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Just like the guy in the horror movie who does not heed the dire warnings of the gnarly old groundskeeper, Brian Heater did not listen to us, and went to this weekend’s Big Apple Con 2009 and paid the price:

The registration woman’s second obligatory question was the more bizarre—and perhaps revealing—of the two. “If Big Apple Con added a casino, would you stay and gamble?” I’m not really much of a gambler, and as such, this was far and away the easier of the two questions. Neither, it seems, are the organizers of Big Apple Con. Both of whose questions are clearly geared at shaping future iterations of the show based on this small bit of mandatory audience participation.


Actually, we have been to many a Big Apple Con and had some fun, but if hot sweatiness alone was grounds for ending a show, BAC would have been finished years ago.

ALTHOUGH, looking at Brian’s photos, it appear that they moved the show upstairs, instead of the tarp-draped, often leaked on pavillion area? Can anyone report?

§ Top Shel’fs Brett Warnock reports on notable new artists and comics he’s picked up over the last few weeks.

§ Chris Pitzer of AdHouse does likewise.

§ Tom Spurgeon interviews erotic cartoonist Dale Lazarov.

LAZAROV: Bruno Gmunder Verlag, my German gay art book publisher, says that most of their books sell online; given that I can go to online booksellers in Argentina, Italy, Poland, India and Japan and see Manly and Sticky listed, I would say they certainly do their homework with online booksellers. They are distributed to bookstores internationally, though, since they’re marketed as art books and not comics. Here in North America, high-end, erotica-friendly comic stores like Chicago Comics, or big city independent bookstores like Books, Inc in San Francisco (which has a long-standing end cap with my books! Yay!), plus still-vital gay bookstore chains like Lambda Rising, carry my books. I helped Gmunder get Manly carried by Borders and InsightOut (the LGBT division of Quality Paperback Book Club) so there’s room to grow, too.

1 COMMENT

  1. OMG! Is that New York Comic Con’s Peter Tatara way in the background of that pic? Yes, I do believe it is…

  2. Heidi,

    I did attend the BAC on Saturday. It was moved to the 18th Floor of the Hotel Pennsylvania. The surroundings were more posh but also more cramped and sweaty (at least in the dealers room). I must have lost 10 pounds in the hour I was there.

    Interesting tidbit, I was given two post cards. One was for the Wizard Big Apple Com, scheduled for October. Also, another one for a con called the “Comic Book Marketplace” which seems to be run by the current owners of the Big Apple Con. Just throwing that out there for anybody sad that the old school con quality that was the Big Apple was going away under Wizard’s watch.