Alright it's time to talk about the Georgia mountain charity comic con.
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The best part about this show is that it was in my back yard, about twenty minutes from our shop.
Can't beat that.
Lots of locals showed up who I would never see at a bigger show, and many of them were cool as shit.
I got to talk to people about our toy, our games, our comic books, and our cartoons.
I got to meet a bunch of local comics artists (and some not so local) and find some potential collaborators and comrades.
We made more money than it cost to be there, we got to put our stuff in people's hands. As always, the other vendors loved what we had going on. It was refreshing to see the joyful, creative part of that community.
(I am in the mountains with inconsistent cell service. The thread might get real stacatto)
Some immediately obvious things that I want to get down before I forget:
We need more and better signs and pamphlets and flyers. Written literature explaining what we do and who we are. Not so much as a thing we expect people to read, but as a reminder, or a conversation starter.
event organizers need to overcommunicate. Every email should include expectation's, booth size, load in, load out time, and at least a basic event schedule.
Publishing a map ahead of time is helpful for everyone!
Events need signs outside the venue directing people to the venue, if you can't have that, you've failed.
I have a point I'd like to get to, but first I have to talk about music.
If your event is going to have music, either know what you're doing or hire a DJ, goddamn.
This show was just using youtube for music, and not even youtube music, with the laptop screen shared to like 8 projectors in the roome. The music was a loud, obvious afterthought. The projectors were adding nothing.
At some point the music started doing this weird pulsing flanger thing, and they just let it go ike that for half an hour, then turned the music off entirely, then turned it back on with the weird glitch still happening, we were getting half the samples of the song.
It was at that point, four hours before the show was scheduled to end, that we started packing up.
The music itself was also poorly chosen, alternating between generic 80s hits and Disney songs.
This was an opportunity to do something unique! Instead we got advertisements for the largest media company on the planet and songs that had already been played to death coupled with incoherent AI visualizers. (and that's before it started glitching out!)
Clearly zero thought was put into this part of the production, and it made the whole experience worse!
I would love to see a similar show, with the following alterations:
- wider asiles
- bigger booths (8x10 is attractive to organizers, but it's too tight. 10x10 or bust)
- either a real DJ playing a themed set or at least some basic thought and respect put into the music choices
- a slideshow or video real on the projectors showcasing the artists in the room, or literally anything other than slop visualizers.
- an MC who knows how to MC! And maybe even has notes about the important details written down, instead of just shouting corrections over and over again into an uncaring room.
And, personally, I want all of the above plus a focus on independent artists and creators in every panel. We don't need four star wars fans sitting in the center of a stage congratulating one another about how much star wars they know. There were at least 8 comic artists in the room, let them talk about their work, their process, their fans, etc.
I think it's great that a bunch of power rangers associated folks came to the show, and I appreciated the power rangers panel, but I'd have been way more excited to hear from the power rangers vfx guy about his latest indie production, to talk to the power rangers comic artist about his creator owned series, to get up on stage myself and talk about making television.
Anything other than "the next 50 years of Star Wars".
I went, Friday and Saturday, as a vendor. I took toys (ones I made, ones other people made) comics (new, old, american, Japanese, mine, others), video games (mine), and a few other odds and ends.
Friday's show ran from 4pm to 10pm, with setup starting at noon (goddamn ridiculous.) Saturday's from 10am to 8pm, with mandatory teardown completion by 10pm and vendor access starting at 7am (absurd!)
Expecting vendors to set up in four hours and tear down in two isn't that bad. It's a little rough, but well within ordinary.
But running a show until 10pm on Friday night and then doing another 12 hours the next day is Not Cool.
Whats worse, attendance was tiny. We get more people at the twenty bucks a table sidewalk swap we do in powdersprings every other month.
Then, the worst part, they were passing out a free comic at the door, self published I assume. I didn't get a great look at it, but I saw "based on characters by Ayn Rand" and a full on Nazi flag on the cover. Allegedly, the Nazis were the villains of the book, but if Rand is the hero...
That's the bad. There was some good.