Category: Long Beach Comic Con

Long Beach Comic Expo 2011 Event Review

I attended my first Long Beach Comic Expo 2011 this year and did have fun even though the venue was smaller than expected and some locations blocked off due to filming.

The Long Beach Comic Expo is indeed a small comic convention, it doesn’t use the main convention center’s ballroom (compared to the regular Long Beach Comic Con) and actually the event is held in one of the side banquet rooms. Even though the room and Expo event wasn’t gigantic by any means, the room was packed and by noon you could expect to bump into people while traversing the aisles or going through comic long boxes.


I originally thought that since the convention hall was small that I would be out of there in less than an hour… I ended up spending most of the day there mostly checking out the artist area and a few comic booths. You could actually walk through and see all the booths in about 10 minutes if you wanted to at a brisk pace.

I arrived an hour early to the Long Beach Convention Center and since the Expo is a one-day event compared to the 3-day Long Beach Comic Con, I was able to park in the main parking lot underneath the center. I recommend arriving early to park in the underground parking since if you plan on buying items and do not want to haul them around all day, being able to hop into the elevator and drop-off the items in my car multiple times was a plus.

This is a comic-related focused event, and unlike the LBCC or Wizard World Anaheim shows, there were no “celebrities” manning booths here. Booths were primarily comic-oriented with a good amount of golden/silver/bronze age dealers, comic artists (seasoned & independent) as well as a few booths selling cosplay-related goods.

Personally, I’m a modern comic reader/collector and this Expo only had a few booths selling modern comics. Bargain hunters note that I spotted only a three bargain-related booths; one booth with a couple short boxes of 50 center comics and a big booth selling dollar comics that was packed full of buyers throughout the day.  I still prefer the Frank & Sons event for bargain-basement cheap reads, but I was able to get a backpack full of comics here as well to help fill in some gaps in my collection.

Since the Con lacked wide-berth spacing, I was constantly being bumped into while looking thorough boxes in the floor where someone would end up swooping above my head or bumping into me if they didn’t pay attention that someone was indeed on the floor. I had to stand up and elbow a few people off me a couple of times for those that don’t realize a thing called “personal space.” Thank goodness I’m not a scrawny little geek and doesn’t mind standing up to let people know to back off me to give me some breathing room. As usual, there were some smelly con-attendees there; oddly they mostly consisted of late-middle aged gentlemen.
The main reason to attend the Expo you ask? The artists and professionals there of course! Almost half the booths at the event were manned by artists, publishers, writers, etc. I was able to bring some comics from my collection and get them signed by notables such as Bernie Wrightson, Mike McKone, Marv Wolfman, Drew Johnson, and Eric Canete. I ran out of time the night before otherwise I would have looked through my collection a bit more thoroughly to find some Trent Kaniuga, Dustin Nguyen, and Peter Nguyuen comics for them to autograph. I was bummed that Peter Nguyuen was the artist on Secret Six (which I dig a lot) and I have at home, but didn’t realize he was attending.
Note to the Long Beach Comic Con program writers: When you list the artists attending the show, it would be very helpful if you can include next to their name the comics they worked on as a quick reference.
With the small venue, you were assured being able to communicate directly with the artists and get yourself a print, sketch or original art. I ended up purchasing several original art pieces as well as getting a couple sketches. Conventions like these I think help visitors get into learning about artists they may never have dealt with or know about their work before. Generally some basic sketches ranged from $40 for head/busts to $80+ for full body commissions. Don’t have a lot of cash to splurge on OA? Go ahead and support your artists and help pay for their booth by buying an art print or sketchbook. Most of the artists there were mainly amicable and nice to talk to. My suggestion for artists looking to sell sketches or drum up more traffic to their booths? Smile, there were a few “name” artists that weren’t too happy looking sitting at their booths which I think contributed to their less than stellar audience traffic.
I did enjoy artist’s booths with low general sketching prices. I missed out on one artist that was selling roughs and preliminary sketches for between $10-$20 that I planned on buying but missed out since he packed-up earlier than the show’s closing and I was caught up at another booth.

Shame that a couple aisles and the front of the center were blocked off where they were filming some web-show thing and the crew kept telling people that certain areas you couldn’t walk into.

The positive part was the artists for me (I’m not a big GA/SA comic collector), so being able to meet, get signatures/sketches/OA was cool. Some artists seemed very busy throughout, though some did start packing up around 4p.m. Most of the artists did say they were planning on attending the Wizard World Anaheim Convention, a few saying only on Saturday though.

