Charlie Adlard, the artist of the acclaimed comic book series “The Walking Dead,” speaks about the trials and tribulations of making the series. The panel was part of NC Comicon in downtown Durham and was held over three days, Friday to Sunday." />
Brandon Lang
Charlie Adlard, the artist of the acclaimed comic book series “The Walking Dead,” speaks about the trials and tribulations of making the series. The panel was part of NC Comicon in downtown Durham and was held over three days, Friday to Sunday.
As the sixth annual North Carolina Comicon rolled through the Durham Convention Center this past weekend, this year’s special celebrity guests drew in a particularly diverse crowd of attendees. Amidst the longtime collectors and regular con-goers, the group that stood out the most this year was the teenage girls bursting with excitement in the presence of musician and writer Gerard Way.
Way, most famous for being the lead vocalist and co-founder of the American alternative rock band My Chemical Romance, which split in March 2013, is also the writer of the Eisner award-winning surrealist superhero comic book series “The Umbrella Academy,”and continues to write comics.
The other major guest this year was UK artist Charlie Adlard, who has been illustrating “The Walking Dead”comics since the seventh issue in 2004 and receives regular credit on the AMC TV series as one of the book’s creators.
The estimated $17,000 in proceeds from Way’s and Adlard’s signing events went to the Duke Children’s Hospital, according to Alan Gill, creator and co-owner of NC Comicon.
Friday night, Way and Adlard joined fellow comics creator Tommy Lee Edwards, NC Comicon senior director and co-owner, for a Q&A panel discussion in the Carolina Theater. All three spent the first half talking with each other about how they broke into the industry and about how their love for comics began.
“We all started with comics as kids buying them at the local drug store or convenience store,” Edwards said during the panel. “What’s cool is that all of us are mutual fans of each other. So that’s what me and my good friends who run the North Carolina Comicon do; we try to bring people in who we really want to spend time with, and I’m just really happy to have two of my favorite creators here with me.”
Way said he grew up an avid “X-Men” reader and knew he wanted to break into the industry from an early age.
“The first comic I did that was published [was] when I was 15,” Way said. “I had sought out an artist friend in high school and talked him into illustrating a comic that I had written. So I’ve always written for artists.”
When discussing where they draw inspiration from and their work schedules, all three said the process of making comics requires as much dedication and effort as it does inspiration. Adlard said the scripts he illustrates are the best inspiration he has.
“I feel like the scriptwriter is the one genuinely working from the blank page,” Adlard said. “I’ve got the inspiration; it’s there in the script. It makes my life a lot easier.”
After Adlard said that Image Comics had just released issue 144 of “The Walking Dead,” which resulted in a roar of applause among audience members, Edwards and Way talked briefly about some of their upcoming projects. Edwards has a new Superman book coming out next month called “American Alien,” which was written by “Chronicle” and “American Ultra”screenwriter Max Landis. The crowd also cheered when Edwards announced that he and Way were currently working on a project together, but they did not provide any further details.
Other panels on Saturday and Sunday with various creators included subjects such as breaking into the industry, diversity in comics and visual storytelling. Additionally, this year saw the return of the Comiquest Film Festival, which featured a mix of retro films such as “Masters of the Universe,” “Godzilla vs. Destoroyah,” “Ghost World” and “Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.” The annual cosplay contest was also a prominent component of the weekend, where attendees dressed up as characters from their favorite comics, movies, TV shows and video games.
Roughly 10,000 people attended Comicon this year, up from 6,500 attendees last year.
“I can attribute the growth to having two A-list comic book creators neither of which are on the ‘convention circuit’ on a regular basis,” Gill said. “I want to grow the NC Comicon with the city of Durham as it continues to grow by leaps and bounds up, up and away.”