Comic Con Talk (Renamed since LA Comic Con can't get it together) (1 Viewer)

The kids and I took a little trip to Lafayette today and hit up the comic book store. Well, they had the latest poster for LACC and all of the people already mentioned were on it, but looks like Denise Crosby will be there, as she was front and center on the poster. Look for her to be announced shortly. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that they can get Linda Blair back for this show. Hopefully we get a few other good announcements between now and then.
 
All the more reason I'm not going. I just can't deal. Or am I, as a comics guy, asking too much?

I've already resigned myself to the thought that if I want to attend a true comic convention, I'll be going to either Charlotte (HeroesCon), Baltimore, or to NYCC. I don't even have a desire to go to SDCC anymore.

SDCC has no identity anymore. And it has been declining in attendance for a few years now, especially since the movie studios pulled out. It's mostly just TV now. SDCC has never released official attendance numbers, but numbers have always come out through unofficial channels, usually as PR brag pieces in San Diego media. This year? Crickets. It's very telling. It wouldn't shock me if they finally dipped below 130k this year. That's off their high of 167k several years ago. They sold their soul to Hollywood to become this major annual entertainment mecca, but now that Hollywood turned their back on them they don't know what they are anymore. Want to go see a panel with the cast of Suits on USA? Well, SDCC has you covered, I guess, but don't go looking for comic books because despite the name this convention has fork all to do with comics anymore.

NYCC is the hot new thing, and much more of a comic convention than SDCC has been in at least a decade. Their attendance has climbed while SDCC's has dropped. Not hard to see which way the wind is blowing. SDCC is yesterday's news, clinging to past reputation but in clear decline.
 
SDCC has no identity anymore. And it has been declining in attendance for a few years now, especially since the movie studios pulled out. It's mostly just TV now. SDCC has never released official attendance numbers, but numbers have always come out through unofficial channels, usually as PR brag pieces in San Diego media. This year? Crickets. It's very telling. It wouldn't shock me if they finally dipped below 130k this year. That's off their high of 167k several years ago. They sold their soul to Hollywood to become this major annual entertainment mecca, but now that Hollywood turned their back on them they don't know what they are anymore. Want to go see a panel with the cast of Suits on USA? Well, SDCC has you covered, I guess, but don't go looking for comic books because despite the name this convention has fork all to do with comics anymore.

NYCC is the hot new thing, and much more of a comic convention than SDCC has been in at least a decade. Their attendance has climbed while SDCC's has dropped. Not hard to see which way the wind is blowing. SDCC is yesterday's news, clinging to past reputation but in clear decline.

Totally agree.
 
That's a dam shame to hear about San Diego Comic Con. One of my family's bucket list trips. A buddy at work went with his family in 2013 (by train!) and had a blast.

Why would the movie studios pull out of that event? Are they just doing fewer conventions in general, or was there something going on with SDCC?
 
That's a dam shame to hear about San Diego Comic Con. One of my family's bucket list trips. A buddy at work went with his family in 2013 (by train!) and had a blast.

Why would the movie studios pull out of that event? Are they just doing fewer conventions in general, or was there something going on with SDCC?

Long story short, the rise and fall of the movie studios at SDCC begins and ends with Jon Favreau.

When the original Iron Man became a massive hit, Favreau really sold the reaction it got in Hall H at SDCC as helping generate early buzz. He kind of became an evangelist for the idea that the studios should go in heavy at SDCC and get the early geek buzz for movies. And they pretty much bought in wholesale, with Hollywood basically taking over SDCC after that. Attendance skyrocketed, and what had once been a comic convention became the place to see the biggest celebrities, get the first (and exclusive) look at the biggest upcoming movies, etc.

