Ryan Ostry
Bugle Reporter
@RyanOstry_BR18
rostry@buglenewspapers.com
The fifth annual Comicopolis event officially took place at the White Oak Library District’s Lockport branch this past Saturday.
With a crowd that almost doubled in size from last year to the 1,925 fans who showed up this year, Lockport branch manager Patrica Jarog said this is an event people travel to from all over the country.
Costumes from all over gather at Comicopolis event in Lockport. (Photo by Ryan Ostry)
“Comics and graphic novels are important for libraries because they tell some of our most iconic stories,” Jarog said. “It’s like who doesn’t know the story of Superman or Wonder woman? So it really fits in for us to be a collaborative anchor in this community.”
At this year’s event, fans had a lot in store for them.
Cheryl Sleboda, doing a demo on how to put costumes together, a motion capture actor Lorissa Julianus (mortal combat), who talked about what it is like to work on video games, Gene Ha, who is a comics artist and writer and School of Rock, a local teenage band were all in attendance.
“Every year it’s gotten a little bit bigger and there’s been more attractions for the fans that come to it,” said White Oak Library District Director Scott Pointon. “We wanted to plant the flag in the southwest suburbs here by making this event as big as we would for everyone to see.”
Another much anticipated activity was the drawing for someone to ride in a replica of the “Back to the Future” DeLorean time machine car.
“A lot of people obviously put their names in for the drawing,” Jarog said. “It’s pretty cool that they will get to ride around town in the famous car, that’s not something that gets to happen every day.”
Followed by the drawing, the Lockport community music band named “Limestone Stage” put on a premier “In a Fortnite”, which ran on the main stage as well as an improve skit.
“Limestone has been around for a long time and they are a great community group we have here in Lockport,” Jarog said. “The man who wrote the script for ‘In a Fortnite’ is actually a trustee here at the library as well so it’s really neat.”
The final part of the six-hour event was one of the most anticipated events out of them all, the costume contest.
“Having a staff of around 90 people and then close to 40 executing the event is truly amazing how everyone has come together,” Pointon said. “With all of the costumes, the venues and the overall collaboration, it made the day pretty special.”
Spiderman, Wolverine, Deadpool, Batman and Ironman among others were just some of the many costumes that showed up to Comicopolis.
Five categories were chosen from to decipher the age group for each winner including general adult, general teen, general kids, adult handmade and a juvenile hand made.
“So many of these fantastic costumes are handmade which makes them even that more impressive I think,” Jarog said. “We’re also giving out $50 gift cards to every winner plus to a store in Lockport, a memento for the winner that will proclaim they won from Comicopolis which is pretty cool for our community to see the hard work they did in putting together the costume.
