It’s Saturday night and I’m cursing the Yankees. Now even though a New Yorker at heart and my husband is a huge fan, because of the game here in Baltimore, not only did I end up with a horrible room at the Hyatt Regency Friday night, to add insult to injury, I couldn’t get it a second night. And Saturday night, as anyone knows, is really the best night to be at the Hyatt bar during Baltimore Comic Con.

In the wake of the Harvey Awards, and a late night for many of the invited guests of the convention, Sunday morning was mellow compared to Saturday’s hustle. Fans still brought the energy onto the floor, many of them taking advantage of what they knew would be a less hectic time frame for ordering commissions. The slower pace prompted more conversation between booths, with plenty of artists hopping between tables when they had a spare moment to reconnect with old friends. Often at larger cons, artist’s alley feels, in its darker moment, like a chain gang where prisoners keep their morale up as best they can through the churning crowds and recognize that they are all in this together. In Baltimore, it was more like the atmosphere on the last day of school, with the barely suppressed sense that the kids are taking over.