A couple of weeks ago, my son and I made it to the biggest show within three hours of me, Planet Comic Con.
I have been attending Planet Comic Con probably since the late 90’s/early 2000’s back when comic cons were much smaller affairs. This year was.. a little crazy.
The last few years, we have made it a point to go on Friday since it was typically the least busy day. I tried going Sunday once, but all the artists that I wanted to get art from were pretty booked up already so that didn’t really work out.
Well, we arrived Friday about thirty minutes before the show started, and my normal parking garage was already full/sold out. So, I drove around and after a couple of rejections found a lot that had space. Unfortunately, it was $40! But, it was just a few blocks walk to the show and we picked up out tickets and wristbands with no trouble and were in line. But, the line! I mean the show opened at 1:00, but it was close to 1:30 before we actually made it in the hall. I have been to a sold out San Diego Comic Con, and I had less trouble getting thru the door than I did at Planet. Kind of ridiculous.
Friday seemed substantially busier than years past, but still not as horrible as Saturday usually is. I was able to get my Jerome Opena signature on my custom bind, and pick up a really cheap ($40) page from Paul Pelletier. Other than that, I just walked around and chatted with the usual suspects (John Lucas, Kyle Strahm, Baldemar Rivas, Chris Grine, etc). We also attended panel called “Starting a Studio: Creator-Owned and Webcomics” which was pretty interesting. Honestly, I probably would have walked and talked to even more people, but most everyone was usually busy when I walked by. Which is good for them, but bad for random, rambling conversations that tend to be the majority of my comic con activities these days.
My son and I did sneak over to the game room, and I taught him how to play a really excellent game called Root. After that, there wasn’t a lot else I wanted to accomplish so we just walked around for a while. We ended up heading out around 5:30 which is kind of early since the show closes at 7:00, but we knew we were coming back the next day. Sometimes, it’s fun to hang around until 7:00 when it usually dies down a lot and it has a lot more of a hanging out vibe, which is what I enjoy.
Saturday is always interesting since it is usually super busy, and I usually don’t have much of an agenda. Which would be great except it’s such a pain to even move around in the main hall. However, I had a secret weapon. I was able to acquire a couple of vendor passes for Saturday and was able to get into the show more than an hour before the show actually opened. Also, we found parking for $5 (I think it was time based, but since we didn’t spend the whole day, it was pretty reasonable). Walking around the hall with only vendors was AMAZING. A lot of people I wanted to talk to were already setup and I was able to have some great catch-up conversations and such. We actually went back to the game room for a bit as the crowds started to arrive. But, honestly, after that, we were done. Moving around in the hall was too difficult for casual browsing and there wasn’t much more I wanted to do. I did have a few purchases I wanted to make so I made a bee line for those and grabbed my books and headed out.
All in all, it was a fine experience, but my son did make the comment that it seemed like it was pretty much the same thing every year. And, as an organizer of my own comic con, that is true and sort of the nature of a comic show. I will say that Planet does a good job of having a handful of new-to-them comic creators every year. This year they had Jerome Opena, Paul Pelletier, Reilly Brown, Stephen Platt, and Dan Panosian. Unfortunately, I wasn’t looking to spend a lot of money this year, and Platt and Panosian are sort of out of my price range, anyway (Opena, too, but he wasn’t sketching). But, honestly, it’s not just the price, but even getting on their list and not having to wait around until Sunday to have it done is the other big issue I often run into. Even some of the indie guys that I have gotten sketches from in years past is kind of a pain at a big show like this. Through no fault of their own, they get busy running their table and don’t have that much time to sketch/draw and it ends up taking a lot longer than you would expect.