I had a better time than I expected at Wizard World’s first Anaheim Comic Con. Not surprisingly, it was similar to the last Wizard World Los Angeles, except without any comics publishers. (I guess they all went to C2E2.) Without Marvel, DC, etc., the con focused mostly on dealers, fan groups, artists and celebrities.
Read on: A Day at Anaheim Comic Con. Or check out my photos of the con on Flickr.
Long Beach Comic-Con is only two weeks away! They’ve posted their programming schedule and floor map, and I’m happy to see that the panels I most want to see are (a) on the day I’m going and (b) not opposite each other!
Comic Con International has opened online registration for 2010. There’s a pretty steep price jump — the full week is $100 now. Admittedly, that comes out to $25 a day, so it’s not that bad when you think about it. But it’s still triple digits.
They’re trying to cut down on the Wednesday night crowds by selling two types of full-con tickets, one with Preview Night and one without. On one hand, that’s probably a good idea. “Preview” Night has gotten rather insane the last couple of years (since the last time Warren Ellis came out to San Diego, really). On the other hand…you need the Preview Night version to pick up your badge early. If you get the regular version, you have to wait until Thursday morning. Otherwise, I’d happily forgo Preview Night so that someone who really wants to go can have a slightly less crowded experience, since I rarely spend more than half an hour on Wednesday anyway.
WonderCon has announced the dates for next year’s convention: April 2-4, 2010. That’s later than it’s been the last few years, and puts it only 2 weeks before Wizard’s Anaheim Comic Con (April 16-18). It’s close enough to make me feel like there’s no point in going to both. WonderCon looks like a better idea for a lot of reasons…but Anaheim is so close that it feels like it would be a waste to not go.
Ever since Wizard canceled Wizard World Los Angeles back in January, just two months before the event, they’ve claimed that the show was not actually canceled, but merely “postponed” (as opposed to WWTX, which was canceled outright). They can probably stop claiming that now that they’ve announced Anaheim Comic-Con, launching April 16-18, 2010.
In the six months since Wizard World canceled half their convention slate, the owners of New York Comic-Con have announced a new Chicago-area show, C2E2, launching next April 16-18 (does that date sound familiar?), and a group of former Wizard staffers have put together Long Beach Comic-Con, starting October 2-4, to take the place of the missing WWLA. Wizard, meanwhile, has renamed Wizard World Chicago as Chicago Comic-Con (its original name before they bought it a decade(?) ago), bought Big Apple Con, and bought Paradise Toronto Con. Or, to be more precise, Gareb Shamus, owner of Wizard, has bought them.
Immediately obvious:
Six months ago it looked like the LA/Orange County area wouldn’t have any big conventions for a while (aside from being 2-3 hours from San Diego). Now there are two. The timing (April) is far enough from both San Diego (July) and Long Beach (October) that it won’t feel like overkill to hit all three. It’s even far enough from WonderCon (usually February or Early March) that it might be worth hitting both.
And I did have fun at WWLA last year and the year before.
And yet… Continue reading