I spent a few hours at the show yesterday evening. I really enjoyed visiting with the dealers and picking up books. I tried to spend some with every dealer I wanted to return to the show. There aren't any other shows in Austin, so want to encourage more dealers to come to this one.
The high points:
1. It was the best layout I've seen at the show for years. Aisles were organized primarily by what they were selling -- all the comics dealers were relatively close together. Then AA, then the celeb pics at the back.
2. Picked up books from almost all the dealers. High Grade, Duncanville, Black Cat, Monster Lair, Rick's
3. Was able to spend a few hours there rather than the 20-30 min I spent last year.
The low points:
1. Still no carpeting on the show floor. This really detracts from the atmosphere and I'm sure doesn't help the people standing in booths all day
2. It's a single day show that runs over 2.5 days. I don't see any reason anybody would necessarily need to be there all 3 days.
3. AA needs work -- too many prints, not enough published artists, and the few they had that were published were guys from the 90's selling photostats of original art for $20 a piece.
4. I would say Wizard used up about 50% of their available space and that was even spreading things out quite a bit. They could cut their rates in half, fill the hall, and do better from a dealer and attendee perspective.
Here are the pics I took of the dealers, etc.
LOTS of available space
High Grade
Duncanville
Black Cat and Monster's Lair
Rick's Comic Crypt