I went to MoCCA for the first time this year, and several creators told me they were doing both shows, which were a week apart. I was impressed that they made the effort, but it was clearly worth it to them, so it’s not surprising that there has been some grumbling, and it was nice to see Stumptown organizer Indigo Kelleigh’s gracious response to the conflict:

I just wanted to state for the record, that I know the difficulties in arranging for a venue for an event of this size, and more often than not our own final dates are dictated by the venue’s availability moreso than our desired schedule. I can’t assign any malice to this announcement on the part of the MoCCA organizers, and I hope nobody else does, either.

I do believe that there’s plenty of talent on both coasts, and further that this move will not harm either of the shows in the short term. For a show like Stumptown, which has only seen increased demand year after year, even last year in our move to a much larger exhibit space, I don’t believe this unfortunate scheduling will impact the quality of our Comics Fest in the slightest.

Some of the commenters at The Beat had said more or less the same thing, but it’s good to hear it from a show organizer. (Torsten Adair pointed out that Wizard World Anaheim is also scheduled for that weekend, but no one was complaining about that.) It sounds like the organizers of indy-comics shows already do try to avoid conflicts, but they don’t always succeed. I hope they do next year, because one inevitable result is that the East Coast artists stay on the East Coast and the West Coast artists stay on the West Coast, and everything gets a little bit more boring.

New York Comic Con

For all intents and purposes, NYCC is now my big hometown show. I still didn’t go, despite the fact that between getting a press pass and having a monthly Long Island Rail Road ticket, it would have cost me basically nothing to do so, and despite the fact that nearly all of my friends were there. There are a few reasons for this, including a major one involving the health of a family member (the good health, fortunately) that has nothing to do with the show itself. But it’s also for the reason I talk about in this comment thread discussion with The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald: There wasn’t a thriving alternative/art/literary/underground comics presence.

Heidi points out that Pantheon and First Second and Top Shelf all had booths at the show, which is true, and which is good. I like tons of Pantheon and Top Shelf books and usually one book per First Second slate. But when I say “thriving presence” I don’t mean “are the individual altcomix-y publishers that are there awesome or not,” I mean “Does the altcomix-y section of the show do well, attract attention, get press, draw attendees and creators, put up a formidable programming slate.” In that light, I don’t think that segment of this show is thriving vs. the rest of the show, no. For example, did Pantheon have X’ed Out, its eagerly anticipated, apparently awesome new book from titanic talent Charles Burns, available at the show? If so, awesome, but did you read word one about it in any show coverage? I sure didn’t. That little group of publishers Heidi speaks of–which by the way is mostly the alt-ish wings of gigantic NY publishing houses, not the alternative comics press per se–doesn’t reach the critical mass that it does at San Diego, even San Diego circa 2010, let alone TCAF/MoCCA/SPX/APE/BCGF/etc. I know there are any number of reasons why NYCC lacks the altcomix component that even San Diego has been able to preserve. I know that not all of it rests at the feet of NYCC’s organizers at Reed. I still think it’s a dealbreaker.

The reason I popped into the comments at Heidi’s place to talk about this was because she characterized the show as “a complete success from where we stand,” aside from crowd-related problems. On a meta level I just don’t feel comfortable using “complete success” as a rubric–I don’t think complete success is possible, for one thing, unless of course we’re talking about Acme Novelty Library #20. It was Heidi’s use of those words themselves that struck me at least as much as what it connoted in terms of what she thinks of NYCC and the mission of big shows like it. But beyond that I will say that I, personally, don’t have much interest in going to a big giant show with out much altcomix presence on the floor or in the programming schedule, and I think the proliferation of such shows is…get ready…Bad For Comics. I really do think that the best altcomix are more vital to the industry than the best superhero or media-tie-in comics, and I obviously say that as someone with a great deal more affection and admiration for contemporary superhero comics than most people. Thus Heidi’s counterexamples, which challenge me on whether I’d characterize a show like TCAF as something other than a complete success because Jose-Luis Garcia Lopez or Grant Morrison weren’t there, don’t really cut much ice with me. Like I said, I don’t count anything as a complete success, but semantics aside I think a show with a major altcomix presence but not much in the way of front-of-Previews stuff is more successful in all the ways that matter to me than the other way around.

