Thanks to Bob Corby, I had the story, and shared it with you, that Wizard World had bought Mid-Ohio Con a week ago. However, it was just yesterday that the official announcement of the deal appeared on Wizard World's web-site. (Thanks to Dara Naraghi at the PANEL blog for bringing this to my attention.)
The press release also includes an announcement of three of the big names that Wizard World will be bringing to the Greater Columbus Convention Center next October 22 and 23. They are camp icons Adam West and Burt Ward of 1960's sitcom version of Batman and "fan-favorite", at least according to the press release, artist and co-founder of Image Comics Rob Liefeld.
Having never attended a Wizard World show before, I will, as I stated in my previous post on this story, reserve judgment on this development until after next year's show is in the history books. However, since for the last couple of years I've gone to the show mainly just to shop for back issues, I really don't see this change really affecting my enjoyment of the experience all that much.
By the way, do the people at Wizard World think this is still 1992? After all, wasn't that really about the last time that Rob Liefeld could honestly have been described as a "fan favorite"? For most of the last fifteen years or so he's been mostly a joke among a majority of fans and even that's worn thin recently. These days he strikes me more as a guy who used to be somebody attempting to pretend the glory days never ended.
I think what this means is that even more space on the convention floor at Mid-Ohio will be reserved for non-comics celebrity guests. I hope this doesn't mean that less space will be alotted to comics professionals, which is my main reason for going to the con.
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