic-Con is here. The one time of the year that I look forward to even more than Halloween or Christmas. The time when the nerds don their best costumes and gather together to celebrate their interests.
I was lucky enough to attend on Friday, Nov. 14, and what a day it was. The cosplay was on point and featured examples from some of my shows, such as Rem from “Re:Zero,” Toph from “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” Denji from “Chainsaw Man,” and so many more.
I was also fortunate enough to catch up with Stephen Bandstra of Dump Stat Adventures. “Dump Stat Adventures is a small publisher producing content for Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition, including adventures and source books,” said Bandstra.
Dumpstat Adventures also produces paraphernalia for “D&D” as well, such as stickers, novels, and so on.
“Get into Dungeons & Dragons or other tabletop roleplaying games,” Bandstra said. “It’s just a great way of meeting people, having fun rolling shiny math rocks – a great place to get away from phones, technology, and things of that nature.”
And I am inclined to agree with him on that.
Next, I was able to talk to Onrie Kompan, a comic writer and producer of works such as “Yi Soon Shin” and “War Lion”. Kompan advises that people buy and read more comics, and also has advice for any would-be writers: “Follow your passion, and if you’re really serious about doing it, and you listen and learn, you can make it.”
I was also able to catch up with Jon Wyckoff, who was running a booth promoting Grand Rapids Community College’s job training programs..
“We have a lot of different classes that people can take, all the way from computer support, welding, construction, automotive, and CNC,” said Wyckoff, who himself teaches Computer Numerical Control or CNC. The booth had many fascinating things created by people in the program, from a chessboard to die-cast “Star Wars” characters to even lightsabers and a Detroit Lions-style Mjolnir, both of which I, of course, had to pose with.
“Just know that we’re always looking for skilled tradespeople, it’s always a fun program to be in. If you want to be hands-on or if you want to be computer support, job training’s the way to go,” Wyckoff said.
The program, which is 18 weeks in length, also helps students find jobs afterward with an over 80% job placement rate, which is impressive to say the least.
Finally, I was able to speak with Kristy Eason of the Comic-Con’s board game library, which is responsible for renting out board games. Eason runs the Comic-Con’s D&D tutorials and just overall handles games and that sort of thing. The game library has anything a board game fan could want and more.
“Really, I kinda want readers to know that we’re here; some people don’t always know that gaming is around, that we’re upstairs,” Eason said.
The board game library will be open all three days of the Comic-Con and is definitely worth a check out.
Grand Rapids Comic-Con will continue to run through the weekend, going from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday, and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, so suit up and make sure you don’t miss it!
