The Aiken County Public Library will host their first ever comic & pop culture convention celebrating graphic novels, manga, comic books, & pop culture. The 2024 A-Con will take place on Saturday, November 2 from 12:00 – 5:00 p.m. and will include author panels, a cosplay contest, scavenger hunt, artist alley, activities for kids, food trucks, and more. SC Humanities supported this program with a Mini Grant.
The A-Con event is a family-friendly event for all ages. Project Director Marie Davidsohn said, “The goal of [A-Con] is to introduce a diverse population of community members to our library services and to celebrate literature with successful South Carolina authors. We want to bring awareness that graphic novels and manga are assets to readers, especially struggling readers.”
The featured presenters at the event will be author India Hill Brown and Marvel Artist Jerry DeCaire.
India Hill Brown is an author with a passion for writing, reading, and all things literary. Her debut novel, The Forgotten Girl, has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Youth/Teens. It’s both a spooky original ghost story and a timely and important storyline about reclaiming an abandoned segregated cemetery. Her second novel, The Girl In The Lake, reminds readers that the truth is scarier than fiction especially when it comes to historical truths and lived realities whose impacts echo through the generations. Her latest book, Rhythm & Muse, is noted as a Cinderella meets Cyrano in a pitch-perfect YA rom-com that is a celebration of Black joy, first crushes, and putting your heart on the line for love. India graduated from Claflin University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mass Communications and with a Concentration in Print Journalism. In her spare time, she can be found curling up with a good book, a hot drink, and a snack. A self-proclaimed southern belle, she lives in the Carolinas with her husband and two sons.
Arist Jerry DeCaire created his first serious drawing at the age of 8 – a Halloween clown mask, shadowed and highlighted with a #2 pencil. As an adult, his dream goal became to create the superhero comics that he knew and loved as a kid. DeCaire submitted his first batch of 6-sequential pages of storytelling art to Marvel Entertainment in 1991, and, to his delight, he received a call back from the then-editor of The Uncanny X-Men, Bob Harras. Other amazing assignments followed, such as Wolverine, Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Mighty Thor, Hawkeye in the MCP’s, Deadpool, and more. His illustration experience also includes RPG character title magazines (like Vampire the Masquerade and Werewolf the Apocalypse), old-style superheroes (like The Green Hornet and The Phantom), and western classics like Cisco-Kid. DeCaire has also worked as an art teacher, inspirational speaker, and performance artist showing the connections between math and drawing. He was showcased in China’s Fantasy Art Magazine in 2011. The latest incarnation of DeCaire’s work can be seen in the 2023 Epic Collection’s Thor: Hel on Earth. Currently, DeCaire is writing and illustrating his own superhero genre, “The Which-When Man.”
A-Con will also feature local authors, including Dr. Tishon Creswell, Casey Mason, Ellen Brown Harrison, LaTrelle Pollard, Lee Newman, Wahanama Robinson, Ursula Ringle, Amelia Sides, Candace J. Carter, Jai West, and Luke Fundak.
More information about the A-Con event, including the full schedule and cosplay contest rules, can be found here: https://sites.google.com/view/a-con2024/home?authuser=0.
The Aiken-Bamberg-Barnwell-Edgefield Regional Library System exists to provide materials which communicate experience and ideas from one person to another. Its goal is to assemble, organize, preserve and make easily and freely available to all the residents of its service area the print and non-print materials that will assist them in their pursuit of education, information, research, culture, and lifelong learning. Learn more: https://www.abbe-lib.org/locations/aiken-county-public-library/.
The mission of SC Humanities is to enrich the cultural and intellectual lives of all South Carolinians. Established in 1973, this 501(c)3 organization is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors comprised of community leaders from throughout the state. It presents and supports literary initiatives, lectures, exhibits, festivals, publications, oral history projects, videos, and other humanities-based experiences that directly or indirectly reach more than 250,000 citizens annually. South Carolina Humanities receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as corporate, foundation and individual donors. The National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.