BOSTON – During its second free admission show, WICKED Comic Con at the Westin Boston Seaport District on October 5 hosted a plethora of indie comic book creators who create work spotlighting different cultures and identities as well as satirizing current capitalism.
Danté Miller, 32, is a fantasy comic creator and illustrator currently working on a comic book titled “The Foolz of April” which originally started off as an illustration of 11 characters, but has now expanded into multiple illustrations focusing on culture and clothing typically not featured in fantasy.
“My reality is very diverse and different,” said Miller. “I want my reality to be reflected a little bit in my fantasy, in my work.”
Though Miller said typical fantasy stories are “primarily dominated” by Eurocentric, Japanese, Chinese and Korean cultures, “The Foolz of April” will contain characters coming from a plethora of backgrounds and ethnicities, hoping to “reshape what it means to approach the fantasy genre.”
His process for featuring cultures that are not his own is considering his own proximity to the identity, “cross referencing” that with people more directly linked to it, researching it and not getting defensive about feedback to his portrayals.
As someone who plans to remain indie, Miller said that a difference to his approach on displaying other identities compared to larger companies is the lack of strict deadlines that make “corners get cut, the due diligence gets overlooked sometimes,”
“If I don’t understand it, then I have to do my research, and if I can’t do my research, or enough research to include it, then it can’t make the cut right now,” said Miller.
Having sold art for a decade, Miller has been to plenty of comic conventions, and said he appreciates how WICKED Comic Con keeps the importance of creators in mind, not making them compete with large scale celebrities, while other conventions lacking this have caused him to drop out from them.
“They have been doing a really good job at trying to make sure that the artists are at the forefront,” said Miller.
At that forefront is where Gabriel Joy Reid can be found. Reid, 25, is a cartoonist, animator and writer who recently graduated from Boston University studying in comics. As someone who’s spent a lifetime doing artwork in the effort to “verbalize my experiences,” they now make comics about black, trans and queer stories.
Having tabled at WICKED a few years prior, Reid came back to the convention to see the friends and classmates they make their work for, as well as fellow creators.
“I love experiences like this because I think, as cartoonists, we spend a lot of our time indoors, inside, looking at our stuff in our caves, and then we come out to shows like this, and we can share it all,” said Reid.
Accompanying Reid at their table was Feeb Om, 23, who grew up a fan of comics and cartoons, but was especially motivated to explore her identity through queer online fandoms, for which she now makes artwork.
“It’s everything to me,” said Om. “I wouldn’t be able to be myself if it wasn’t for queer art.”
While Om has tabled at other conventions in the past, this was her first time doing so at WICKED, leading to her being unsure of which of her art she should bring.
Om’s work contains autobiographical stories, but mainly consists of original stories focusing on queer characters, as well as fan art that can all be found on her Instagram.
Though many creators at the convention do both the artwork and writing for their stories, Justin Drew, 37, purely works as an author by the name of Mr. Shushy when writing his satirical children’s books.
One title of his books, titled “Microplastics Are Your Friends” serves as a mockery of the current political administration, based in a reality where they give up on removing microplastics from food, and commission a children’s book that portrays them as a positive.
“The back half of this book is unhinged madness that you will never be able to predict,” said Drew.
Other work from him includes another picture book set to release next year titled “Lily Loves Her Tapeworm”, which is a romantic comedy about a girl who falls in love with her own tapeworm.
Outside of picturebooks, Drew has begun working on a comic book called “Monster Gun” that serves as a parody of “Pokemon”, but also “an indictment of late capitalism” which will begin its Kickstarter next year.
Never having tabled at a convention before, Drew found WICKED to be a “learning opportunity,” with some lessons being to start displaying prices on his work and have more finished books that are ready to sell when at future conventions.
“I’m trying to live or die by my weird IP, my weird little stories,” said Drew.
The next WICKED Comic Con is scheduled for May 23, 2026.
This article was produced for HorizonMass, the independent, student-driven, news outlet of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and is syndicated by BINJ’s MassWire news service.
