Actually not a con war, but a curiosity of scheduling with both the MoCCA Festival and Crucial Entertainment East Coast Comicon in the Meadowlands both scheduled for this weekend.
When I originally heard about the scheduling I was told that it had all been worked out and there was no beef, but it’s still unfortunate since there are great guests at both shows and I’m sure a lot of people would go to both. Although they aren’t that far apart AS THE CROW FLIES, the crow must fly over a wide river, and hopping back and forth between Jersey and the meatpacking distract isn’t totally easy unless you have a car and don’t mind paying a lot of tolls.
Someone also pointed us to the East Coast Comicon website, which has an updated attitude towards the press:
Everybody wants one, everybody has a blog. We’ve found that coverage of the con, during the con does little to promote our efforts. We have a finite amount of tickets and we can’t give them out to everyone who wishes to shoot some video or chat to a comic creator — yes, we’re mean terrible people because we don’t want to let you in for free. For the most part, your blog posts do not help us spread the word about our con. How do we know this? We’ve polled our customers. Why do other cons let bloggers and podcasters into their cons for free? Perhaps they haven’t done their homework to find out what helps for promotion. So please don’t feel ill of us, we’re glad you love comics enough to write or blog about the art form, but we just can’t justify granting all the requests we get; and we get a lot.
Which makes sense when you consider the number of comics media outlets these days. Most shows, especially larger ones, have had to put in a lot more guidelines for who is press and who isn’t.
All that said, Torsten will be on the scene for ECC covering all the breaking news. As for The Beat, we’ll be at MoCCA both days, and we have no idea if we’re on the press list or not—admission is $5 a day and that’s cheap enough that we can swing it no matter what.
Wherever you may be going, have a fun time!
I’ll be at East Coast on Saturday, MoCCA on Sunday.
Breaking news? Unless something major occurs (and I don’t think it will), I’ll report my general feelings, and the cool stuff I discovered in the Meadowlands. It’s a good show.
I do wish that ALL thriving comics shows (those in existence 5+ years) would plan dates years in advance. It makes it easier for everyone… planners, creators, fans. The WanderCon fiasco could have been mitigated with a five-year plan.
That said… it’s easy to travel. From the High Line, head to Port Authority Bus Terminal. Take a bus to Harmon Meadows. 15 minutes.
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