It has been years since I had stepped foot onto the Wisconsin State Fair grounds, but that changed because Mighty Con holds one of their events on the site, MCC(Milwaukee Comic Con). This event took place on Sept. 2nd, 2023 at the Wisconsin State fairgrounds in the Exposition Center Building in West Allis, WI.
Now, when arriving at the building where the festivities were taking place, it had a very heavy atmosphere of individuals, both older and younger attendees who were there for the site seeing, making their monthly purchases of memorabilia/collections and as well as to show off their amazing cosplays! In ways, it was similar to the atmosphere that Big Monster Con had back in late July of this year. There were a lot of familiar aspects to other local events that I recognized– vendors that I have seen at previous conventions, and as the way the set up was presented. It’s nice to see some consistency, of course the event was in a completely different city and ran by a different organization.
Unfortunately, there were no guests attending the convention this year, but there were many independent artists and vendors who were attending the convention. Some of those independent artists were Krystal Kowalczyk of Anime Oils, she creates pieces using oil points and puts a twist on those paintings by using UV paintings to give it a different color effect under UV lights. Another one, CJ Standal, creates visual novels such as “Rebirth of the Gangster” which is a noir-style gangster story and “B.A.E. Wulf” on the other hand is a mash-up story of Beowulf and a Lovecraftian story in one!
Now to the best part of all of this, the KAIJU stuff!
So, we had quite a few vendors selling kaiju/tokusatsu figures and collector items. One of those vendors that had a presence there was good friend Nate Thomas of Kaiju Days. Anthony Koeber was not able to join Nate due to schedule conflicts, which was a bummer. There’s always a silver lining, though. It was great getting to help table with Nate at this show! I have had previous experience tabling with Creacher Preachure, so I figured I could help in some way. He was running his table by himself; he didn’t have much time to walk away to use the restroom or to take a moment to breathe. So, I ended up working with him for the remainder of the my time at MCC.
The time we had together was like the times we usually had from previous events like G-Fest or the pop-up store at Space Golf in Orland Park, IL. We caught up on life, talked about the movies we enjoy, and bantered back and forth with our shared love of dry humor. We even met some new faces that we have not seen before and talked to a few locals that were excited to hear about Kaiju Days appearing at MCC and even hearing from folks that have not gone to G-Fest! It was a surprise to me, honestly, that some of these kaiju fans hadn’t attended the big convention in Rosemont before, but hopefully we talked them into doing so!
But to sum up everything from this past weekend, Mighty Con does have room to expand and get more open with the diversity of vendors that appear at their show. I hope next year they think about bringing out some guests. It was great seeing the local kaiju community in my home state come out and support Kaiju Days, and share their love for the genre. In the end, I hope it blossoms into more G-FEST attendees and, potentially, the building blocks for a growing kaiju presence here. MCC was a fun weekend activity to do with family or friends, and definitely a great opportunity to meet new folks.
Maybe we’ll get some more kaiju stuff brewing in Wisconsin!
Sources:
-Mighty Con(Organization, website, convention information), https://mightyconshows.com.
-Milwaukee Comic Con(Convention, website, convention information), https://mightyconshows.com.
-Big Monster Con(Convention, article), https://kaijuunited.com/2023/08/02/a-brief-recap-of-big-monster-con/.
-Anime Oils(Vendor,social media, vendor information), https://www.instagram.com/animeoils/.
-CJ Standal(Vendor, website, vendor information), https://www.cjstandalproductions.com.
-Nate Thomas(Interviewee, article), https://kaijuunited.com/2023/06/15/community-interview-nate-thomas-and-anthony-koerber/.
-Kaiju Days(Vendor,website, vendor information), https://kaijudays.squareproduct.com.
-G-Fest(Convention article), https://kaijuunited.com/2023/07/19/kaiju-united-at-g-fest-2023/.
-Space Golf(Location, article), https://kaijuunited.com/2023/06/12/visiting-the-kaiju-days-pop-up-store/.
