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Heidi,

Thank you. The “Happy Ending from Virgil” will have me laughing for hours.

Thanks again,
Troy

I would have understood this better if I knew who “Boomer, Virgil and Chaka” were…

Boomer is the name of a character from the 1970s Battlestar Galactica as the actor who played him has spent the last 35 years appearing at fan cons and selling his autograph. Virgil and Chaka are unknown to me and I watch way too much TV and I still don’t recognize those names.

Wasn’t Chaka the name of the man-monkey on Land of the Lost?

I think Virgil is a wrestler. Maybe?

Still, using your military site ID to impersonate a federal officer — even if the crime used in using that is minor, that’s a MAJOR crime that should be punished. He should probably also lose his job. I can’t imagine the Air Force wants this guy on their site anymore, either.

They should fine the guy whatever it actually cost to get into the VIP room plus legal expenses on both sides and then give him a buttload of community service. That plea deal is preposterous.

http://www.sltrib.com/news/3757105-155/salt-lake-comic-con-says-10k
“Salt Lake Comic Con co-founder Bryan Brandenburg said Friday he was perplexed when he found out federal prosecutor Carlos Esqueda referenced tickets to the room during a hearing for a man accused of pretending to be an Air Force agent at the September 2015 event.

Brandenburg says tickets have never been sold for attendees to enter the VIP area where celebrities can rest.”

We claim the Zoo and all of Balboa Park as open grazing area for our cattle.
Signed,
Bundy Boys are in Town

I wouldn’t believe anything a con organizer says about their own convention. And since the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News own the convention along with Farr I probably wouldn’t believe anything they publish about the con either. Those local TV news pieces just repeat the same lines the paper and Farr have been spreading. I would however believe the exhibitors and fans who went to the con and are providing their feedback. But you’ll have to hurry if you want those opinions since negative comments have a habit of getting erased from the Salt Lake City Comic Con’s Facebook page. Here’s a quote from the event that helps sum it up,
“I love Salt Lake City. They have the best comic con in the world.” -Stan Lee
“Talk about being proud. When you get that kind of kudos from Stan Lee, you’re doing something right,”
-Bryan Brandenburg
Did Stan Lee forget he owns an interest in Stan Lee’s Comikaze?
I think Salt Lake Comic Con and Comikaze have more in common than just Stan Lee’s accolades. Both are exploitive cons that use the passion of fans for the genre to drive up attendance and get national coverage for their poorly run events. How many poorly run cons with 75k plus people does it to become evident that these are not “growing pains” but in fact just the way the con does business?

I’m waiting on Torsten to post. He’ll set this straight.

Agreed. Torsten, weigh in on this, please. =)

Baltimore went at the same time and got much better actual COMICS names. I guess if you wanted pictures with Shatner’s toupee for the fifth time you could’ve gone to SL, though.

SLCC’s numbers are completely shady. Their child “estimate” is way too high and the fact that they count unused retailer tickets should be a serious red flag. Dan Farr only cares about the numbers, and if anyone took just a quick look at their FB page on Thursday the comments were all the same …. No volunteers to help. No signage. No line management. Why? Because these things cost money (signage, volunteer recruitment/training, security) at that would cut into Farr’s profits. This show is just a cash grab and all Farr cares about is the numbers and tooting his own horn. Fan experience means nothing to him once your money is in his pocket.

Shady numbers, questionable ethics (deleting people’s negative comments), and poor planning. I give Farr 2- 3 years until he sells or folds. Which is probably exactly what he wants in the first place. Get huge numbers and sell a crappy convention to the highest bidding fool.

Okay, the numbers, via Wikipedia:
SLCC 515,000 square feet
SDCC 615,700 sq ft
Javits 840,000 sq ft
Toronto over 460,000 sq ft (and expanding further?)

All of these shows use the entire facility.

Denver CC, in its third year, drew 86,500. It used Halls C,D,E, approximately 278K sq.ft.

(What’s the metric for event planning? Fire safety? How many sq.ft. per person?)

So, yeah, I could see these numbers being plausible.
8 hours to Denver, by car.
6 hours to Vegas.
5 hours to Boise.
So that’s a good regional pull.
(Toronto pulled a few of my friends from NYC.)

BTW, there’s also the LDS Conference Center nearby… it seats 21,000.

The King of Cons?
Komiket.
Approximately 600,000. Picture MoCCA Fest on steroids. All exhibitors are amateur publishers selling their limited edition comics.
Tokyo Big Sight has about 868,000 sq.ft. of exhibition space.

(And Heidi, I know you’re probably frazzled from Balmer, but there has been another census since 2000. Utah actually gained an electoral vote. 1.14M in SLC, 2.9 M in UT.)

As a long time Denver resident, I would be amazed if this Con pulled any significant numbers from Denver. Its and eight hour drive from Denver with no mountain traffic and, to me, the United States ends at the Colorado border and doesn’t restart until you can buy liquor again.

Just looking at the license plates in the parking lots, people from all over the west were there. Me and my son came from Boise. In lines, I talked to people from Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming and even Calgary.
Thursday and Friday were busy but Saturday was incredible. By noon, the whole Salt Palace was shoulder to shoulder and you were duck walking. We left at 130 because I realized it was getting too crowded to do anything and the holding area for admittance was packed with people streaming in.
I don’t know how many people were there Saturday but I can tell you you couldn’t see the floor it was jammed with so many people. If there had been and emergency in there, such as a fire, I can’t see how everyone would have made it out. It was absurdly packed.

I’m not surprised by the numbers posted. I attended on Saturday, and the crowd was like something I have never experienced before. There were serious crowding issues, especially at intersections. On one occasion I asked the person in front of me “Did we manage to stop at the back of a line? Or are we just not moving?” and she said “I DON”T KNOW ANYMORE!” The crowds did make it difficult to see everything or to travel from one end to another. When we left at 4:30 they weren’t letting anyone in because the fire marshal closed entrances for a short while because they had exceeded capacity. All in all, we really enjoyed it. We pre-registered so we walked right in in the morning with no line. We planned ahead what was most important to see and managed to check everything off and get in a few extra things as well. Last year was far less crowded, though.

I covered SLCC this year and last for my podcast, as invited and credentialed press.
I also cover Denver Comic Con, not only as press but as a moderator and host as well.

I live in Colorado but when you are invited to another con, who can pass it up?

I can honestly say, experiencing both cons within 2ish months of each other – SLCC was just under double the amount of people.

SLCC made sure to widen the aisles to accommodate more foot traffic, even then you were in a shoulder to shoulder sea of people. From the lines to get into main events to just the downright chaos of the con floor, I honestly have no doubts attendance was 100k +

and to those who say Denver keeps the Coloradans happy… Let me just say there is a huge difference in quality and guests when you compare a non-profit con versus a for profit con, so saying people from CO may not make the drive is a tad bit silly.

Apparently they are now claiming that attendance went up to 20% after the show ended… By the way Chris F, I may be a tad silly, but I’m also right…

http://fox13now.com/2014/09/08/comic-con-draws-mostly-local-crowds-officials-say/

Unless you’d like to contend that the massive crowds from Denver all stayed in their cars…I’m going to say the thing that everybody commenting on this post should too… The organizers are LYING! LYING! It’s great that they have a nice con in SLC, but these guys are allergic to the truth…

You are all a bunch of Bloody Idiots. Your just jealous about the Salt Lake Comic Con being better than all of your Local Cons. I am from Idaho and I went and it was awesome. 95% of all the attendees had a great time and all the celebrities who went loved the event and the fans. You can cross check the different celebrates and their facebook and twitter pages with the comments if you like. Its a great event and its just going to get better. There is no other con in the united states that has done better in their second year than Salt Lake Comic Con has.

What you fail to realize Brammerhammer23, if that is your real name, when somebody lies about their attendance like this it drives up table prices, ticket prices and, once it is widely reported, causes a huge black eye to the industry as a whole. I’m sure everybody had a great time at the show, but its frustrating to those of us, who are dealers and comic shop owners, when you can’t trust the attendance figures promoters put out there.

Wait… Brammerhammer23? You aren’t the one of the show’s co-founders are you? Because your user name is very similar to the last name of one of the show’s founders…

I went to Salt Lake Comic Con and it was awesome. I went all three days. There was a lot of people but it wasn’t overly crowded. It was easy to see the schedules for the panels and such because of the Salt Lake Comic Con app. It was great.