Every year for the past ten years, over 58,000 Midwestern comic book fans and other “geeks” gather for the annual Wizard World Chicago comic book convention at the Donald J. Stevens convention center in Rosemont.

Formerly the Chicago Comicon, Wizard magazine purchased the convention in 1997.

At Rosemont, booths are filled with everything from adult film stars to television stars and this year even featured Michael Madsen, star of Resevoir Dogs. But more important to many fans are the booths filled with thousands of comics marked as low as a quarter.

Today’s average comic book retails for $2.99, leading avid fans to purchase as many as possible. This coupled with blowouts retailers give when they do not wish to carry their stock back halfway across the country causes many a fan to enter with a bursting wallet, and exit with a broken back and a few hundred bucks worth of the coolest “geek” stuff they might purchase that year.

When shopping, fans frankly have to be friendly when they are halfway through a box that might have the one issue of “Solar, Man of the Atom” to complete their collection, and two other fans are fast approaching, seeking the same special deal in the quarter bins.

With too many disorganized comics to look through alone, everyone has the chance to get friendly with a few other people looking for specific titles, and good collectors always help one another.

Rick Berg, DeKalb’s own comic book guy, manager of the local Graham Cracker Comics franchise, was around to manage his company’s toy booth, along with Christopher Bernd another Graham Cracker-DeKalb employee.

The DeKalb store was closed on the Saturday of the convention, since Berg and other DeKalb employees were needed in Chicago.

There’s something for everyone at the con, be it movies available cheap (sometimes they are bootlegs), b-list celebrities, like championship bodybuilder and televisions own Incredible Hulk, Lou Ferigno (he walked right by me!), and definitely seeing people dressed up for the convention.

The male, and yes, female fans who dress up are called Cosplayers. The term, which was formed in the Japanese cartoon (Anime) community, is used when a fan decides to dress up and portray his or her favorite character.

Cosplayers often spending dozens of hours and even thousands of dollars constructing accurate costumes to match their favorite characters.

The winner of the 2007 costume contest was cosplayer Jia Crens, a professional seamstress who has created over 15 other character costumes. Crens was dressed as the classic cartoon X-Men’s Rogue, complete with a poofy-haired “skunk” wig.

In the end fans can end up leaving with lithographs, action figures, hundreds more comics, plenty of fun pictures, and endless anticipation of the next year.