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

By Tom Spurgeon

* on Office Christmas Party Thursday we look ahead to a pretty quiet convention weekend -- which makes sense at this point in the year. There are conventions in Portugal and France. The big one to my mind is a Reed show in Singapore where a small but significant group of American comics creators are heading as guests. I expect people coming back and raving about a) the food, b) how freakishly well-organized it is. An Asian Lucca -- by which I mean a show in that part of the world that's specifically friendly to American mainstream comics creators -- would be a welcome thing, to my mind.

* Fantagraphics' store show on Saturday night seems like it would be worth stopping by, at least on your way to that party where the host and hostess are wearing sweaters and obviously not speaking to one another.

* you could spend this relative downtime registering for WonderCon, the early April show from the Comic-Con folks. I had a good time at that show last year, even though -- perhaps because -- none of my usual convention pals were around. Also, it was free for me, which mitigated against various travel nightmares. I guess what I'm getting at is that if I were in the area I'd have no problem heading over for at least one long day of buying comics and hearing cartoonists talk. I quite enjoyed the panels I attended, and whatever Seth's doing is bound to be worth seeing.

* I don't think I'll be on the West Coast that week but it turns out I may be in the Midwest at the same time as March's C2E2 Year 2, and if I am, I'll be there.

* no word yet on CCI registration; the Eisner people named their judges, though.

* in fact, seeing this is the last Four-Color Festival column of the year, you might spend some time over the next few weeks as I will plotting out your 2011. It seems to me that there staggering number of shows that on some level or another, some for people in close proximity and for those that are far away, appeal to a certain kind of comics fan. In an ideal world where I had a magic credit card and an inexhaustible supply of energy, I could make the case for attending around a dozen shows in North America and half that number overseas (I will probably attend three or four total). That's an amazing number of shows, and a sign that conventions have a collective energy they maybe never had before. I hope you enjoyed this recurring focus on them, and it's likely the column will return in 2011.

I hope that you enjoyed this column pulling together each week's convention-related news. The column will return in 2011.
 
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