2015-07-25 - Space City Comic Con Review

[alxjhnsn]

Not a comprehensive review of Space City Comic Con this time - I was only there for Saturday and only for 3 or 4 hours at that, but I do have a few comments.

 

Location - NRG Park, Houston, TX

 

Parking - Hard to believe but it was inconvenient. Better than the GRB, but with the Circus in town ... [The Dome really needs to come down, IMO]

 

Artist Alley - The rows were too crowded especially compared to Comicpalooza. It was really hard to move down them with people standing at the tables. There seemed to be adequate space behind the tables and I'm sure that was a relief for the artists.

 

Good guests and exhibitors in the area - There wasn't anyone that I really wanted to meet, but there were several that whose work I've enjoyed. It was good to say, "Hi."

 

The ones I spent at least a little time with included:

• Carlo Barberi - very nice and he had quite a bit of OA including some excellent Spider-man pages
  
• Walden Wong - another very nice man with a good pile of OA for sale
  
• Scott Kolins - Scott had his son for a booth helper and again it was a good visit. I'd forgotten that he'd done a few issues of the latest LSH book. There was one page with Ultra Boy and Phantom Girl dropping down to the old inverted space ship club house. Almost pulled the trigger, but ...
  
• Brett Booth - Nice chat. Lots of recent Flash art. In fact, with Scott there, one had an excellent selection of modern Flash art.
  
• Ken Lashley - Likes cookies; bring him some. Had a brief chat.
  
• Vo Nguyen - Talented and friendly. Doing a lot of paintings.
  
• Brent Peeples - Talented and friendly and really starting to get some notice - lots of new covers and interiors. Go Brent.

Celebrities - Convention management clearly spent their money (and floor space) on actors. We were really there to see Arthur so I didn’t spend much time in the area, but ...

• Arthur Darvill (Rory) and Karen Gillan (Amy) represented Dr. Who and had a good, but not overwhelming line.
  
• William Shatner - Good line, he seemed very happy to be there. Big smile on his face and he looked good and healthy. That man's career is unbelieveable. Not the most talented actor ever, but wow the success.
  
• Miltos Yerolemou was there signing and greeting in front of his table. He is very friendly. He had 3 or 4 fencing sessions for those interested in lessons.

The volunteer handling Arthur and Karen also worked Walt and Louise's booth at Comicpalooza and recognized my wife and me. That was a surprise; I guess I hung around Walt’s booth a lot.

There were lots and lots of other celebrities - some I knew of, some I did not.

 

Cosplay - lots of cosplay guests and booths with the crowd having some nice examples. Two of my favorites - Dim and Wit, the Fairy Brothers, were there. If you see them, stop and tell them Alex said hi. Get a free hug. Good guys. Don't worry, you'll recognize them.

 

Dealers - There were not a lot of comic dealers. Bedrock City Comic Company had a large setup and was moving a lot of t-shirts. I think there were 3 other comic centric exhibitors. From my POV, not a lot of comic books on the floor - not empty by any means, but I didn't see all of the local dealers represented. Maybe I missed them.

 

Lots of other types of dealers - jewelry to handmade clothes to books (Murder by the Book (a local shop) and Tor).

 

Miscellaneous - There were open top, metal mugs all over the place. Turns out that they were SCCC commemorative mugs. The vendor has their own flavors that are supposed to be quite good. They sold those at one booth and more common drinks at two other locations. I was worried about spillage, but no one else seemed to be.

 

A few folks said there were some minor setup issues, but nothing unusual or bad. Business was reported to have been okay to good.

 

Summary - All in all, it seemed like a pretty successful show. Congrats to the SPCC team.

[alxjhnsn]

No pictures - sorry about that.

[Doc McCoy]

Thanks for sharing, Alex!

[Brenmark]

I always enjoy your reports, Alex. Thanks for sharing.

[alxjhnsn]

Likewise, Mark. Your reviews are as close to SDCC as I'm likely to get. It interferes with our normal summer vacation and that's not moving.