A few Cosplayers attended with mainly the Star War’s 501st Legion group in full-force. Since the ballroom was small, there was not much space for the cosplayers to march around and show their wares. Many of the cosplayers were nice and didn’t mind picture taking with some of the attendees.

Looking forward now to the full-blown Long Beach Comic Con in October!

 

Long Beach Comic Con 2010 Event Review

Mr. Monster went to Long Beach Comic Con 2010 on Friday, Oct. 29th and had a pretty good time.
Goth-Harley Quinn & Black Mask (Left). Star Wars Honda Del Sol-style (Right)

Ticket Registration Woo-Hah!
On some online comic boards there were those writing about their online registration experience and bad ticketing information after you bought it online, it was pretty bad on-site too. Got to the convention around 2:00 p.m. and saw a line at the ticketing booth, I thought that was for the people who were paying for the tickets online…nope, those were the pre-registrants.

If you pre-registered online you had to get in line, and for me it was a 20-30 minute wait. BUT if you didn’t buy it ahead of time, you were directed to the cash or credit card booth which had NO line. So it was better to not even pre-register there. Man, between LBCC and Wizard World Anaheim (jacked up “convenience” fee on-site) you would think they would have learned better line and pricing management from San Diego Comic Con.

For Friday’s event there was only one booth for pre-registrants, but there were two booths for on-site payees (one cash, one credit), and even one booth for Exhibitors (which the person manning it was just lonely sitting there). I overheard the a volunteer saying that the opening of the con earlier that day was messy with bad line management. LBCC needs to step it up with figuring out that online registrants should be FASTER in getting into the Con than payees just…I mean that’s what they had on their Buy Tickets page noting pre-registration should be a good deal faster.

Oh, and I think on-site parking at the structure was $10 or $15 bucks. The parking signs for the Con pointed to the three-level structure at the back side of the Con so you had to hoof it a couple blocks across the street and then back up the stairs to get in.

Bring On The Show!
The Hulk angry about the Con pre-reg line as well.

Overall the Long Beach Comic Con was nice once you got inside. The last time I was at the Long Beach Convention Center was six years ago when Wizard World held their first So. Cal event there before moving to Anaheim. Outside at the front entrance of the Convention Center were some Star Wars cosplayers as well as the semi-famous Honda Del Sol decked out as an X-Wing ship.

Compared with Wizard World Anaheim (WWA) earlier this year the show booths were more comic-related instead of celebrity. mini-SDCC lite, though I did like WWA since they had more quarter bin booths vs. the mostly dollar booths (I’m a bargain reader). Some of the celebrities there were the WWF/WWE Honky Tonk man, Corin Nemec (Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, currently on Supernatural t.v. series) and couple others that I didn’t really know too well. The celebrity signing booths were set up in a circular manner and probably had 7-8 booths, small in comparison to the three long double-sided rows of booths at WWA.

Original Art and Autographs
The Justice League hanging out.
Lots more artists at LBCC as well and picked up some nice OA from a couple of them and got some signed comics as well. This was the first show I brought some of my comics to get signed by some of the show attendees though not all of them appeared that Friday (ie. Rob Liefield, Mark Waid, etc.). I did get in line for a couple of the set-time signings for both writer Jeff Loeb (Batman: The Long Halloween, Superman for All Seaons) and creator/artist Mike Mignola (Hellboy).
The signing for Jeff Loeb took me 20-25 minutes since there were a couple groups of fans that brought a box, and I do mean a BOX, of comics for him to sign. I’m guessing he signed about 50+ comics for each three people (flippers/resellers) there. I grossed to one of the other people in line about them bringing in their entire collection but this fellow collector (both of us along with the rest in line had maybe 1-3 items to sign) said it was expected since they don’t put limits on amounts to sign for such a small Con and since Loeb’s a writer they’re generally o.k. with signing tons of stuff. Not cool with me, either impose a limit or have those with more than 10+ items do it at the end. Waiting that half hour wastes my attendee time and I PAID to be there and not wait in line when I could be elsewhere in the hall.

