First webcomic convention arrives in Ferndale

FERNDALE — Ferndale will be playing host to the first Webcomicon, an event that will bring popular comic artists together to one convention.

Webcomicon will take place Aug. 3-4 at the Rust Belt Market, 22801 Woodward Ave., hosted by The Awkward Yeti and The Awkward Store. It will feature close to 20 artists who will be presenting their work, along with a host of panels that attendees can check out on the con floor.

Organizer Nick Seluk said these artists don’t get many chances to get together, and he wanted to be able to bring them all to the same place.

Seluk, an artist himself who makes The Awkward Yeti, also said he wanted to give a space to web artists, as they often get overshadowed at bigger conventions by more mainstream artists.

“We don’t see a lot of concentrated genres in comic cons,” he said. “You might see, like, one webcomic person or two, and I just wanted to bring everybody into the same place. It’s kind of like the artists of Instagram getting together, like the social media people who you don’t necessarily know who they are or sometimes you don’t even know the comic name, but you’ve seen it on your social media feeds. So I thought it was kind of a nice target to have, like something kind of niche where it’s more intimate and meaningful.”

Seluk described web artists as people who make “short form humor webcomics or comic strips.”

“It’s like basically the evolution of what you would see in the newspapers,” he said. “We all sort of started online for the most part.”

Brian Gordon, artist and creator of the comic Fowl Language, is excited to see how the convention runs and what a webcomic-specific event will be like.

“At traditional comic conventions, it kind of feels like you’re at the kids table, because you have your celebrities, you have your people there to see, like, the big comic artists, you know, from traditional comic book stuff, and it always seems like webcomics are kind of like, ‘Oh, and those guys,’ versus like being in the spotlight,” he said.

“I’m really excited to be at an event that really celebrates web comics for what they are and, on a more personal level, it’ll be fun to see these people in person, because one of the downsides to being a web cartoonist is that you don’t work in a traditional place … like in a more brick and mortar sort of a work environment where you’re around your peers. So, I know a lot of these people, but they’re in Texas and California and all over the world. So, (I’m) just excited to be in the same place as these people for the first time.”

Seluk said he’s excited about the target niche of the con and focusing on the humor aspect of the work presented.

“Comic cons are more superheroes, graphic novels, stuff like that,” he said. “I really like focusing on the humor part of it. Definitely looking forward to meeting some artists that I haven’t actually met in person yet, and I’m just really hoping everybody has a really good time. I’m doing a lot of detailed planning, hoping that it will be fun for everybody.

“I’m really excited to have everybody together, but also to have a chance to meet fans that are there to see our type of work,” he continued. “It’s always really good to meet the fans when you’re working online, because they start to forget that there are real people out there. So it’s really nice for them to meet the human behind the comics and for us to actually interact with them.”

Tickets for the event cost $5 to $15. Kids will be able to enter for free on Sunday, Aug. 4, and there will be activities geared toward younger attendees. For more information on the event, visit webcomicon.net.