A few days ago I had the pleasure of attending Comic-Con Kuwait at the Kuwait Fairgrounds. Yes, there is a comic-con out here in the Middle East and my overall experience was mixed. Due to my schedule out here I was only able to go the first day of the 3-day convention. The area for the convention was quite large and it wasn’t over crowded to where you would bump shoulders with people, which was nice. There were two big problems I had with the convention though.
One was how unorganized it was from delaying people to get inside, waiting to purchase autograph and photo tickets with celebrity guests due to their system being down, none of the scheduling for the autograph sessions were on time, lines were moving slow, and the last thing was the severe lack of comic books that were being sold at the convention. The only comics I found were trade paperbacks, art books, and manga books. Other than that, there were plenty of vendors though that was there to sell shirts, toys, figures, and statues.
The artist alley was small but they only had a handful of artists there. My understanding is that this was the convention’s second year and there’s a lot that they could improve on when compared to my other convention experiences. When I was walking around though, I spoke with quite a few different people, so that made the experience much better. The layout was very nice and spread out neatly so it was easy to always finds what you were looking for. There wasn’t a ton of cosplay but it was great seeing the ones I did come across. I wish I could’ve gotten more pictures but my phone was dying and I forgot my portable battery charger.
If you weren’t looking for comics or toys to buy or waiting for an autograph, they had a nice little gaming section and the food court had the typical variety of food from pizza, Taco Bell, and burgers. I think it’s great that they have a convention out here and were able to get guests such as David Hayter, Nolan North, and Michael Fassbender. If they recognize what they could’ve done better this year, then I can see a large improvement for their next year. It was interesting non-the less to go to a convention out here. Even with its problems, I still managed to have a good time.
