Thousands Converge on Downtown Cleveland For the City's First Comic ConEvent Despite Villainous Weather

In hyper local news... Known as the birthplace of Superman and for major blockbuster movie productions for Spider-Man 3, The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Cleveland is a part of comic book culture. Although, the city has never had a real comic convention, until now.

This weekend marked the first ever Wizard World Cleveland Comic Con event. It's been years in the making and since around 2009 there's been rumors swirling that a comic convention was headed to the city.

Opening on Friday in negative degree temperatures (-5 at one point, to be exact) fans flocked to the Cleveland Convention Center. The weather is usually the villain of the city this time of the year, and it was, but that didn't stop fans of comic books and pop culture. In fact, it was a bigger draw than expected with as bad as the weather was.

On Saturday the crowd grew even bigger. The weather was not as cold but still plenty villainous as 3-6 inches of snow came down in and around Downtown Cleveland. Cars were lined up for parking garages and into the street in front of the Convention Center until 2 p.m. The event started at 10 a.m.

Being the city's first real big comic convention there were some concerns about its potential and attendance, but the large fan turnout removed any and all of those concerns. Vendors could be heard talking on their phones stating how shocked they were with the big crowd and business. And other vendors said they were so busy they couldn't even find a moment to go use the restroom.

All of this equates to what observationally appears as a hugely successful convention for the city and for Wizard World. This may be Wizard World's first convention in Cleveland but it seems obvious to say that it definitely won't be its last. UPDATE: Wizard World has already confirmed that it will return to Cleveland in 2016 on Feb. 26-28.

Welcome to Cleveland, Wizard World! It's been a long time coming but next year please have it a couple of months later so there's warmer weather.