Moreover I think NYCC benefits from a really low bar to clear in terms of press assessments of its success, complete or otherwise, for several reasons. For one thing, its nearest competitor is Wizard’s late-model shows, and NYCC looks like something curated by Dan Nadel by comparison. I know we can quibble as to whether Reed’s creation of a new Chicago con was the first shot fired. But it seems to me that the Wizard-initiated full-scale stage of the Con War, which started when Wizard scheduled its Anaheim show directly against Reed’s C2E2 and really exploded when the Shamus Brothers announced they were putting their New York City-based Big Apple show on the same weekend as Reed’s NYC show, was more than just a disaster for Wizard–in terms of how lightly attended and all but ignored Wizard’s shows have turned out to be, in terms of how they’ve been forced to back down from their most direct challenges to Reed’s dominance, and in terms of giving prominent industry figures the cover they needed to totally walk away from Wizard after all these years. No, it was also a huge and direct boon to Reed. In the public eye it provided Reed a convenient heel for their babyface, but it also made the multimedia component of Reed’s shows look comparatively classy and the comics portion look comparatively prominent.

Meanwhile, Reed’s staff and spokespeople are about a billion times more accessible, attentive, receptive, and honest about their shows. Whatever the organization’s faults, I think it’s pretty clear they care about comics and care about people having a great time at the show and getting something out of it, rather than prioritizing making a buck, trying to punish one’s perceived rivals, and papering over problems with inflated attendance numbers and incredible disappearing guest lists. There’s not really anything to complain about there–that’s admirable and awesome on Reed’s part–other than maybe that crowd control and staffing seems to be a problem year after year regardless, and that Comic Con International’s people are also pretty great shakes.

Finally, NYCC also gets a lot of free goodwill because half the comics press and at least 75% of the staff of its big-name publishers can booze it up and have a great time at karaoke and then take the MTA home. If the social scene is the main reason why you go to comic conventions, or even if it’s just a close second to actually engaging with comics, NYCC is your show of shows. Its location itself–hometown for many and The Greatest City in the World for everyone else–flatters that party-based conception of a show for, I’d go so far as to say, most of the industry’s power players and opinion makers. This isn’t true of San Diego, with its expensive cross-country flights for the NY-based publishing and press scene and its touristy environs in which the Con as a presence is inescapable in a way that isn’t true of Manhattan and the boroughs. I really do think this accounts for a lot of the inevitable post-SDCC kvetching every year. How else to explain the relative volume of complaints about how little publishing news there was at SDCC, when there was so much more of it there than at NYCC? Yes, I know San Diego has more multimedia stuff going on than NYCC (perhaps not through lack of trying on NYCC’s part, mind you), but it’s San Diego–it has more of everything. Including the comics that matter the most.

Wizard

“We’re not done with Philly per se, but we do seem to be done, at least for the moment, with the Wizard conventions.”

–Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort, answering a Formspring question about Marvel’s third Wizard World Philadelphia no-show in a row by making Marvel’s severance from Wizard’s convention wing more-or-less official. (On its blog, Wizard reports that this year’s Philadelphia show “broke ever [sic] attendance record EVER!! The show was a HUGE success!”)

Gareb Shamus

Just as his Wizard World Philadelphia Comic Con kicks off today for its 10th year, Gareb Shamus announced he’s acquired another convention, bringing the total to 13. This time it’s the fledgling ComiCONN, which was held for the first time in May in North Haven, Connecticut.

In what’s become standard practice for these Wizard World acquisitions, the convention’s organizers will remain to “promote, advise and consult on the show.” They’ll also continue to operate their own local events.

The renamed Wizard World Connecticut Comic Conn will debut sometime in 2011 in Hartford.

But back to Shamus and his Philadelphia show, the subjects of a fawning preview — the convention “appears to be bigger and better than ever,” mainly because “Gareb Shamus is back in charge” — in this morning’s Philadelphia Daily News.

After the repeated drubbings the Wizard empire has received, maybe it’s due a softer spotlight. Still, even the company’s defenders are likely to admit the article is a little … much. Witness, for instance, this passage, explaining away the recent decline of Wizard’s convention arm. It turns out it was an unfortunate result of Shamus’ flirtation with mixed martial arts fighting and the International Fight League:

“I had left Wizard for a number of years,” said Shamus, whose Wizard brand is arguably the most popular, powerful and influential name in comics. “Around 2003, when I felt the company and conventions were healthy and in good hands, I decided to try something different.” [...] “These shows take a lot of time and a lot of money,” Shamus said. “I thought others could handle them, but then decided I had to get back to the company.

And the cancellation of shows in Los Angeles and Arlington, Texas? That was “all just part of a grand plan dating back to when I came back in 2008.”

“We had already decided that Austin would be better to have a show than Arlington, and Anaheim would be better than Los Angeles,” Shamus explained, “so why put the time, effort and money even for one more year where we knew we wouldn’t get maximum benefit? We needed to realign and put our time, effort and money on making sure that worked long-term. But we have never failed. Some people laughed when we did Boston for one year and stopped. Well, guess what? We’re doing a Boston show again.”

As for criticisms of the Wizard conventions, well …

Shamus said that because Wizard has been so successful, it is a target for everybody – from fanboys on the Internet to writers and artists who are used to being coddled at smaller shows.