But while this worked for a while, the studios eventually began to question how valuable it really was as a marketing tool (which is all they ever saw it as). The news cycle during SDCC was rapid fire, so a big movie's time in the spotlight was only until the next Hall H panel happened, and things got lost in the shuffle. Additionally, it was said that a lot of Hollywood types (and stars) hated having to pack up to go to San Diego for the weekend, as they saw it as a hassle more than anything. And over time, the marketing departments began to wonder if catering to the geek crowd was paying any dividends. Apparently running panels at SDCC wasn't cheap when you had to accommodate a bunch of big stars, which led to the bills piling up.

The death knell came with Favreau's Cowboys and Aliens. He again went to Hall H to recapture the Iron Man magic, and the movie got a pretty good reception in Hall H. Then it went on and bombed horribly in theaters. So this pretty much led to the studio executives saying "We're wasting our time and money doing this. A movie getting a good reception in Hall H indicates nothing about what it will actually do in theaters." and they started scaling back substantially in the years after that. It was just one or two studios at first, and it was usually a shocked headline like "Studio X skipping SDCC this year! Why would they do that!?" then more and more studios started skipping and it just became common place.

Also contributing to this was Disney basically pulling out completely to hold their own conventions where they would be the only one in the news cycle. Between D23 and Star Wars Celebration, they decided they didn't need SDCC anymore and could recreate that same circus with themselves as the only focus. The studios had been abandoning it for a while, but once Disney said "Marvel and Star Wars won't be there, they have their own dedicated conventions now," that was pretty much it.
 
Sun, where do you get all of this knowledge from man? I've said it before and I'll say it again....you need to open up a comic book shop in central Louisiana. I would be a regular. :)
 
Sun, where do you get all of this knowledge from man? I've said it before and I'll say it again....you need to open up a comic book shop in central Louisiana. I would be a regular. :)
If you follow a lot of the right sites and podcasts, a good bit of the pieces are out there. Hall H has been going down a while. I follow several podcasts that used to do live broadcasts from SDCC, but don't anymore because of a lot of what Sun has talked about and then some. Seems the East Coast cons are the way to go if you're a true comic enthusiast, especially HeroesCon and NYCC (I plan on going to one, if not both, in 2019).

I will say this though... Sun be dropping some knowledge that even I haven't heard of and I've been collecting since I was 9. :worthy:
 
So I've officially signed up for Big Easy Con and for HeroesCon. Just can't bring myself to attend Wizard World.

Still considering LACC.
 
Big Easy Con has announced a few more guests to their slate. Of the three, I'm anxious to meet Dustin Nguyen. Have a bit of his work.
 
We are now one month out from Wizard World New Orleans and their current lineup is so completely unappealing that I don't think you could pay me to go. Like if they said, "Here are some free tickets, we'll pay your hotel and food, just show up", I'd think I'd have to pass. I remember just a couple of years ago (if memory serves me right) they had Stephen Amell, Matt Smith, Norman Reddus. Granted, they've still got time to announce the "big" names, but if this is as good it gets for them, then they might as well just call it quits.
 
We are now one month out from Wizard World New Orleans and their current lineup is so completely unappealing that I don't think you could pay me to go. Like if they said, "Here are some free tickets, we'll pay your hotel and food, just show up", I'd think I'd have to pass. I remember just a couple of years ago (if memory serves me right) they had Stephen Amell, Matt Smith, Norman Reddus. Granted, they've still got time to announce the "big" names, but if this is as good it gets for them, then they might as well just call it quits.

They had the Civil War Panel that year as well (2016): Jeremy Renner, Chris Evans, Haley Atwell, Anthony Mackie, Russo Brothers,and Frank Grillo
 
Their biggest mistake is having a damn con in January right after the holidays. Makes zero sense.
 
Their biggest mistake is having a damn con in January right after the holidays. Makes zero sense.

I never understood the timing. Early January is a terrible time for a con. People's budgets and expendable time have been tapped by Christmas/New Years. I realize that we're long past the days of "convention season" being a thing and they're pretty much year round now, but even still it's dumb to hold a Con the first week of January. But WW are dumb, so that's par for the course, I guess.
 

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