Conventions

Just in time for her selection as comics industry Person of the Year, Noelle Stevenson has been announced as the creator of the key art for the 2016 MoCCA Arts Festival. MoCCA and Stevenson go back a ways: back in 2013 her student piece "Knight of Swords" was featured in MoCCA's Student Scholarship Competition. Stevenson was just a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art at the time. She's gone on to become a regular exhibitor at MoCCA, and hopefully in 2016 as well.

This morning, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a $1 Billion expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City. Construction will start...

Wizard World Portland gets the Time Lord treatment in an exclusive variant cover for the upcoming show in February.

ICv2 has an interview with ReedPOP czar Lance Fensterman which covers a lot of growth items for NYCC (Hint: more venues not more days) and also the ongoing con saturation we're seeing:

This may sound peripheral to the whole "expand the SD convention center" saga, but the problems with the Chargers aging Qualcomm Stadium (built in 1967) is very much in the mix as far as local politics go. The Chargers have been begging for a new stadium for ages—apparently the one they've got is so old it doesn't even serve artisanal hot dogs.

Comiket, the world's biggest comics event, shrank a bit at the just concluded winter fest Comiket 89. It only drew 520,000 people over its three day duration, down from 550,000 at Comiket 88 last summer. It's worth noting that this is daily attendance: about 150,000 actual humans actually showed up on day 1, 170,000 on day 2 and 200,000 on day 3. See, even Comiket does turnstile attendance!

We haven't had a crappy con tale in a while, but what happened at the Panama City Beach Comic Con in Florida seems to...

Lego Marvel's Avengers was the best game of PSX and here's why.

    There is apparently a grassroots petition campaign underway in San Diego, where concerned citizens hope to get a ballot initiative that will keep Comic-Con in...

Comics are the forefront of what we love here at the Beat, but when Marvel delays its latest event you need something more to...

The second annual Comics Arts LA festival was held yesterday, in its first year as a two-day show. It's the Los Angeles stop on the Premiere Indie Comics Circuit, and had a strong influence from the local animation community, as befits its founders, Jen Wang, Angie Wang. Iris Jong and Jake Mumm, several of whom have ties to that community. While I haven't found any detailed write-ups, it seems like everyone was up on their socials, with happy photos of comics and people all backlit with the warm, golden sun of early winter downtown LA.

Just a few days ago I was predicting some consolidation in the crowded convention business in 2016, and like clockwork I learned that there have been layoffs at the convention company Wizard World, following the most recent financial statements that revealed a slowdown in convention revenue. I reached out to a WW spokesman for confirmation and was told "We are working to run the shows as efficiently as possible."