“A lot of those people who complain want something for free,” Shamus said. “We will work with people as much as they want to work with us.”

Wizard World Philadelphia began today at noon at the Pennsylvania Convention Center and continues through Sunday. Comics guests include Greg Horn, Michael Golden, J.G. Jones, Joe Madureira, Mike McKone, Arthur Suydam, Mark Texeira, Herb Trimpe and Ethan Van Sciver.

Philly2Philly has a solid primer for attendees.

The battle of New York is over without so much as a shot fired.

On its convention website, Gareb Shamus’s Wizard Entertainment announced this morning that it is rescheduling its suite of Northeastern comic conventions, eliminating the head-to-head, same-town, same-dates match-up between its Big Apple Comic Con and Reed Exhibition’s New York Comic Con on October 7-10. Now, the Big Apple Comic Con will now be held on Oct. 1-3, the New England Comic Con on Oct. 15-17, and the New Jersey Comic Con on dates to be announced later. In addition, Big Apple has changed locations from Pier 94 to the Penn Plaza Pavilion, while the New England show will be hosted at Boston’s John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center. It’s unclear whether the New Jersey con’s date change will lead to a move from Edison’s New Jersey Convention & Exposition Center upon rescheduling.

Wizard made headlines, and drew a significant industry backlash, beginning late last year by making a series of aggressive scheduling moves against veteran convention promoter Reed and its slate of comic and pop-culture shows. Most notoriously, Wizard scheduled its Big Apple show the very same weekend as Reed’s New York Comic Con, October 7-10, and in 12th Avenue venue literally blocks away from NYCC’s Javits Center location. Later, Wizard scheduled its New Jersey con for the following weekend. Ever since, guest-list comparisons and official industry presences have weighed in mightily in Reed’s favor.

Wizard’s move is not without precedent: Shamus’s company earlier switched the dates for its Chicago Comic Con from Aug. 12-15 to Aug. 19-22 following Reed and Lucasfilm’s scheduling of Star Wars Celebration V for the original dates. But this move seems more likely an attempt to accommodate comics industry players who did not seem keen on shuttling back and forth between two competing shows in their New York City backyard.

Of course, the date-shuffling and venue-switching hardly represents a cessation of hostilities: Scheduling shows in Manhattan and Boston the weekends before and after Reed’s NYCC could be seen as an attempt to leech business away from more established show. But we’ve already had a same-weekend Reed/Wizard match-up a few weeks back, when Reed’s inaugural Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo more or less forced Wizard’s Anaheim Comic Con into obscurity despite underwhelming attendance (to which, it must be said, Reed admitted with refreshing candor). At this point, it’s tough to say whether there’s really any direct competition between Wizard’s nostalgia-tinged line-up of genre-TV stars and Reed’s much more comics-focused conventions. But whatever competition there is has just gotten much less direct.

C2E2

Conventions | On the eve of the inaugural Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, the Chicago Reader examines the escalating competition between convention owner Reed Exhibitions and longtime Chicago Comic Con organizer Wizard Entertainment: “It’s but one battleground in a war the two powers are waging across the country — an epic struggle that some observers see as a contest between the forces of good and, well, not so good.”

Writer Deanna Isaacs touches upon the rise of Wizard’s Rosemont event to the second-largest comics convention in North America, and its more recent decline. She quotes a couple of local retailers who have become “disenchanted” with the show. But Wizard CEO Gareb Shamus shrugs off the complaints: “Everybody’s going to tell you this or that. You’re talking about one person. We have 1,000 vendors at our show in Chicago, and they make a lot of money.”

The Daily Herald interviews C2E2 show-runner Lance Fensterman, who says he expects between 35,000 and 40,000 attendees this weekend. The Chicago Tribune, meanwhile, offers its own preview, with eight “must-see” convention events, and brief Q&As with Alex Ross and Jeff Smith. [C2E2]

Mark Fiore cartoon

Digital comics | Mark Fiore, who earlier this week became the first editorial cartoonist to win the Pulitzer Prize exclusively for animated work, had his iPhone app rejected in December. Apple told Fiore that his NewsToons app, with its Flash-animated political satire, “contains content that ridicules public figures,” a violation of its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.

