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



By Tom Spurgeon

* I totally missed Seth's SPX poster. Not sure I'd seen this Farel Dalrymple SPX 2013 poster yet, either.

* there are a lot of shows now. I was noodling around with what next year might look like, and made a long list of shows that I could be perfectly happy attending just in North America. Even leaving some I'd be perfectly happy to attend off of the list -- like any Projects sequels or CAKE or APE -- and budgeting modestly in terms of cash needed on the ground for incidentals and meals, I ended up with a $14K projected outlay! Now, obviously, I can't spend even a healthy double-digit percentage of that much money. But it does show how many decent cons and festivals there are now. It's a rich, rich time.

* speaking of next year's shows, I became slightly paranoid at some point over the weekend that MoCCA has yet to announce dates but I was told by one of their board members they're all looking forward to the next year's show and there's no chance one won't come off. So that's good. It will be interesting to see what that group can do with a full year to plan and execute a festival. New York is very expensive for a lot of exhibitors, so there isn't a lot of room for years of build.

* here's a Boston Comic-Con report.

* here's a piece by Andrew Wheeler on Comic-Con International. It used to be a much bigger show in the overall firmament, sure; when I moved to New Mexico in 2003, it was the only show I made sure to attend every year, and the only other show I might feel the need to attend was SPX. It's still a useful and vital show. I always find it weird when sites with some role in shaping how that show is perceived comics-wise run articles critical or questioning of how that show is perceived comics-wise. Every special guest that was a comics person was a walking feature story, and I doubt very many of them had feature stories written on them -- maybe a panel on their spotlight presentation, I don't know. I thought there was a lot of interesting comics news this year, and none of it involved photo arrays of people in costume.

* finally, Janet Smyth talks comics at the Edinburgh Book Festival.
 
posted 7:15 pm PST | Permalink
 

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