The Never-Ending, Four-Color Festival: Cons, Shows, Events



By Tom Spurgeon

* the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists is meeting this weekend. That group has done a pretty good job of mainstreaming into its body a lot of the younger cartoonists that are not necessarily going to have the same career paths as the previous generation. I'm not sure what there is to talk about, but whatever's on the mind of the membership will be revealed by Monday.

* SPX has added more guests, including Congressman John Lewis and Michael Kupperman, who are always getting confused for one another. I'm glad Kupperman is going; I enjoyed seeing him at TCAF and I think he's an undervalued creator. I believe Rutu Modan and Seth might be new, too, or at least sort of new. Both of them are smart, articulate festival guests whenever they're invited. I've heard rumors of Jeff Smith and Raina Telgemeier, but that announcement looks like it may come as exactly the worst timing for this weekly column -- I'll update when I know in one of the randoms, for sure.

* Grand Comics Festival has announced its show for 2014. I'll start building the 2014 part of this post ASAP.

* Baltimore has its hotel information up. I would love to go to a show in Baltimore, and I used to visit that city once or twice a year 20 years ago. I never seem to get out to that show, though. People are very fond of it.

* here's all of the comics-related ALA programming in one place. I gotta go to one of these, too.

* finally, I think this might be it for CAKE-related reports, but it's a good one. The Collective Memory for that show is here. Those were harder to find than most reports like this used to be, but there was a lot of writing from that show, and I'll need to take one more pass to look for random blog entries, video and photos so there's likely more. The upshot is that with some solid administration and whatever amount of luck might be necessary in a festival's early years, that show has a great chance to stick. Chicago is a great comics town, cartoonists want to visit Chicago, and the regional fan base should grow accustomed to the show being there in a way that has a fine chance of allowing the festival an audience year to year.
 
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