This last Saturday, I attended the 3rd annual WASFen convention. That’s the Wausau Area Science Fiction Enthusiasts. Organizer Evan Cass invited me to be a Guest of Honor after meeting me at last year’s Wizard World. I found it to be a fun time, with several hundred attendees to the one-day convention.

It gets off to a slow start, probably because it is a largely local crowd and many of them are taking their time on a Saturday morning. Of course, “first thing in the morning” is when the news media shows up with their cameras to cover the convention. By afternoon the interviews were hopping, the tables were getting plenty of visitors, the most famous Guests of Honor had small lines at their tables and I had had sales of only a little less than I make during two long days in Artist’s Alley at Chicago. Actually, that isn’t a fair enough comparison: Chicago also costs much more in transportation and hotel and I have to buy my table space, whereas WASFen’s space was free and I got the Guest of Honor treatment. That makes WASFen probably the most profitable convention I’ve ever attended!

The guests of honor included sci-fi and fantasy authors such as Patrick Rothfuss, Kelly McCullough  and Kathryn Sullivan, plus comic book creators John Jackson Miller (who also does the webcomic Sword and Sarcasm) and Tim Seeley. Kathryn has three interconnected juvenile fantasy books, and I had to buy one of them (“Talking to Trees”) because the write-up on the back intrigued me. A teen-age girl takes her brother’s silver bracelet because it matches her outfit,  unaware that it is a magical key to another world!  He’s the protagonist in the other novels.  It piqued my curiosity enough that I grabbed a copy for my niece Jenny.

I didn’t have enough spare time to explore the vendor area.  The table space seemed quite affordable to the vendors who were there, and there were about 7-10 different vendors with probably enough room for 6-10 more next year.  The vendors included a few creators as well, such as Jonathan L. Switzer of “Scwonky Dog” and Jim Yoho of Episode Fun, a goofy look behind the scenes of The Phantom Menace. (Liam Neeson is represented in the comic as a trailer, since he refuses to come out after having read the script.) I also met Ryan Schwartzman of Dorkfathers, a comic shop in nearby Merrill.

There was another room for readings and other features, such as a one-man Rocky Horror Picture Show (My wife loved that one!) and another room for gaming.

The day’s program began with Q&A for the Guests of Honor, including me. (I’ll have that video online sometime soon.) This was followed by a Jeopardy tournament, which sounded like fun. The categories included: The Demon, Swamp Thing, WildCATS, Sandman, Marvel 2099, Marvel Epic, Marvel UK, Savage Dragon and The Ray. Yes, The Ray. Unfortunately, the categories featured not one of my favorite characters, so I was at a serious disadvantage. Somehow, I still won!

The interviews and trivia game were run by David Alan Cohen, a gregarious and funny guy whom I could probably talk comics with for hours and hours. (Unfortunately, he does not yet have a microphone headset and a Skype account, so he won’t be in any Monitor Duty podcasts soon…but maybe someday!) David has an excellent voice, reminiscent of Kevin Pollack or Albert Brooks (or Kevin Pollack doing his impression of Albert Brooks). He was also selling his comic collection, and having won $30 in comics from his Comic Book Jeopardy game, I stopped by to spend it. Hey, guess what’s written on the ends of the boxes in his collection? The Demon, Swamp Thing, WildCATS, Sandman, Marvel 2099, Marvel Epic, Marvel UK, Savage Dragon and The Ray. Well, you write what you know.

The show concluded with a costume contest that graded the participants on how much work they put into the costume, its quality as a costume and whether they would act out something appropriate for it. I was invited to be one of the judges. One person came as raccoon Mario from Super Mario World 3. When asked where he(?) got the tail and the ears, Mario replied, “From a leaf”. Bonus points! The winner was a tie between two women who came as the light and dark mages from Final Fantasy. The contest was then followed by a charity auction with all proceeds going to a local women’s shelter. Evan, who probably hadn’t slept much the night before and by then was quite burned out overseeing the whole show, was running on fumes while performing as auctioneer. I believe at one point, while holding some DC Heroclix, he fell asleep and then ordered waffles. (Kidding!) I won a couple items which I’ll probably donate in turn to the FallCon auction.

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Wausau is a lovely, small city in the center of Wisconsin and it contains roughly 40,000 people. At least, that was the population when I lived there in the mid-1990s. That’s right, this was kind of a Old Home Week for me. From 1994 to 1996, I lived in a small duplex apartment and wrote radio advertising for WOFM when I wasn’t rewinding VHS tapes professionally at Blockbuster. In my spare time I read comic books and watched my five free movies a week. And that’s all I did. Wausau is certainly a nice town. Only problem is, there was never anything to do! How I wish someone had organized something like WASFen when I lived there.

I believe WASFen may have a chance to really take off. After all, Wausau, Wisconsin, is centrally located for comic book fans from all over Wisconsin, eastern Minnesota, northern Illinois and Da YouPee. It’s on a straight route from Minneapolis to Green Bay and straight north from Madison. When talking to Evan about the possibility of finding more pros that might want to attend, I pointed out that I knew many guys from the Twin Cities who attended a convention in Des Moines and that’s a longer drive than the simple three hour tour to Wausau.

The nice thing about a convention like WASFen is that I’m meeting comic book readers who may never make the majorly expensive trek to Wizard World in Chicago, or even to FallCon in the Twin Cities. In other words, it’s a whole new market, and I got to meet some great people…and move some product, which is always nice.

After the con, Evan Cass and I talked about the possibilities for 2010. WASFen was a thrill and I hope to be back next year.

Check them out on MySpace, and visit the Facebook page for Evan Cass, the organizer of same. If any sci-fi/fantasy authors or comic book creators are thinking of attending a future WASFen con, they should contact Evan. (His info is on the MySpace page, right under the picture of Yours Truly.

Evan, thank you very much for inviting me.