Fandom

We knew there was a Big Apple/New York Comic Market Con this weekend at the Penn Plaza Hotel...but we did not realize it was the LAST show to be put on by Mike Carbonaro. But it is. Carbonaro, an inescapable figure on the NY comics scene, has some 40 years of selling comics behind him (he started as ateen like so many of us) but really got on the NYC map with the famed "Church Con" of '96 or so when a planned major convention at the Coliseum (now torn down) was canceled at the last minute when the organizers failed to talk to/pay off the fire marshals. Carbonaro and pals like Vincent Zurzulo stepped in to throw a last-minute show in the basement of a church and a kind of tradition was born again...the kind of grimy, fan-focused shows that New York City fandom was founded on.

via Collider:

The internet is NOT forever. DC's website is undergoing a huge overhaul in a few weeks, according to The Source, with a new design, and new, exclusive content, and the old forums are going to be erased.

How many statistics can one news day handle? DC has just released results from their Retailer Survey which they launched in conjunction with the New 52. As we noted at the time, the survey was aimed at gauging interest in each and every New 52 title, as well as general readership demographics. As such, it represents the most comprehensive reader survey a comics company has made in some time. While it's very New 52-centric, it does reveal a lot. While DC has released their own bullet points, which we've shown below, ICv2 has more info and an interview with John Rood. You'll want to head over there and digest the whole thing. But here's the broad picture:

Via Crunchyroll, a translation of a 2chan chart which shows which kinds of otaku are the craziest and cause the most trouble. In case you're wondering about the "train" part that occupies the Michele Bachmann spot on the chart, it does not refer to various colloquial meanings of the word "train." It means fans who like...trains. You know, toot toots. Just what is it that makes them so crazy? Known as tetsudo otaku, train fans have long been looked on with suspicion by the Ahakibara crowd -- Irvine Welsh is universal, it seems -- but a band of younger, more energetic trainspotters has revitalized the subculture:

Will LA ever get a good comics show? It seems as elusive as a football team. This weekend saw first time show Comikaze unfold at the LA Convention Center, scene of much heartache over the years. Held just one week after the Long Beach Comic Con, Comikaze still was a sell-out, according to IGN, but first hand reports were very mixed.

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.

This weekend's GeekGirl Con in Seattle sounds like it was a big success; both Saturday and Sunday sold out, and while the above news report doesn't make it look like it was sardine-land, maybe selling out before you get to that point is not a bad idea. Gail Simone has a lengthy write-up that deserves to be read in full; the idea of a female-run and female-centric convention seems to be fairly emblematic of the time and place we find ourselves in, and it sounds like the programming, in particular, was noteworthy:

It's been a long time since I posted an arty Hipstamatic photo dump -- and I know you missed it!

And to think I almost didn't go to the Baltimore Comic-Con. Like many I was feeling pretty conned out, but in the end the idea of a short road trip to an always relaxing show -- and covering the Harveys -- won out, so I was off on a road trip with Ed Catto of Bonfire Agency and Captain Action fame, and Josh Frankel, founder of new publisher Zip Comics. Beginning as it did at 7:30 am, the trip down was a coffee-driven affair, as we discussed our various endeavors and ideas for improvements and prognostications for the future. While all three of us are born optimists, the current uncertainties and question marks left any real attempts at planning akin to spitting into the wind. Future cloudy; ask again later.

Mr. Tony Lee, author of many Doctor Who and soon MacGyver stories, has posted some thoughts on guest behavior at cons, basically saying that if you are a paid-for guest, you should stay a guest after hours, and not just on the show floor.