Dan Vado Announces New Series Of One-Day Comics Shows Starting January

According to a number of industry sites, Dan Vado of SLG Publishing is starting up a string of one-day comics festivals of the indy/small press variety, indicating that this means a creator-driven rather than a theme- or industry-driven show. The "San Jose Comics Festival" will kick off on January 16 with a free event at SLG headquarters in downtown San Jose.

A few of the sites have noted that Vado was a founder on what has since become nearby San Francisco's Alternative Press Expo (APE). That should be noted for sure, although I think what's more interesting here is that this is another series of entries in an increasingly crowded and complex comics event calendar. What was ten years ago a line-up of San Diego, a reeling Chicago and a couple of decent small press shows has become a full-blown calendar of festivals, cons and small press events. Newsarama asked a few comics professionals their opinion over whether such a busy calendar can be maintained; I think the question gets distorted a bit by the fact that the Wizard Entertainment efforts have been staggering through the motions for a few years according to factors that as far I can tell have nothing to do with increased competition.

Anyway, I think comics can maintain a bunch of different shows, as I don't see the models involved feeling the impact of other shows as greatly as their own stresses and pressures. Again, the exception is the Wizard shows, which conceivably might have problems competing toe-to-toe with the Reed shows if they weren't opting for a kind of low-cost, diminished expectations effort that might work just fine because the standards for success are so different than that you see at a traditional comics show. SLG's standards are different, too, although certainly in a different and to my mind more admirable direction than Shamus' new round of shows seem to be. I imagine there's room for a regular series of one-day shows given the economics involved and the way that people don't regularly see work like this through retail avenues, and wish them luck.

photo of Vado from I think 2006 by Whit Spurgeon
 
posted 9:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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