Conventions

The Mid-Ohio Con was held this weekend — the first one to be run by Wizard since taking over the show last year — and based on reports, it was very well attended. But, in an echo of long ago scars from Con Wars, it was not quite as well attended as its organizers seem to imagine in their own worldview.

One week past, and most have recovered from the media spectacle that is New York Comic Con. A slight breather is in order as the convention season glides into hibernation, with just King Con III and the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival remaining here in New York City. As soon as the Con ended and attendance was announced, comixologists began to ruminate upon what they had witnessed, what went right and wrong, and what to anticipate if the Con keeps growing at an annual rate of 14,400 people a year. What might next year's show look like?

While 105,000 people converged upon the New York Comic Con last week, some 150,000 booksellers, publishers, and bibiophiles packed the halls at the Frankfurt Book Fair, held October 12-16.

Word out of San Diego is that the previously rumored “a nationally-televised parade that would kick off or end Comic-Con” will not happen after all.  San Diego City Council President Tony Young tweeted yesterday that the Con organizers were dead-set against it, likely fearing the logistical and bureaucratic challenges it would face.  Parades at comic book conventions are hardly unknown, though, with Atlanta’s DragonCon holding a justly famous parade each year on the Saturday morning of the show.

Was it worth braving the crowds? Are comics the center of attention at NYCC? How good was a $5 hot dog taste? And what does I.M. Pei have to do with it anyway? This is it -- the one you've been waiting for!

It's going to take a while to get the images and sounds — and smells — of New York Comic Con out of our head, and images such as the above — a bevy of gender-swapped Doctor Whos composed of cosplay superstars — will show you why. There were SO many costumed people at the the show this year. The ratio of costumes to lookieloos was incredibly high. So yeah, if it was spectacle you wanted, you got it, including the topless woman with the fake mustache who was hanging outside the Javits on Sunday. "Yeah, they were talking about her all the way back to Macy's," a photographer told me. Since Macy's is five blocks crosstown from the Javits, this is the equivalent of light speed communication in New York terms.

Although it may have felt like more, as you were sandwiched between an Optimus Prime on one side and a Harley Quinn on the other, with Mister T coming up close behind, this weekend's New York Comic-Con drew 105,000, show runner Lance Fensterman reports. He also has a recap of some of the main complaints of the show:

Penultimate and ultimate con posts! Drink and drive with Transformers Beer Pong! See the new "CARtoons"! Lots of photos, and what I did at Javits this weekend.

Yesterday at his panel, Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada announced a Dexter comic, in the continuity of Dexter novels.  This comic will be...

If there was ever a bullcrap spin on a story, this NY Time pre-NYCC piece which attempted to cast it as the "smaller, quieter" cousin to SDCC is one.

Over on the Vertigo blog, we find an announcement that Vertigo's titles are starting to be released simultaneously in both print and digital ("day and date" is an insipid phrase; let's all stop using it).

In the late '90s, Alan Moore had a bit of a lull in his career.  It was after his exit from DC and before...