Last weekend Geppi’s Entertainment Museum (GEM) brought a piece of the pop culture museum to the crowds at Awesome Con. At the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, GEM presented a wonderful exhibit of comics, art, and collectibles usually housed at the museum.
“It couldn't have gone better. I know we increased the recognition of the museum for sure,” GEM President Melissa Bowersox said.
“It’s been phenomenal. We’ve been so happy that people not only have been coming and seeing the exhibit, but then coming back a second, third, and fourth time to look at some of these things. Overall, we can’t be more thrilled with the response that we’ve been getting from the great fans here at Awesome Con,” Collections and Exhibits Manager Michael Solof said.
Convention attendees walked through the exhibit mesmerized by highly coveted comic books, notable collectibles, and fun tidbits of pop culture. Comics including The Amazing Spider-Man #1, Tales of Suspense #39 with the first appearance of Iron Man, Journey Into Mystery #83 with the first appearance of Thor, Amazing Fantasy #15 with the first appearance of Spider-Man, Fantastic Four #1 with the first appearance of the team, and other comic highlights were on display.
“The collection we displayed was to be a taster tour, if you will, of Steve's [Geppi] entire collection,” Bowersox said. “A mini museum for sure.”
They had collectibles featuring the Pink Power Ranger, Bart Simpson, Negan from The Walking Dead, Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and the original Plane Crazy storyboards of Mickey Mouse.
“Everyone was stopped in their tracks by the displays. Reactions ranged from gasps and awes to actual tears of joy. The original Plane Crazy storyboards were incredibly well received. We were thanked by everyone for bringing the exhibit to DC and many guests returned to tour multiple times, in most cases bringing back friends to see it – just as happens with our actual museum location,” Bowersox said.
“We wanted to pick out, kind of, the greatest hits of the museum,” Solof added. “But our number one thing that we decided upon beforehand as the overall theme, besides being a century of pop culture, was we wanted to pick items that stopped people in their tracks and made them go, ‘Wow.’ We have more than done that just in the little area that I’m standing in front of now, which is holding things like the very first Fantastic Four, the very first Spider-Man, the very first Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, X-Men. People just walk up, walk past these cases and stop in their tracks and go, ‘Oh my God. Wow!’ It’s having the desired effect of just making people stop and get sucked in to all this cool stuff.”
On the heels of such a resounding success, the team at GEM are already considering more traveling exhibits. “We plan to start looking at traveling parts of the collection but nothing has been scheduled as of yet,” Bowersox added.
