So I went to Anime Central Midwest this past weekend.  It was tons of fun, and although I didn't get to be in the artist alley myself, I got to see a bunch of really talented old and new artists.  Bought a bunch of small prints (the ones that are in my price range), and one large one from this guy:

No, it's not Demetri Martin, although it looks a lot like him, and he even has some of the same mannerisms.  This guy is Jason Brongel, and he's a very talented young artist.  I bought this awesome piece off of him.  Check out the rest of his stuff when you get a chance.

Of course, what is a convention without some cosplayers.  As a fan of Magic: the Gathering, I was kind of pleased to see a Jace, although it was disappointing to not see anything else.  There were some bad ones, and there were some not quite so bad ones, but the best I saw last weekend was this guy:

Not too bad, right?

I also got to play in the Avacyn Restored prerelease.  No, there wasn't a helvault.  I was disappointed.

I did however pull an Avacyn, and a Restoration Angel, as well as a Devastation Tide with art by one of my all time favorite artists, Raymond Swanland.

Of course, the fun didn't stop there.  As I was getting excited for this weekend's release of the Avengers, who should stop by but some of the characters themselves?

I've heard some great things about the movie so far.  Here's hoping that it's as good as they've hyped it up to be.

For those of you unfamiliar with the characters to the right, starting at the left, we have Black Widow, Captain America, and finally, Loki.  I didn't recognize Loki at first, because it was a girl playing him.  She had the hair down though.  Would've been a little easier to get it if she had the horns.






I also saw the dealer from Resident Evil 4.  I asked him what he was selling:

Yes, you're seeing those right.  They're panties.  He claims to have gotten them from Pedobear.

And these guys are people I've been trying to find for 24 years now:

Carmen Sandiego, and Waldo (or Wally, for those not from America).  Yeah, I didn't know that Waldo was a DBZ fan either (check the strap across his chest).

Ran into Deadpool as well, but he wasn't in a good mood.  Tried to mug me:

I've been playing some Dead Rising recently, so I was pretty happy to see Frank West walking around killing some of the hordes of bad makeup zombies running amok.  He of course had some help with the crew from Left 4 Dead, but none of them were as stylish with that awesome novelty hat.

And as though getting a straight on photo wasn't enough, Frank decided he'd photobomb a picture I took of Travis Touchdown from No More Heroes:

And since I don't really want to drag this out much longer, I'll just let you guys look through the rest of the good cosplays I found.  With a quick mention to Cape Mario (so many are just the overalls and hat), Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers (one of my new favorite franchises), and Beaker of the Muppets (awesome cosplay), these were some of the people that made the event even better: