After having just awakened from 11 hours of slumber, I finally think I am rested from New York Comic Con. This show is the most surreal experience, year after year. Creators like ourselves spend weeks preparing for the event, obsessing over every last detail. Then, you arrive. And, in a blink of an eye, it’s over and you are on your way home. Expectedly, yet sadly, the course of events of the weekend dictate how well you feel about the show as you reflect on your journey. This was our third trip to NYCC, second as an exhibitor. Each year it gets better for a variety of different reasons.
I am not going to encumber you this month with a laundry list of what we as creators did or did not do well. I want to focus on what I saw from others, that either impressed me or in some cases, disappointed me. For those of you who are familiar with big conventions, like New York Comic Con, the big thing everyone talks about is the costumes. This year’s show brought in 77,000 attendees and I would be remiss in commenting that 10% of them were in costumes, if not more. In the exhibitor area, including Artists Alley, I did not see as many as in years past, in other words – not as many booth babes. There was one exhibitor, however, who did take cosplaying to a whole new level, and yes I am going to exercise a bit of favoritism here. Matt Ryan, president of Free Lunch Comics and the creator of the comic book series Bigger designed and wore a 9 foot costume of his lead character, Willie Rison. Matt, or I should say Willie was the hit of the show. On Sunday, which is Kid’s Day, there was actually a line to take pictures with our favorite teenager from the book where American Pie meets the Incredible Hulk. In the series, which has been on the indie scene for over 10 years, Willie’s entire body doubles in size whenever he sees a pretty lady. It was so exciting and rejuvenating to see this extraordinary promotional effort from a creator. It proves my most prevalent theory to comic book promotion – brand recognition.
While this year’s attendance at New York Comic Con saw a 12% increase from last year, and customers seem to buying up a storm, evidence of the economic situation certainly reared its ugly head among the creators. I found myself coming home with not as many postcards as I normally do. I saw some empty tables in the Small Press section and Artists Alley. And I saw a good number of tables being shared by multiple creators. We found ourselves in the position of sharing booth space, not by choice but assignment. I am not quite sure I am sold on the idea, especially when it comes to sharing with a non-affiliated creator. We have shared table space before, but with creators published by our own publisher. Or, we have shared space with other members of the Comicbook Artists Guild. In both scenarios, we have had positive experiences because we never felt as if we were in direct competition with each other. We also were promoting a common bond, despite selling different products. Hopefully, next year, we can convince New York Comic Con to give us a full table. If not, we, and I recommend to others, will work closer with our tablemate to make the table space look more synonymous. In hindsight, being that we were paired with an artist and Everett is a writer, we had the perfect opportunity to establish a collaboration of some type. I firmly believe it could have made a difference to the customer.
As I have mentioned, last year was the first year we appeared as an exhibitor. Working in promotions, I spent a great deal of time, both last year and this, scheduling podcast interviews. Last year there was a sound quality issue that impacted the number of interviews the podcasters would do. This year however, the world was our oyster. Everett completed 5 podcast interviews. Every time I went over to the Podcast Arena, I was able to speak to someone in every single booth. Why wasn’t there a line of creators ahead of me? It shocked me to see that creators both in Artists Alley and the Small Press section were not taking every opportunity to capture a moment of these podcasters’ time. That is why they were there! We want to express our sincere thanks to Comic Timing, Raging Bullets, Comixology, ComicRelated and To the Point for taking the time to look at our work and interview us. And creators, next year do not miss this boat.
One final observation for this month. Creators, whether you are mainstream or small press, when I walk up to your booth, say hello. Smile. Introduce yourself. I was walking up and down Artists Alley and a ton of creators took down the little name tents the Con gave us. I had no clue who you were and when I walked up to you, nothing was said. I, and many other attendees at Comic Con, don’t know your work. Tell me about it. Let me see your passion, because believe or not, it can rub off on your customer. New York Comic Con is just the beginning of the 2009 convention season. It started off with a huge bang, let’s keep the momentum rolling.
Next month, I am going to share with you some thoughts on promotions from other creators in the industry. Because we appear at a high number of conventions, we have met a number of creators, all with their own tricks of the trade. Until that time, I’d also like to start a new feature in this column. Do you have a question or need advice relative to promotions? If so, email me at susan.soares1971@gmail.com. Your question and my advice will appear in a future column of Promotionally Speaking, here at septagonstudios.com. See you in March!
