Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2) is an annual convention that takes place in Chicago within the realm of comedy, fictional writing, comics, video games, anime, cosplaying, educational workshops and so much more. This year’s edition took place from April 10 to 13, 2025. Over 300 activities took place over the three-day convention, and many activities took place simultaneously.
The exhibitor floor was the largest space centrally located and featured kiosks of hundreds of vendors selling merchandise. The workshop rooms along the outside of the exhibitor space featured educational writer’s workshops during the daytime and several adult comedy shows as dusk approached. The comedy shows featured standup comedians from all over the nation as the audiences filled the rooms with jokes, laughs, screams and woos.
C2E2 guests may have felt a fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) by choosing competing activities. “It just depends on my mood in the circumstance because I mean I’m a huge nerd sometimes,” Nitin Potineni, a recently graduated Joliet Junior College student, said. “But I mean when it comes to focusing on one thing, I usually get distracted like whenever I notice something else.”
C2E2 had autograph and selfie booths to take with celebrities. Guests had to pay a price to get a desired autograph or selfie. Potineni compared C2E2 to Fan Expo at Rosemont. “Before this, the Fan Expo at this legendary stars actor Mark Hamill, he cost about like a grand for an autograph or a photo op. I was like what the hell?” Potineni asked. “I mean I was like why would you spend a grand for an autograph like it’s like pointless? I mean he’s a good actor, but it’s kind of a bit greedy.”
C2E2 did not have any celebrities charge such exorbitant fees for an autograph or selfie, and it was a bit more reasonable. “In the C2E2, on the other hand, this actor Andy Circus, his price is $100. He’s kind of reasonable, but at the same time, [I’m] just not that into him.” It is not just the cost that determines a convention guest to pay for an autograph or selfie, but the other factor is how much the individual cares for that celebrity. “I did spend $100 for the Daredevil actor, [Charlie Cox,] from the Netflix series,” he said. “I liked him a lot.” Potineni concluded by saying, “And also if you are into comic books like me, this is the place for you.”

C2E2 is a paradise for individuals who enjoy collecting dolls, trading cards, comic books and antique and rare toys. The Independent interviewed Zach Gaunt, retired Navy personnel from St. Louis and Funko Pop collector. His strategy for exploring an enormous convention like C2E2 is “I’ll take an initial lap or two,” he said. “I have in my head what I want: Funko Pops, Pokemon cards [and] gaming-related [things], like gaming controllers.”
Gaunt prefers buying collectibles from a convention’s exhibitors over online or stores because “you can see that it’s coming from a genuine collector opposed to a face that you don’t know online,” Gaunt said. An additional reason is the website and selling markups as well. As a collector, he shared his knowledge about a grading scale called the Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA). A PSA 10 Funko Pop doll would be considered mint condition, but a PSA 9 Funko Pop doll would have “very minor discrepancies. Like a nine might have like a couple visual scratches that don’t take over the pristine of it, but if you’re really looking into it, that’s the difference.”
As a thought experiment, the Independent asked Gaunt about the characteristics of a PSA 1 collectible, and he responded, “That’s the worst. So that could be like there’s a crack in the whatever packaging. It’s missing in some of it. There’s a hole. Normally people wouldn’t get it graded unless it’s something so rare that there’s not many still out there to kind of keep it in that going on.” Gaunt closed by saying, “Just kind of take pictures, walk around and learn something new I guess. It’s a fun time.”
The Independent received the opportunity to sit down with Adam Nusrallah, producer and head of creative development at Cyanide and Happiness, C2E2 exhibitor and C2E2 panel facilitator. During the previous night’s interactive comedy drawing session, he facilitated the live drawing panel and featured people’s shouted ideas while his session’s panelist drew artwork. The idea of an open Q and A session also helped to fill any dead air “so we could add to the humor of the response backs of people’s questions and make it an interactive thing,” Nusrallah said. “So that we’re all sort of participating together.”
Nursallah’s expertise is in animation and drawing; he gave solid tips and tricks for creative minds at NEIU. For 2D animation, he recommended Toon Boom and Adobe Flash, and for 3D animation, he recommended Autodesk and Maya. Procreate was another recommendation he made for NEIU students pursuing illustrator careers.
Nusrallah discussed how his younger self would react to him doing comedy, animation and drawings. “He’d be proud because that was one of his dreams,” Nusrallah said. He used to go to panels in his younger days before his career took off. “I always used to dream that one day maybe hopefully I can share the work that I get to do, or the work that I want to do in the future with others, and that was a dream goal,” Nusrallah said. “I’ve gotten to do that, and it’s not something that I thought like I knew I had it in me.”
“When it comes to a live panel thing in front of a bunch of people, most of the time, we kind of wing it,” Nusrallah said. “…After you’ve been doing this for so long, you get used to that.”
C2E2 had something to appeal to every age demographic, and that could be a difficult task to achieve in comedy shows. However, “everybody likes a good laugh. So, if it makes you laugh, then that breaks all generational gaps,” Nusrallah said. “Depending on the crowd, people are shy to ask questions or speak up, but last night’s panel, everybody was super into it. I think one of the coolest things is just how involved the entire crowd was.”
When it came to student clubs, groups, projects and teams at a university like NEIU, Nusrallah offered some sound advice. “Spend time together to get to know each other. Spend time together and have fun,” he said. “Go do things that are not specifically related to doing the actual work. That’s where a lot of inspiration comes from.”
Nusrallah encouraged NEIU students to spend time together and share their thoughts and ideas. “It’s really just about bonding together and finding the right group that you’re interested in collaborating with and being creative,” he said.
Nusrallah provided some closing remarks. “And so you have to learn to be okay with being uncomfortable and just do the work and put it out there,” he said. “And consistency, consistency is key. It’ll always outbeat anyone in the room if you’re a consistent[ly] harder worker.”

C2E2 not only offered entertainment and comedy shows, there were several writer’s workshops to help aspiring writers harness new ideas, evade writer’s block and get the ball rolling towards publishing a book through desktop publishing organizations. One writer’s workshop that helped writers to evade writer’s block was titled “Assemble Your Ideas: Brainstorming Activities for Writers”, which was facilitated by Eric Kallenborn from the Fine Arts Department at Oak Lawn Community High School.
Kallenborn walked the audience through a brainstorming activity called “Hard, Weird, Scary, Stupid.” “This is an activity I learned from The Comedy Bible,” Kallenborn said. It was a book of fiction written by Judy Carter. This technique is used to write jokes, personal narratives and essays.
Within a notes app on their phones or a physical notebook, the audience was asked to write the four words as categories and leave space below each word. “And then you’re not going to try to be funny. You’re not going to try to be anything but honest. And you’re going to write down all the things that you can think of that are hard, weird, scary and stupid about a particular topic,” Kallenborn said.
After doing the exercise with the audience, “you just came up with body paragraphs. Those are your topics,” Kallenborn said. “So, let’s do a topic sentence for each one of these. And then let’s kind of fill in with our ideas.” Some topics he suggested for the audience included: photosynthesis, hardware, the U.S. Civil War, parents, teenagers and parent-teacher conferences. It can be anything. Kallenborn routinely does this activity with his students to brainstorm writing ideas. This brainstorm technique works for any subject matter that the writer wants to write about.
Kallenborn concluded the brainstorming activity with some food for thought. “And just there’s so many different ways these brainstorming activities can kind of just help us laugh and think more and just have fun,” Kallenborn said.
The expo had something for everybody, whether visitors were diehard fans of a franchise or casual hobbyists looking to learn something new. Next year’s edition of C2E2 will take place from March 27 to 29, 2026.