As Laura McGann notes in her article, Fiore isn’t the first cartoonist to have difficulties with Apple: The Bobble Rep app, which uses caricatures by Tom Richmond, and Daryl Cagle both initially were rejected by Apple on the same grounds. [Nieman Journalism Labs, via Romenesko]

Digital comics | Brian Heater considers what Apple’s iPad could mean to independent comics. [The Daily Cross Hatch]

Publishing | Tom Spurgeon, Sean T. Collins and Alan David Doane comment on March’s comics-price milestone as, for the first time, more comics in Diamond’s Top 300 were priced at $3.99 than at $2.99. [The Comics Reporter, Attentiondeficitdisorderly, Trouble with Comics]

Conventions | Rob Clough and Frank Santoro file reports from the MoCCA Festival, while Graphic NYC and Indie Spinner Rack team up for audio, transcript and photos from the panel “The Art of the Superhero: When Singular Vision Meets Popular Mythology.” [MoCCA Festival]

Conventions | A writer with Suffolk University’s student newspaper offers a dreary assessment of last weekend’s Boston Comic Con. [The Suffolk Voice]

Kick-Ass #1

Creators | Keith Phipps chats briefly with Mark Millar about Kick-Ass, creating his own properties, and his “knack for writing troubled, sensitive teens”: “The funny thing, actually, is that it seems to have become a little thing, like the way Stephen King always writes about writers from Maine. I think it’s totally a lack of imagination on my part. When I stop and look back, I think, ‘Shit, I’ve just done the same thing each time.’ [Laughs.] People say ‘Write what you know.’ And I suppose at that age, I was a kid obsessed with comic books. I just wrote from the heart, I suppose, what things were like for me at that point. I mean, Kick-Ass in particular is massively autobiographical, right down to things like Dave’s mom dying at the same age my mom died. Same name, same reason, all this kind of stuff. I didn’t even plan it out like that, I just found it pouring out once I was starting to write it. So yeah, I suppose I have to think up some new themes for new work.” [The A.V. Club]

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #156

Creators | Brian Truitt spotlights writer Larry Hama, who returns to the G.I. Joe franchise with a Free Comic Book Day issue and ongoing series from IDW Publishing: “It’s like coming home again. It’s comfortable and it’s like, hey, I know these guys. I don’t have to do tons of research and read tons of back issues.” [USA Today]

Creators | Grant Morrison launches an interview tour focusing on Batman and Robin and Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne. [Comics Alliance, io9.com, Splash Page]

Creators | Matthew Meylikhov posts a video interview with artist Cameron Stewart from last weekend’s Boston Comic Con. [Multiversity Comics]

Education | A spotlight on Stanford University’s English 190G, known as “The Graphic Novel Class.” [The Stanford Daily]

FLUKE 2010

While the inaugural C2E2 is getting the lion’s share of the attention, it certainly won’t be the only comics convention going on this weekend:

• The Anaheim Convention Center, one of the venues vying for Comic-Con International, will play host to the first Wizard World Anaheim Comic-Con Friday through Sunday.

Comics guests include Simon Bisley, Tim Bradstreet, J.M. DeMatteis, Glenn Fabry, Ale Garza, Phil Jimenez, Drew Johnson, Stan Lee, Rob Liefeld, Mike Mayhew, Arthur Suydam and Bernie Wrightson. Media guests include LeVar Burton, Yvonne Craig, Michael Dorn, Richard Hatch, Kato Kaelin, Juliet Landau, Lee Meriwether, Julie Newmar, Nichelle Nichols, William Shatner, Helen Slater, Brent Spiner, Lindsay Wagner, Billy Dee Williams and the kid who played Young Ben Linus on Lost. Doors open at 3 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday.

• Denver ComicFest kicks off at 5 p.m. Friday at the Hilton Garden Inn Tech Center in Denver, Colorado, and continues through Sunday. Guests include Dan Brereton, Amy Reeder Hadley, Zach Howard, Jon Boy Meyers, John Porcellino, Whilce Portacio, Fiona Staples, Matt Sturges and Noah Van Sciver.

• The ninth FLUKE mini-comics festival will be held from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at Ciné, 234 W. Hancock Ave., Athens, Georgia. Flagpole has a preview of the event, which will feature such cartoonists as David Mack, Eleanor Davis and Devlin Thompson.

From the new WizardWorld.com

If you were to go to WizardWorld.com, the online home of Gareb Shamus’s publishing, retail and convention empire, you would see a jazzy new layout (albeit one still based on the old Yahoo SiteBuilder template) and a fancy new logo for both the company and its many conventions (the little superhero silhouette guy is gone). You’d see news and blog sub-sites dedicated solely to guest-list updates for the aforementioned cons. You’d also see a major, major, MAJOR SPOILER for the acclaimed Syfy series Battlestar Galactica, based on the appearance of certain actors from the show at Wizard’s Chicago Comic Con. Let the surfer beware.

Eliza Dushku ad for Wizard World Toronto

She was the top-billed star of the Wizard World conventions in Toronto and Anaheim — and briefly the victim of a case of mistaken identity with Warren Ellis. But now Eliza Dushku, the Joss Whedon mainstay who starred in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dollhouse, has quietly been dropped from the guest lists of both shows.

