If you’re near Garden City, Long Island this weekend you might wish to check out the first ever EternalCon—it’s a one-day show at a fantastic location: the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, LI. Admission to the con also gets you admission to the museum’s displays of planes and other vehicles. As befits the setting, EternalCon is spotlighting GI Joe with guests including Larry Hama and Jim Shooter. It has an original benefit poster, above, by Sean Chen and Mike McGuire—proceeds go directly to the Hurricane Recovery Fund for Hurricane Sandy victims.
We chatted with EternalCon organizer Frank Patz-Batista, a long time Beat pal, and he told us he has already presold more than 600 tickets for the show as of earlier in this week—that’s a pretty good number for a new, small local show. EternalCon has gotten great promo in local papers, and Frank enlisted friends to do radio promotions and more. He also told me that exhibit space has been sold out for over a month but if he could have sold more room, from all the requests he’s gotten, he could have easily doubled the size of the show.
I bring all this up as yet another example of how the economics of comics show have really taken hold. As I mentioned, Frank is a Beat pal, so it goes without saying that he’s smart and business focused—he did a great job of promotion and using connections to serve an area that didn’t have a con—and the audience seems to have been ready for it.
Of course the ultimate test will be how the show does. We’ll keep you posted.
What day is it?
Today, from 10 am-6 pm.
SRS
How was the show?
Eternal Con the First was a success! If you were looking for ANY type of GIJoe merchandise – you could find it there. The main floor was packed with dealers hawking T-Shirts, action figures, statues, Harry Potter scarves, 1/2 off HC’s, Anthony Synder’s original art was there , and Big Apple’s Mike Carbo, too . $1 boxes of comics abounded – which helped me out a lot, replacing comics that Hurricane Sandy destroyed. Spent time chatting with Long Island’s own Billy Tucci, Jim Shooter, and Frank Tieri. Inside the museum was a display of original props from the Planet of the Apes films, which was very cool. Outside was a replica of the original Batmobile, Mad Max’s car’ and Kit from Night Rider. There was something for everybody and an enormous amount of cosplay ranging from a Colonial Marine to Iron Man to many, many Star Wars characters. The con seemed busy all day, so I hope the dealers did well and want to make back next year. It is great to have a local con back here on Long Island. The last local con I can remember was at the Holiday Inn In Rockville Centre run by Ken Diamond. Thanks to everyone involved for a great first effort.
Comments are closed.