The First Ever Decorah Comic Convention

When my co-worker Mark asked during a business lunch if I’d heard anything about the Decorah Comicon taking place at the end of June, my first reaction was to ask him if he was joking. Even after he said he wasn’t, it still took me seeing the poster in a store window to accept that it was real.

While Decorah has some places that cater to those with geek interests (video games, comics, role-playing games, anime, and let’s be honest here an interest in reading), by and large the place that is the most geek-friendly is a video game store called The Game Exchange. This is where you’ll find high-school kids hanging out playing video games or checking out the used bric-a-brac that lines the walls. Most of it is old gaming paraphernalia, like some old Nintendo controllers, but there is the occasional Transformer. The store also sells comic books, although all of them were published in the nineties, a time universally considered by fans to be the nadir of comic book art and writing. It’s conceivable that the store owner actually bought those comics in the nineties and has just been unable to sell them. 

Another issue with having comic book conventions is that you need to have people who are willing to attend them. This was the part that worried me. A couple years ago, a guy named Matt had gotten together a group of people at the local bowling alley who might be interested in doing some gaming, and said group of people had promptly broken up to go their own separate ways. Needless to say, I was a little skeptical about how this comicon would play out. Maybe 20 people would show up. If the organizers were really lucky, they’d get 30. Even so, I was going. I don’t consider myself much of an organizer, and usually when I try to promote something about which I’m really passionate, I usually receive massive waves of indifference. So someone taking the time to organize a comic book convention in Decorah, much less opening it up to the general public and encouraging people to come in costume, or cosplay, as it’s known in comic book circles, was an act of bravery that deserved to be supported.  So on Saturday I went out to Decorah to the VFW hall and entered the Decorah Komicon. 

The first thing I noticed was that the VFW hall is a remarkably depressing place. If you take a church’s community area and combine it with a cheap bar, you have a good idea of what the Decorah VFW hall is like. I was there once before on a Saturday night, when an acquaintance had suggested we “hit the bars and go dancing.” Apparently the VFW hall is considered a bar on Saturday night, and it was populated by two or three men in their sixties or seventies, sipping beers while a DJ played a schizophrenic mix of 21^st century pop and old country tunes. It was like attending a high school dance, only with a crusty bartender serving overpriced drinks. This time around was slightly different—there were still overpriced drinks, but the con organizers had seen fit to provide snack-sized bags of chips to everyone at the con for free. As an experienced con goer, this amenity immediately elevated the con to the ranks of the greats. 

As expected, there weren’t a lot of people at the con, and most of them were in high school. Still, there were quite a few twenty and thirty somethings in the crowd, and a few of them were selling their artwork. It was really cool to see. They weren’t professionals, just fans who really liked to draw. Another surprise was that the con had invited some local merchants to sell their wares at the con, and a surprising number had taken them up on it. The secondhand games and DVD store had out a selection that Comicon attendees would find attractive, and The Game Exchange had its rack of 90s comics transplanted to the VFW hall in case anyone was comic-deprived enough to buy them. Some guy was selling issues from his collection, and the con had even gotten t-shirts printed! 

The con even had panels. There were talks about figure collecting, the history of comics and a talk about comics, stories and religion that I’m sure has never been attempted at any other con.  The basement contained several video games consoles that had been set up, and in a darkened corner there were a couple of kids watching some old X-Men cartoons. It was wonderful. 

The thing about being a fan of comics, video games and the like is that, even with the proliferation of comic book movies in the mainstream, they always have the stigma of being childish, and there’s still a consensus  that you can like them, just don’t like them too much and for God’s sake, don’t like them if you’re an adult. Being able to take off your mask for a bit and talk shop with other people who have the same interests is liberating, and I certainly enjoyed being able to do so in Decorah. 

One of the best parts about the Decorah Komicon was Lindsey, who works at the local DVD rental shop. I talked with her about why she had wanted to put this con on, and she said that she had always liked going to the Anime Iowa convention in Iowa City until it finally became too expensive. So she decided to create a convention closer to home that would attract people. She hoped it would get bigger each year, and while I don’t know what the future holds, I would say that based on the turnout and enthusiasm a Decorah Komicon 2 is likely.