Conventions

It didn't take that long for tickets to this year's San Diego Comic-Con to sell out after they went on sale yesterday -- but it did seem like an eternity for those who spent four+ hours hitting the F5 key in hopes of getting through. The ticket site -- run by indie ticketseller TicketLeap -- went live at 9 am PST and immediately slowed to an excruciating halt -- it never technically crashed. Those who persevered through fail screens eventually got tickets -- by about 6 pm EST, 3 pm PST, all tickets were gone. We've already reported some of the bitter reports on twitter, but this really does seem to have been a year of massive frustration. The TicketLeap site took more than 35,000,000 hits during the ticket buying process...allowing for 100,000 tickets sold (let's say), that's 350 refreshes per person, but who knows how many actually TRIED to get on. No wonder that Isotope responded with the "FailFrog:"

UPDATE: Four day passes sold out about 4 pm e.s.t. Single day tickets are still available. For now.

To the surprise of no one, when passes for this year's CCI:SD went on sale this morning at 9 am P.S.T., even the industrial-grade servers at TicketLeap were immediately hobbled. Sales have been going on all afternoon, with this the most seen screen:

As you may recall, this Saturday is the FOURTH attempt at Pass-oween for the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con, with tickets going on sale with a new, multi-phase system which is being handled by TicketLeap, which explains in a press release:

TCAF just got even more international with the announcement that renowned manga-ka Natsume Ono will be a guest. Ono, creator of not simple, House of Five Leaves, Gente, and Ristorante Paradiso, fits squarely in the "independent spirit" mold of most of the fest's guests and provides a reminder of the artistic diversity that manga offers. However she's also a very successful artist whose Ristorante Paradiso andHouse of Five Leaves have been adapted into anime, viewable in the US on Hulu.com, Funimation.com, and Crunchyroll.com, in North America.

The annual Angoulême comics festival is taking place over in France, and folks are blogging it like crazy. Tom Devlin and Peggy Burns from D&Q are having the best time ever obviously. And for those -- like The Beat -- who bitch and moan about having to stay at a hotel in San Diego more than 7 blocks from the convention center, the Burns-Devlin contingent is staying at a hotel 30 kilometres from city center. It helps when the hotel is a remodeled centuries old farmhouse and not a Days Inn, however -- no complaints at all.

After two melted servers and a stressful stress test that saw 1000 tickets sold in 60 seconds despite maddening lag times, Comic-Con International: San...

According to this article, India is getting its first comic-con, a two-day affair to be held next month in New Delhi, and called...Comic-Con India:

Diamond has just announced that they'll be holding their retailer's summit this year in conjunction with C2E2 in Chicago, as they did last year. The Midwest location allows for access to a wide swath of retailers. This year's show will focus on the topic of attracting new customers, with a day of workshops and focus groups on Thursday, March 17th, and a retailer breakfast on the 18th. Diamond also announced participation at a variety of shows throughout 2011.

Is Wizard World trying to turn into TCAF? Of late, the convention tour has been reaching out to indie cartoonists, suggesting a rather unlikely team-up.

Two young men from LA have pled guilty to selling bogus Comic-Con passes. The two advertised their counterfeit passes on Craigslist and sold them...

Back in the Summer of 1994, I was visiting my relatives in Germany. I had heard of the Erlangen Comics Salon, a comics festival being held...

TicketLeap, the company tasked with handling the onslaught of ticket requests for San Diego, has analysis of how it went. With numbers. What happens when...