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I’m not going to give updates on this every time there’s a post, but just to keep up with various developments, that indie comics show in San Francisco that a bunch of volunteers have begun exploring has some pretty ambitious plans as reported by Matt Silady.

SF is currently without a major comics show, as APE and Wondercon have moved. But the dream is still alive:

SF Comics Fest Advisory Committee Update

With representatives from comics retail, publishers, professionals, education and more, we held the first committee meeting tonight. We’ve initiated a two-prong attack to bringing a comics-centric festival to San Francisco.

2015: The committee is developing a plan for a 1-2 week city-wide spring comics festival involving events at retailers, libraries, schools, bookstores and other organizations. The first step in that process is creating a master list of businesses and organizations who are interested in being involved. The point person for collecting this information is the amazing Casey Gilly. If you know of a business or organization who might like to participate, be sure to send that information her way! The tentative launch date for the festival would be Free Comics Day – Saturday, May 2nd (offering an ideal avenue for promoting city-wide festival events). EDIT: To clarify, there would be NO competing Festival events on Free Comics Day. That day is for retailers. It would just be an opportunity to spread the word about events taking place over the following week and weekend.

2016: Our goal is to merge the events and programing developed for the city-wide festival with a big hall, exhibitor-centric show in 2016 (date to be determined). Whether internally organized or through a partnership with an external organization, this show would appeal to a large audience with programing and satellite events centered around the rich and diverse comics culture of San Francisco.

The committee is scheduled to reconvene in early January to firm up a general outline for the festival. Our second town hall meeting is tentatively scheduled for early February for community feedback on the plan.

If committee members have anything to add to this summary, please do so in the comments. And if anyone has any question at this point in the process, please feel free to ask. We’ll do our best to answer. As always, we encourage and welcome your feedback!


There’s a lot more in the comments—this sounds like a BIG undertaking, so if anyone wants to get involved now would be the time. Good luck to all involved!