Is this a victory for the shows’ Con War rivals, Fan Expo (the same city as Toronto) and Reed’s Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (the same weekend as Anaheim), a sign that Wizard’s rapid convention-circuit expansion isn’t making it any easier to attract big-name talent, or just schedule churn?

This latest rebranding of a small local show with the Wizard/”Comic Con” name is part of a now-established pattern; interestingly, Johnston describes it as one in which “no money actually chang[es] hands,” but rather an existing con infrastructure is essentially bartered for Wizard’s name recognition. I hadn’t heard that before, but it may be the only way such rapid expansion makes sense for a company with fewer employees than it’s had since its very earliest years.

In other recent Con War news, Johnston reported last week that Wizard has now sandwiched Reed Exhibition’s New York Comic Con with nearby shows of its own the weekend before (New England Comic Con, Oct. 1-3), the weekend after (New Jersey Comic Con, Oct. 15-17), and of course the very same weekend in the very same city (Big Apple Comic Con, Oct. 7-10). Johnston sees this as an attempt to crowd NYCC out; piggybacking off the press of the larger and more established show could also be a motivation.

For their part, Reed continues its M.O. of adding guests, rather than shows: Recently announced additions to Chicago Comics & Entertainment Expo — a competitor of Wizard’s Chicago Comic Con that runs head-to-head against Wizard’s Anaheim Comic Con the same weekend — include Dan DiDio, Paul Levitz, Mark Bagley, Peter David, Mark Waid, Dash Shaw, Chip Kidd, Art Baltazar, Bob Layton, Jonathan Hickman, Peter Tomasi, James Robinson, Greg Pak, Jim Valentino and, in all likelihood, probably quite a few I’m missing. The presence of DiDio, Levitz and Geoff Johns seems to be a pretty clear vote of confidence from DC, by the by. Meanwhile, reports that the city of Anaheim is strongly trying to woo Comic-Con International away from San Diego indicate that Wizard’s show isn’t quite what the city is looking for.

In the now-traditional mode for Wizard’s aggressive convention-circuit expansion, former North Coast owner Roger Priebe will remain aboard as an advisor and consultant.

The new show’s venue and dates have yet to be announced, but depending on when Wizard’s Cleveland and Cincinnati conventions end up falling, we may see another front in the Con War develop, this time against the Columbus-based long-time regional player Mid-Ohio Con.

Apart from the early-December announcement that Wizard rival Reed is partnering with Lucasfilm to put on the next Star Wars Celebration — a move that forced Wizard to reschedule its Chicago Comic Con — the outfit behind the New York Comic Con and Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo has left the expansion arms race to its opponent.

Instead, perhaps attempting to make good on its nose-tweaking tagline “The con Chicago needs, the con you deserve,” Reed has focused on shoring up its C2E2 guest list. The show boasts some true heavy hitters, including Geoff Johns (superhero comics’ biggest writer), Alex Ross (superhero comics’ biggest painter), Gail Simone (superhero comics’ most prominent female writer), Jeff Smith (arguably the biggest name in children’s comics with Bone) and, in a very rare con appearance, Chris Ware (arguably the biggest name in alternative comics with The ACME Novelty Library).

Additional guests on the pretty-massive roster include Jim Cheung, Mike Mignola, Steve McNiven, David Finch, Steve Epting, Geof Darrow, Frank Cho, Gene Ha, Adam Hughes, Greg Land, Ethan Van Sciver, Ben Templesmith, Mike Perkins, Butch Guice, David Lloyd and a dedicated line-up of women creators spearheaded by Amanda Conner, Jill Thompson and Sherrilyn Kenyon. And as best I can tell, every single guest C2E2 has announced actually makes comics.

What of the two Wizard shows that provide C2E2 its most direct competition, Chicago (with which it shares a town) and Anaheim (with which it shares dates)?

Anaheim is closer to us on the schedule, and unsurprisingly its guest list is a bit better fleshed out. Long gone are Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev and Phil Jimenez, who pulled out almost immediately following Wizard’s announcement that its Big Apple Comic Con will compete directly against Reed’s NYCC on the same October weekend. Gone also is Heidi Klum, the model/host of Project Runway who shared top billing with Bendis. I’m also not seeing Ernie Hudson or Mick Foley, despite the presence of press releases trumpeting their attendance.

Heading up the Anaheim guest list right now is a genuine comics giant: The Man himself, Stan Lee. After that, the most prominent names are nerd god William Shatner, Dollhouse star Eliza Dushku, Battlestar Galactica‘s Mary McDonnell and Hung star and occasional comics creator Thomas Jane. Anaheim also has a moderate comics-centric guest line-up that includes Bernie Wrightson, Tim Bradstreet, J.M. DeMatteis, Mike Mayhew, Mike McKone, Simon Bisley, Glenn Fabry and Charlie Huston.

