mysterio

Assuming the pinup centerfold is present, then

A little public service announcement... I've booked our hotel for 2018 already, and the rates are good this far out. If you are planning to attend next year you might think about getting on a room soonish to lock in a decent rate (mine was about 2/3 of what the room cost this year, and at the same hotel).

Great books!

It sure is. Great guest list, and hopefully the date change won't hurt too bad. We're sitting this one out, but hope to hear plenty of reports!

Any updates?

Donated, thanks for the heads up.

They revamped the web site recently, so it is possible that they may not have bothered to add them yet. Klaus Janson is announced on FB but isn't on the artist list either...

Assuming that CGC is there, which I believe I heard as well, you would set that up at the show itself. BEFORE you get your book signed go to the CGC booth and secure a witness, and then go get your book signed with that witness in attendance. If the line is long make arrangements so you can text them to send the witness as you get close to the front. Then you follow them back to the CGC booth and do the paperwork (you can also fill out forms ahead of time if you would like). The key here is to coordinate with CGC before you get any signatures, otherwise you will not be eligible for SS.

Val Kilmer added.

Sam Keith added. It's been a while since I read a guest announcement and said "holy cr@p."

With at least two other large players (Reed and FanExpo) you'll just see fighting over Wizard's corpse to pick up the profitable shows. With Chicago, for example, Reed already has C2E2 so another Chicago show later in the calendar makes little sense. I see either Fan Expo moving in, or another moderately sized independent promoter picking up the late summer Chicago show. Most of the Wizard shows will go away completely, with better attended shows like New Orleans being possible exceptions.

Any reports?

Home Page Recycling the thread for the 2018 version.

Welcome to the boards! Yeah, it should be a fun show.

And if even 10% of the people milling about in the celeb area were there for the same reason (and it may have been much more), then letting those people be someplace else and get the same info would be useful in reducing the crowd.

Scott Wilson cancelled, but they got Frank Miller for Sunday only.

I like the projector idea even more, and it'd likely be cheaper to implement. You could have the announcements be 30 feet high in the lobby, on the walls above the bathroom entrances, or anyplace folks congregate. You could see them from a distance. Program sponsors could place rotating ads on them too, or you could rotate pics of cosplayers or short video clips of the celebs.

Yeah, last year, it was congested, but not as bad. I remember it being annoying trying to maneuver in the celeb autograph area, but this year was near impossible on Saturday at least. I think they will fix it and probably not too hard of a fix for them. Moving big celebs, better schedule communication to attendees and/or line organization. This venue has room to grow. There is plenty of room in adjacent halls or downstairs (maybe, never been down there to see what is available) to sequester some of the larger celeb lines from the general mix. Hamill alone would have been worthwhile to put in one of those areas to allow more room to breathe and organize the various lines. If there is another group of WD stars that would make a lot of sense for them as well. Photo Ops with those stars could be organized in the same areas without impacting the other celeb area.

It was a good show, with a great guest list. Obviously the move to March/April didn't hurt the draw at all. But I don't see how anyone could be fine with the celeb area on Saturday afternoon. You couldn't move around, and if anything had happened in the middle of that there would have been a very serious problem. Not only that, but in terms of PR obviously the crushing lines weren't a good look. This is the #1 issue to address for 2018, and I have no doubt that FE will be working hard on that.

Facebook Page Home Page 2017 event thread

Might as well give my perspective a few days removed from the event. I am still trying to get caught up on my sleep... From a vendor perspective, it was a bit of a disappointment. We've been doing these shows since 2015, and that first show was our high water mark. 2016 was a chunk below 2015, and this year was a pretty good step down from 2016. That being said, buying was steady pretty much all weekend and we sold through quite a bit of material (like 9 copies of Secret Wars #8!). Most of these sales were quite small though, so when all that activity was added up it didn't hit the number we had hoped for. Friday was very solid for sales, but Saturday barely squeaked past Friday for us. I can't help but think that the inflation in autograph prices we have seen of late is contributing to this trend in sales declines (not just at this show, but 2016 and so far in 2017). It used to be that your upper tier autographs were in the $50 range, with most being like $25-30. Now Stan is $120, Hamill was $195 ($250 if you got him on a poster like I did), and others like the WD stars and Tim Curry were also pricey. That sucks a lot of money out of the room that doesn't go to vendors. We were right along the red carpet, and every morning when people were let in they sprinted right past us down to the celeb section of the floor to get their spots in line. The guest list was great, and obviously worked for attendance (and I paid for Hamill, so maybe I am a bit of a hypocrite here) but it wasn't very helpful for vendors. Of course some did well, so YMMV. Back to the celebs, there were some well-publicized issues that I will leave to social media. They didn't directly affect me, so I won't comment one way or the other. On the one hand the celeb area was a nightmare to navigate, and was clearly way too small. That will need to be addressed next year with some additional space, or maybe putting the biggest celebs in another area of the center that was unused this year. I am sure they are already working on that for 2018. I do have to say that the Hamill line worked very well for me personally. I had gotten an autograph ticket (thanks to my quick thinking brother, who selflessly got out of JD Morgan's line to get the ticket for me and sacrificed a few spots for himself in the process) and was able to get into my spot easily. The line was handled efficiently, at least up until my auto came up, and I was only in line for about 90 minutes. So my experience in that melee was actually fairly positive. I agree that LCDs to provide updates on the floor and post schedules would be a significant improvement. Printed schedules just don't cut it anymore. The larger autograph lines and photo ops are consistently late, and people need to know when they need to be someplace. I like the convention center for this event, and I do enjoy the show. I just hope that sales in 2018 improve from our standpoint so we can continue to keep this one on our calendar. I can't help but feel that some of the larger shows are getting to a point where the vendors are just about superfluous to many attendees, and this is showing in their expenditures. If all they are going to do is stand in autograph lines all weekend, why do these big box shows (Wizard, I'm really including you here too) need vendors?

That article seems like it clearly has an agenda against Fan Expo. Seemed like that to me too. A bit anti-vendor as well.

per PM

One wonders if they went back to publishing comics with cover prices back in the $1 range and made them available in grocery stores and gas stations again whether they would have captured some of those fans of the movies as readers. Distribution through shops only will only reach new fans if said new fans actually go where the books are. This doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to.

This is from my Apple news feed.