Curious ComiCon

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Saturday, May 5th, 2018
9:00 AM to 6:00 PM

The third annual Curious ComiCon is on May 5th at Country Club Center. It started from the owners and team of the Curious Comics store, in Nanaimo, participating in the worldwide “Free Comic Book Day” promoting literacy. They made it a celebration of comic book culture with all manner of games and local artists displaying their art, opening up a world of imaginative possibility. The community loved it so much that, by 2015, it had been regularly attended by 500 people.

Inspired by enthusiastic feedback, in 2016 it evolved into a convention, named Curious ComiCon, in honour of the generosity of the store. Deciding to expand the spirit of giving we linked with the Children’s Wish. Word was so good that renowned artists joined in, and every single one was happy to add to the free gift bags and/or donate original art for silent auction. We had a cosplay competition, computer & RPG tabletop games, and lots of activities taking over most of the mall. Attendance grew to 1500. In 2017, we had our first celebrity guest, Mackenzie Gray from the hit Marvel television series “Legion”. He signed limited edition copies of original artwork of his character “The Eye” that he got donated by legendary artist Bill Sienkiewicz. The artist John Gallagher (The Flash, Supergirl) https://www.uncannyknack.com/ , also added star power and became an annual guest for us. We expected this upgrade to attract 2000 attendees, 4000 people showed up in busloads and carpools from Victoria, Port Alberni, Courtney, and all over the island. We hear we are Vancouver Island’s favourite free ComiCon. A single Mum of five, told us that she could never afford to take her kids to a convention or buy them half the stuff they got in their gift bags, so, seeing their happy faces at our event, she felt like a superhero. This is why we do it. With your help we can reach more families.

This year, in addition to all of the above, we have an exclusive limited edition play mat for Magic designed and donated by the original artist of the Magic card game, Dennis Detwiller. Artist Matt Smith http://www.smithvssmith.com/workshops-lessons/ is bringing his “Let’s Draw Some Comics” program for 40 lucky kids. John Gallagher will be giving us an original piece of art for a major new franchise he is working on, to be announced on our Facebook page closer to the date: https://www.facebook.com/CuriousComiCon/ The Star Wars 501st Legion Stormtroopers, Ghostbusters, and The Dark Knight of Victoria will appear. Award winning VR creators Cloudhead Games have donated demos of their “The Gallery” series to the Vancouver Island Library’s VR guys so everyone can play for free.

Attached is a letter of support from the Children’s Wish Foundation. Though we are a small city, with one of the highest child poverty rates in Canada, we are two thirds of the way towards the $10,000 needed to grant a wish. Once we’ve fulfilled our commitment to Children’s Wish, we will be supporting a different Vancouver Island charity every year. Every penny made goes to the charity.