But this is simply dwarfed by the number of guests attached to old TV shows and movies (which Wizard’s Anaheim sub-site helpfully groups by franchise), including Star Trek‘s Shatner, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig and Michael Dorn; Futurama‘s Billy West, John DiMaggio and Phil LaMarr; Batman‘s Adam West, Burt Ward, Yvonne Craig, Julie Newmar and Lee Merriwether (plus the Batmobile); and an assortment of (mostly supporting) actors from Stargate, Seinfeld, Hill Street Blues, Austin Powers, Three’s Company and so on. There’s also the usual sprinkling of other celebs (Adrianne Curry, Angie Everhart, Jason Mewes, Erik Estrada, Micky Dolenz, Tia Carrere, Jake Busey, Doug Jones, Taylor Dayne) and ’80s wrestlers (Ted DiBiase, Virgil, The Honky Tonk Man, Greg “The Hammer” Valentine). Interestingly, the list contains several guests — Joe Viskocil, Mark Sheppard, Michael Pappajohn and J.M. DeMatteis — who were among the wave of ostensibly last-minute no-shows at 2009′s Big Apple Comic Con.

The Chicago show is further away and thus its current guest list is shorter. But the make-up is mostly the same: nerd celebs like Shatner, West, Newmar, John Schneider and James Marsters, and a smattering of comic creators topped by David Mack, Michael Golden and Mark Texeira.

What to make of all of this? A few things, I’d argue. If we’re judging by the guest lists alone, then Reed clearly appears to have the edge in terms of support within comics. I’d guess that this isn’t just pro-community support, but institutional support as well — you’ll notice how well-represented big-name exclusive creators with Marvel and DC are at C2E2 versus Anaheim. And if we extrapolate the goals of the two convention organizations from the guest lists they’ve produced, it appears we have two very different conceptions of what a comic con should be, and perhaps more to the point, who their audiences are and what those audiences want. Neither is necessarily my ideal — Chicago is one of North America’s great alternative-comics towns, so I’d love to see C2E2 support Chris Ware’s appearance with a slate of local and regional creators of that sort, for instance — but when given the choice of the two approaches, certain distinctions are not difficult to make.

As is now custom with Wizard shows, the con’s previous organizer, dealer Marc Ballard, will remain with the show — Shamus’ tenth — as a consultant. New dates and venue information are forthcoming. “Attendees can anticipate the strong caliber lineup of stars and exhibitors that fans across the nation have come to expect,” according to Shamus’s press release.

The announcement comes one week after the creation of the New Jersey Comic Con Wizard World Convention, to be held just one week after dueling Manhattan-based shows: Reed Exhibitions’ New York Comic Con and Shamus’s own Big Apple Comic Con.

That, of course, places it just one week after both Reed Exhibition’s New York Comic Con and Shamus’s own Big Apple Comic Con, controversially scheduled in the same city and on the same weekend as Reed’s effort in a move widely seen as launching a Con War between the two companies. Since then, the two outfits have rolled out distinct battle strategies, with Reed focusing on top-tier comics guests and Shamus/Wizard concentrating on adding more and more shows to the Wizard World Tour.

Atlanta Comic Con Wizard World Convention

More than four years after abandoning plans for an event in Georgia’s capital, Wizard Entertainment CEO Gareb Shamus has purchased Atlanta Comic Convention, a one-day show founded in 1994.

Renamed (deep breath) Atlanta Comic Con Wizard World Convention, it joins Shamus’ rapidly growing stable of eight events that includes Chicago Comic Con, Big Apple Comic Con and the recently announced Austin Comic Con. No date or venue have been announced for the Atlanta convention.

According to the press release, Atlanta Comic Convention founder Will Tillander will remain as a consultant for the show, which will expand from one day to three.

Wizard’s previous attempt at an Atlanta convention, announced in July 2005, triggered a backlash from retailers, creators and fans because its inaugural show was scheduled for the same weekend as Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina. Shamus quickly dropped plans for a 2006 Atlanta show, but said Wizard would seek an event there the following year. None materialized.

Wizard is no stranger to the Lone Star State: The Dallas/Arlington-based Wizard World Texas was a staple of the late convention season for several years, including one in which it merged with the horror show Fear Fest in 2008, until its cancellation last year. The press release for the Austin con specifically positions the new show as a response to popular demand for Wizard’s convention wing to return to Texas.

The Austin Comic Con is the seventh such show Shamus and Wizard are now behind, along with conventions in Toronto, Philadelphia, and Chicago; an as-yet-unscheduled New England Comic Con in Boston (site of another past Wizard World attempt); and the controversially scheduled Anaheim and Big Apple Comic Cons, set to take place the same weekends as Reed Exhibition’s Chicago Comics & Entertainment Expo and New York Comic Con respectively.

