MCHS Library Holds Comicon
Comic books, video games, LARPing and more were found at McDonald County High School on Aug. 15 as the library hosted Comicon during an open house.
Librarian Jill Williams said about 20 students from the library club worked on the event throughout the summer.
“It’s something I had seen in the press a lot and knew the kids enjoyed comics and superheroes,” Williams said. “I’d seen Comicon and was fascinated with the idea of it. I thought it was something that would bring people into the library.”
She said they came up with the idea in the spring and began working on it the week of July 28.
“We’ve met every week, and this week we’ve been here every day. They’ve literally been here since 8 o’clock this morning,” she said.
“These kids are the cream of the crop,” Williams added. “These students are really, really special. They’re willing to do whatever I ask. They’re the best readers in the world. I don’t know what I would do without them.”
At the event there was a “breakout box” which was like an escape room, Williams said. Participants had to go through a whole set of clues hidden in comic books to figure out how to unlock a series of combination locks to unlock a box to get to the prize inside.
Makayla Stone of Rocky Comfort was manning a craft table at which people could make their own superhero masks and cuffs.
“I like all the things you can do,” Williams said of Comicon. “If you like art things, you can do art things. If you like LARPing or video games, you can do that as
well. It’s not just for one type of person.”
Doug Whitehead of Neosho writes children’s books and has made two stop-motion films. One was in the Orlando Film Festival and the other is in a NASA competition. He was showing one of the films to share how stop motion works. The film was three minutes and 40 seconds. He said stop motion takes about 24 images per second.
“I think it’s cool. It’s fun, real stressful to set up, but I think it’s going to be fun,” said Levi Womack of Southwest City of Comicon. “I think the LARPing is probably the coolest here because it’s interactive and fun.”
Kyle Busby of Anderson said, “It was a lot of hard work, but it’s going to be fun. One thing I really love about the library is you come here and it’s always different. The amount of love and care people put into it just to say, ‘This is ours.’ There’s so much flavor to it. It’s literally McDonald County culture.”
“Comicon is a lot of fun,” said Keagan Spurgeon of Anderson, “especially because I’m into super heroes. I’ve always wanted to go to a bigger version of this.”
Preston Farnum of Pineville was in charge of sign-ups for LARPing. LARP stands for Live Action Role Play. He said, “You can either do a combat LARP or a social or a mix of the two. We’re hoping it turns into a community thing.”
Vincent Russo of Pineville was also helping with signups for LARPing. He said, “I feel like the game promotes a sense of teamwork. It’s sort of a combination of theater and sport. It’s an accepting club community and it promotes storytelling because you have to make up stories about your character. I feel like it’s a strong community, and I’d like to invite anyone to it.”
During the LARP, students battled one another with weapons made of plastic or foam.
Jason Hurley, owner of Hurley’s Heroes, a comic book store in Joplin, was on hand with stacks of comic books.
“I also write comics, so I go to comic conventions all the time,” he said. “We’re having a good time so far, giving out some free comic books.” Hurley writes a science fiction crime comic called “The Beauty.”
Lane Pointer of Rocky Comfort said, “I’ve been here since, like, 10 o’clock this morning and I’ve been working really hard to get this ready. I think it’s turned out really well — better than most of us expected it to. My favorite part would be seeing everybody smile and having a good time while we’re working.”
Alex Padilla of Southwest City was running a video game tournament called Injustice. He said, “It’s a video game where a bunch of DC villains and heroes fight against each other. In our tournament, we’re trying to run an eightperson tournament where they eliminate each other and the last person wins a gift card. We’re running five tournaments tonight and each one takes 15 to 20 minutes.”
“I really like it,” he said of Comicon.”We spent a lot of time designing everything. While it’s far from the real thing size-wise, it’s still a lot of fun.”