Event Review // MCTCON July 23rd, 2023 at Army & Navy Club, Manchester CT

https://www.instagram.com/mctcon/

While I had seen posts on Instagram about this event, it wasn't until I saw that Richard Maurizio was announced that I confirmed with both Quentin and Jess that they wanted to go and so I bought tickets.   This was fun because it wasn't this huge comic book convention that was in this big place where you had to pay for parking and also pay $20+ just to get in.  Tickets were only $5 and since going into these things is doing a lot of shopping, when you feel like you aren't paying as much it makes it feel better overall as well.

This space was tight in the sense that there wasn't really a lot of room to move around, but that was also because there were so many people.   It is definitely better to feel like there are too many people in a small space than a small number of people in a large space no matter how much my anxiety told me otherwise.  Our first goal was to get in and find Richard Maurizio because he had a special Archie comic book for this event and we did just that.  

Walking around, the tables were just full of my childhood.  Most everything you could imagine from the '80's and '90's was here for you to add to your collection, from comic books to toys to VHS and video games.   After the Archie comic book my first purchase was a small Roger Rabbit toy because I'd never seen it before and love Roger Rabbit.  This came from a table that had a lot of Care Bears, a plush Gummy Bear (from the Disney animated series) and what looked like nearly everything ever made for Teddy Ruxpin.   

We went through bins of smaller figures to find some Alf toys that I bought along with a cassette and storybook for The Rocketeer.  What's funny is, I somehow was googling cassettes and searching for them on eBay I believe in relation to Alf and then The Rocketeer one came up.  So I had seen this online recently and thought it was neat, so having it in person in front of me was a must buy.  Now I'm just unsure whether or not I want to open it and listen to it.

 

I found this really cool Last Ronin figure for $15 and I feel like that was the find of the show.   The person selling it was in full conversation with someone else and I just kind of showed him the figure then the money and as I was walking away I could hear the person who was up until then discussing rent prices say something about how he was shocked that the particular action figure was only $15.   

Earlier on, we went by the Matt Ryan table and he had done a sketch of Mario for Quentin.  We looped back and there are three issues of "Brenda" out there to be read, so we bought them all so Quentin and I both have some reading to do now.  It was really nice to talk with Matt Ryan too, just about comic books in general and how they're in the process of launching a game which will go along with their comic books.  It just feels like a whole lot of what both Quentin and I are into, so getting on board was the right call.

As it was getting to be time to go because we had seen it all and spent enough money, Quentin got three of these grab bags of Pokemon cards and a Lego mini figure.   As I turned around I saw on a table a comic book featuring Jonah Hex and Yosemite Sam.   DC crossing over with Looney Tunes felt so cool and as my eyes wandered I saw two more issues of such crossovers.  I bought the three that were there and now have some new pieces to my weird comic book collection.  

I really enjoyed this convention because it felt like there was something for everyone there, if you're into this sort of wide genre of media.  It wasn't like I just walked away with comic books, as we found so many of our other favorite things here as well.  And items were reasonably priced, which you can tell by what we got.   This is definitely something that I want to do again and if you're into anything you're reading about here I highly suggest attending in the future as well.