Thankfully the signing for Mike Mignola was a lot better. I expected his line to be even longer since he’s creator of the famed Hellboy series and a cool artist in his own right. I only brought a couple old Phantom Stranger comics to sign and bumped into the signing area near the end of his signing time and saw there was only about two to three people in line. I asked one of the show volunteers (lots of them there and pretty good in answering questions) if the line for Mike was long earlier and he said no. I got Mr. Mignola to autograph my two comics (will bring the remaining two left in the mini-series next time) and asked him if he could sketch a Spectre on one of my blank comic covers. Mind you this was the first time I ever asked an fully-published artist at a show for a sketch. Mike asked if the Spectre had a moustache, which I replied the Corrigan version did not but the new Crispus Allen did. He did a quick marker sketch for me of the hooded Spectre. I’ve since read Mike doesn’t sketch at bigger shows like SDCC, so this was a cool treat being last in line for once.

I was able to get a Blackhawk comic signed by Howard Chaykin, Wetworks #1 by Whilce Portacio and a Swamp Thing comic by Bernie Wrightson. Unfortuneately Mr. Wrightson doesn’t do sketches at Cons anymore (one of the few I would’ve paid for a quick sketch) but had some preliminary ST panel art for sale there.

One of the cool things about the LBCC from the days I attended Comic Cons (7+ years ago) is now I’m into original comic art and this show had a good amount of artists to pick up items from. The show had artists tables separated into opposite areas of the Hall, some attendees didn’t like this but I felt it helped make the show feel bigger by letting you peruse artists a bit less claustrophobic.

I walked around the artist alley and being there still pretty early the area wasn’t too crowded and some artists not fully set-up yet. So one of the first tables that caught my attention was for artist Drew Johnson who was a penciller on the recent Wonder Woman, Supergirl comics and the past The Authority. He had his original art (OA) portfolio open and some nice un-published Wonder Woman caught my eye and so I checked out the other pieces in there. While the WW art was out of my budget I did pick up four nice Supergirl OA pieces and asked Drew to sign the accompanying comics they were in that I found later that show. He was also cool enough to do a quick Wonder Woman head sketch on my Zero Hour comic cover. Definitely an artist to check out and chat with. Next time I’ll have to see if I can pick up one of his Authority pages to add to the collection.

Near the end of the show I saw one of the cool recent Supergirl comic covers as part of an artist’s booth and found that the artist Joshua Middleton was drawing and had some OA for sale. I poked around and found one of the Supergirl comics he drew the cover for as well as a few issues of the Superman/Shazam: First Thunder that I waited in line for him to sign. As I waited for him to finish a commission piece I saw he had some nicely priced OA and I ended up picking three pieces out; one Metamorpho/Aquaman interior page (along with the comic) and a couple from the aforementioned Superman/Shazam series.

I do regret not waiting in line at Amanda Conner’s booth for a sketch since by the time I walked around and went back to her booth about 1-2 hours later she was packing up for the day. I also wish I found out how much Arthur Sudyam (Marvel Zombies cover artist) charged for sketches since I would have liked to get one done by him as well.

There was a booth by Cool Lines Artwork who are professional OA sellers and they brought tons of OA from different periods to gawk at. Too bad buying one of their pieces would pretty much cause me to default on mortgage payment otherwise they had some pretty iconic Silver Age- Modern covers to drool over.

Overall if you’re looking to meet artists, get OA or chat with industry people, LBCC is the place to be.

The COZ
Zombie-Hulk
Took a couple photos of the few roaming cosplayers that day but there wasn’t too many running around. There were a few DC-group themed people and a big Zombie-Hullk there. There was a cool Firestar there as well. Ended up in line in front of a Gothic-themed Harley Quinn and Black Mask from the Batman series as well. From photos of the Con there were a tremendous more during the Saturday event.

The Books, It’s All About The Books!
Now Mr. Monster is generally a low-budget reader and what I liked about Wizard World Anaheim earlier this year were the couple big booths with 25 cent comics for sale. Unfortunately that wasn’t to be here at LBCC. Most booths were dollar or higher-end GA/SA sellers. There were only about a couple booths dealing with 50 cent bins that weren’t just junk 90s fodder. Picked up a big stack of items at one booth near the entrance for artist signings and fillers as well as one booth that had a few o.k. hardcover TPBs for 5 for $20.

The rest of the show were standard Con fare with toys, comic-related clothing, etc. Few booth babes there, but again this was a thin-Friday crowd. I was able to circle the entire hall in about 45 minutes but with thorough digging spent 4-5 good hours there.

That’s All Folks
Good times there apart from the ticketing fiasco, should be back next year!

Sergio Aragones signing at Hi De Ho Comics.

P.S. Attached a shot of Sergio Aragones (MAD magazine writer, Groo creator, artist) who was signing at Hi De Ho Comics in Laguna Beach today as well.