Conventions

Remember back in the day two years ago when you could go on the Ace Parking site and buy advance parking for the San Diego Comic-Con? Well, this is no more. A new random lottery based system has been put in place, to go with all the other random lottery systems for Comic-Con:

A little while ago I wrote about a bunch of comic-connish events getting postponed or cancelled and now The El Paso Comic Con has bitten the dust.

I'm surprised we don't see more of these stories in the media, but perhaps this is just the start. It seems a 13-year-old lad...

Remember when we were urging you to consider going to WonderCon Anaheim if you got shut out of Comic-Con badges? Well, I guess a lot of people did, because Saturday is now sold out! You can still get single day badges for Friday and Sunday, and a FEW 3-day badges. WonderCon Anaheim is held April 3-5 in Monongahela Anaheim. If you want to go...well, maybe you''d better get a badge now.

Speaking of SDCC, did you know that WonderCon is thrown by the same folks and you can go to the website and buy tickets and book hotel rooms in a totally normal, non-anxious fashion RIGHT THIS MINUTE? It is true that you may not run into Travil Fimmel at the Hilton bar, but you are pretty much still going to have a good time. This years show is April 3-5 at the Anaheim Convention Center, and guests include Babs Tarr, Ed Brubaker, Neal Adams and other people you would probably like to see.

For those of you who are sensible and like to avoid stress, the "Early Bird" hotel rooms are now available for Comic-Con 2015. These...

It was badge-o-ween this weekend—open registration for this year's San Diego Comic-Con. Rather than follow the travail and triumph on twitter, I went and sat in a sauna, but it was the usual. Everything sold out in about an hour — 30 minutes less than last year. There was a new snafu where people had to log in to the member ID to get their registration number...which then crashed the member ID site because people didn't have it all written out on a piece of paper like they probably should have. Planning, folks.

Tomorrow at 9 am pst, noon est the big one gets underway, the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Darby, the Masters -- registering for a 2015 San Diego Comic-Con badge. The day before the big event, the con has posted a The Ultimate Comic-Con 2015 Open Online Registration FAQ and let's be honest, it is made to weed out people who can't follow instructions:

Here it comes! Preliminary instructions for this year's San Diego Comic-Con open registration is coming next Saturday, 2/21 at 9 am pst. As usual links will be revealed later and you'll get into a waiting room before being able to get in and purchase tickets. Only THREE PER PERSON this year, which is tough. Here's some rough guidelines:

The Valentines State’s first comic con of the year wrapped up over the romantic weekend. Jimmy Jay, Amazing Arizona Comic Con organizer, didn’t let a hallmark holiday get in the way of putting on his three-day annual comic book convention on Friday, Feb. 13 through Sunday, Feb. 15. The event kicked off with an intimate panel with Spawn Creator Todd McFarlane and the New York Times best selling Batman artist, Greg Capullo. They signed someone's baby.

Well, this is a bit of a wounder. I alluded in an earlier post on the Angoulême comics festival that the attendance was being disputed, and in a must read wrap-up of the 2015 festival Matthias Wivel covers everything and has a much more knowledgable breakdown of the dispute. In the past it has been a tenet of faith that 200,000 people attend the festival, which fills an entire medieval style town on a hill. This number has been cited as a reminder of how the French love their comics, how robust the European comics scene is, and in general how Angoulême is heaven on earth for comics lovers. While all of that remains true, it now seems that festival organizers may have been inflating the attendance a tad and it's more like...15,000-20,000.

The Long Beach Comic Expo February 28-March 1st and just announced a great line-up of guests, which you can see below. They also released the cover of the program guide by Travis Hanson, creator of the Eisner nominated story The Bean. It's a nice mash-up of some creator owned icons.