Update: In other convention news, organizers of the newly launched Long Beach Comic Con have announced a one-day show for Feb. 20 at the Long Beach Convention Center. Creators from Aspen Entertainment and Top Cow Entertainment are scheduled to appear.

Long Beach Comic Con, which debuted in October, is run by Martha Donato, former senior vice president and convention organizer for Wizard Entertainment.

from WizardUniverse.com

Is Wizard preparing to relaunch its web presence one more time? That’s the implication of a graphic recently added to the current, bare-bones site that once housed the digital version of Gareb Shamus’s publishing flagship (and once employed yours truly).

A banner atop the placeholder page now present at wizarduniverse.com reads:

Please pardon our appearance!
There’s a new WizardUniverse.com coming soon!
We’re relaunching with a New Look & New Attitude!
In the meantime, we are still open for business…enjoy!

Additional, awkwardly punctuated text directs visitors who are “looking for Wizard” to WizardWorld.com, where in addition to the usual assortment of news they will find updates on “the Wizard World tour of conventions, from 2010′s Toronto Comic Con, to our inaugural Anaheim Comic Con to next summer’s Wizard World Chicago Comic Con!”

Con War tea-leaf readers can make of the omission of the June 11-13 Philadelphia and October 7-10 Big Apple shows what they will.

The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival (photo courtesy of Sam Walker and Rickey Purdin)

* Organized by Desert Island‘s Gabe Fowler and PictureBox‘s Dan Nadel, the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival made its debut on Saturday, and I’m awfully glad I was able to make it. (I didn’t think I’d be able to, but my wife and mother-in-law gave me a reprieve from going to see New Moon for the third time. Hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!) I live on Long Island, so having an artcomix convention on my very own land mass is a cause for celebration. And provided you’re willing to brave a dreadful mile or so on the BQE and the Kosciuszko Bridge, it’s not even that much of a hassle to get there — parking in Brooklyn is a snap.

* Less easy was dealing with the weather, which was awful. Freezing rain and, eventually, snow. I figured this would do a real number on attendance levels …

* … but when I entered the tiny church basement where the show was held, it was so packed I could barely move. Maybe the weather drove people inside? Admittance was free, so it was the perfect place for soggy Brooklynites to pop in and soak up some art risk-free. I talked to a couple of publishers who were glad the weather was so rotten, since a balmy day might have driven the crowd to unsustainable, NYCC/Big Apple-style shut-down levels. Most of the publishers and exhibitors I spoke with seemed ecstatic with their sales, too.

* The crowd itself was … ugh, I hate the H-word, but it was a young, stylishly disheveled, Brooklyn-based crowd, I’m sure I don’t need to draw you a picture. The smell of vegan hot dogs and wet neckbeard, my own included, was all-enveloping. But this also means that it’s not a celeb-seeking crowd or a collector crowd, it’s a reader crowd, an art-appreciation crowd, and a heavily co-ed crowd to boot. It’s the kind of crowd that I imagine comics veterans can hardly believe finally exists.

* The talent-to-square-footage ratio was as lopsided as you’ll ever see in North America. As I made my first circuit of the room, Ben Katchor and Gary Panter were cheerfully signing books helpfully provided for sale by the con. Jessica Campbell of “Big Two” altcomix publisher Drawn & Quarterly told me of the chaotic scene at D&Q’s table when Charles Burns and Adrian Tomine’s signing ended as Gabrielle Bell and R. Sikoryak’s began. I myself was lured to the show in large part by an ultra-rare con appearance by Fort Thunder alumnus Mat Brinkman, over whom I gushed like a Browncoat on Nathan Fillion’s autograph line at San Diego.

* Yet as packed as it was with talent and attendees alike, it was, as Heidi MacDonald and Rickey Purdin both report, a show with a really personal, intimate feel. It was the kind of show where I could have a quiet chat with Katchor about how depicting space is his primary interest in comics, and where Tunde Adebimpe — lead singer of big-deal alt-rock outfit TV on the Radio — could spend 40 minutes or so contributing to Ben Herman’s Beautiful Dreamer sketchbook. The one-day-only set-up and festive holiday decorations — it was held in a church basement, after all — helped contribute to a sense that this was a fun day out rather than a weekend-long expedition. (This went double for me as I really was there instead of going to the movies and the mall; for that reason I skipped out on the panels and the post-show festivities, both held at nearby venues.)

