Summer Con Season 2007 Kicks Off



The summer third of the comics convention season kicked off over the weekend in Philadelphia, with Wizard World Philadelphia, and in Charlotte, North Carolina with long-time professional favorite Heroes Con. Although there's a danger in over-reporting on conventions due to their social role and PR platform nature, they're important comics business entities and, given the industry's structural shortcomings, can be a significant money-maker and exposure platform for folks, too.

In terms of this last weekend, each of the prominent shows has issues. While Wizard would be happy if Philadelphia staunched the audience and status bleed of its recent shows, they're probably too early in the reign of their new show-runners for it to be a make or break proposition. Heroes Con had a chance to build on goodwill whipped into a fury by Wizard trying to aggressively move into the region a couple of years back when that was a lot scarier in terms of its business implications. They also apparently raised exhibitor prices, which is one of those upward shifts that can be a big risk for such shows.

In terms of the Philadelphia show, Wizard has a links page up here. That's probably more important than a usual sponsor's link dump because Wizard's show are structured as PR platforms for mainstream comics, with announcements as to who is working on what and the like. In terms of independent voices, Mike Manley provides three reports so far; his convention write-ups are generally among the best. His basic take on the show seems to be that it's a lot smaller than it used to be.

Update: Manley's concluding post on the con says he felt there were more people there than last year but still a serious decline from attendance five years ago, he wonders if the show will continue past 2008, and he makes a load of suggestions. His comment that there seemed to be fewer retailers may be the most telling thing in all of his posts. When a few years back it looked like Wizard might challenge for the overall convention season crown, which seems slightly ridiculous now, the most compelling reason given was that retailers preferred the hardcore comics-buying crowd of the Wizard shows over the Hollywood-interested casual $1-box buyers of a San Diego.

In Charlotte: I've always liked Ben Towle's con reports, and he does a general write-up previewing the show followed by Friday, Saturday, and Sunday reports. I don't know that anyone has definitively covered the show in terms of attendance and sales, but anecdotal evidence gathered in random link fashion suggests creators sold books, or otherwise had a good time.
 
posted 12:26 am PST | Permalink
 

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