* Falling as it did at the ass-end of the year, and announced as it was after the small-press show circuit had drawn to a close, this wasn’t really a con for major book-of-the-show-type debuts. It was more of an opportunity to pick up new minicomics by folks you like — PictureBox was offering a Jimbo mini by Gary Panter, for example — or snag books you’d missed elsewhere.

* My own haul was small but felt substantial: Tunde Adebimpe’s glossy, painted fight comic Plague Hero, his table-neighbor Domitille Collardey‘s sinuously drawn one-woman anthology comic What Had Happened Was…, C.F.’s new minicomic/fetish-pinup showcase City-Hunter Magazine #1 courtesy of PictureBox, Lane Milburn & Noel Freibert’s flipbook My Best Pet/Feeble-Minded Funnies from Closed Caption Comics and Drawn & Quarterly’s last copy of Anders Nilsen’s Big Questions #13.

* The emphasis was at least as much on the “graphics” end of the equation as it was on “comics,” so provided you had the scratch and the rainproofing abilities required, you really could have cleaned up on gorgeous silkscreened prints, handcrafted fold-out art books, and a killer selection of prints from Desert Island, including a gorgeous $30 poster for the show itself. With an eye on my holiday budget I couldn’t dip into this arena very much, but I left with many a business card and a lust in my heart for Panyiotis Terzis’s Jack Kirby-meets-House of Style photocollage and L. Nichols’s He-Man and She-Ra block prints.

* Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t a big West Coast contingent, so you had the strange-for-an-indie-show spectacle of D&Q without Fantagraphics, and PictureBox and Bodega without Buenaventura. AdHouse didn’t trip up from the Dirty South and bicoastal Top Shelf were missing as well, but Secret Acres and Sparkplug represented, as did collectives like Closed Caption Comics, Partyka, and the House of Twelve. Indeed, as a curated show rather than a first-come-first-serve free-for-all, the quality level was uniformly high. And (here comes the Con Wars angle) the enthusiasm I saw from publishers, exhibitors, and attendees alike could easily be seen as a shot across the bow of MoCCA following their disorganized and divisive showing this summer. To be sure, the approach of BCGF is different even from MoCCA’s best years, and I assume publishers will have their preferences. But if there’s any city in America with room enough for two major alternative-comics conventions, it’s gotta be New York. I’ll certainly be back to both.

Sean's BCGF haul

The running battle between rival convention promoters Reed Exhibitions and Gareb Shamus’s Wizard Entertainment just saw a game-changer of Death Star proportions enter orbit: Reed has announced it’s partnering with Lucasfilm to become the exclusive producer of the Star Wars Celebration conventions. The relationship officially begins with the announcement of Star Wars Celebration V, to be held in Orlando, Florida, on Aug. 12-15.

Of course, those are the same dates for which Shamus’s Chicago Comic Con had been scheduled.

Until this morning, that is, when Shamus announced via press release that he is pushing the Chicago show back a week, to Aug. 19-22. In a statement that will no doubt raise some eyebrows given his past scheduling maneuvers, Shamus said:

We respect our 20 year relationship with LucasFilms [sic] and everything Star Wars has meant to the fan community. In deference to our attendees, guests and friends at Lucas, we are changing dates. We are all fans of the Star Wars films, and this slight change enables us to bring the type of presence the fans would expect at our annual Comic Con.

Shamus, apparently, has been doing some partnering-up of his own: According to this post at the message board for the horror magazine Rue Morgue, recent Wizard emails to potential exhibitors have touted coming partnerships with horror-con outfits Rock and Shock and Monster Mania. But can it compete with the firepower of a fully armed and operational alliance between Reed and Lucasfilm — one that’s apparently quite willing to take aim square at Shamus’s own schedule?

Looks like the Con War has opened a new front: Wizard Entertainment CEO Gareb Shamus has purchased the New England Comic Con to add to his ever-growing slate of comics and pop-culture shows. According to a press release posted on the Wizard site, the Con’s previous owners, Larry Harrison and Jerry Tournasm of retailer Harrison’s Comics & Collectibles, will continue to work for the show.

The latest addition to a roster of Shamus/Wizard shows that includes Anaheim Comic Con, Toronto Comic Con, Big Apple Comic Con, and Wizard World Philadelphia, the Wizard World New England Comic Con, as it will apparently be called, is not to be confused with either the Boston Comic Con — whose guests for its April 10-11 show next year include Jim Lee, Mike Mignola, Eric Powell, and Bill Sienkiewicz at the top of a pretty impressive roster — nor the previous Wizard World Boston show, held once (in 2005) before being canceled. Whether Shamus’s latest attempt at a Boston event will engender the same sort of rivalry as his other cons have with such shows as Heroes Con, the Long Beach Comic Con, Fan Expo Canada, and Reed Exhibition’s New York Comic Con and C2E2 remains to be seen.

More, undoubtedly, as it develops.