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This makes me wish I were going! Next year for sure!

Don’t forget the previous Con Wars:
http://www.chron.com/business/article/Judge-refuses-to-stop-show-7361787.php
“The hearing was the latest development in the dispute between Space City Comic Con, a three-day festival scheduled for NRG Center over the Memorial Day weekend, and the convention and visitors bureau, which has a 50 percent take in a rival pop culture event, Comicpalooza, scheduled for the George R. Brown Convention Center in mid-June. The convention bureau sued Space City Comic Con and its owner, George Comits, for trademark infringement earlier this year.”

Attendance in 2014: about 30,000.
—
The bigger problem, especially for the organizers, will be refunds for the VIP tickets.
At best, they take a hit in the pocket book. At worst, they get hit with a class-action lawsuit.

Meanwhile, in Houston, will be
Amazing Houston Comic Con (Sept 9-11, 2016)
Comicpalooza (June 17-19, 2016)

Meanwhile, in Orlando, MegaCon (now part of Informa, which runs Fan Expo) expanded to four days, and not much happened. (I wonder if they’ve evolved past their comics-centric origins?)

“I totally get that but when you screw over your fans and punish your fans because of it well to me that’s totally unacceptable.”

He didn’t screw over his fans. The promoters did.

If you show up to work and your boss decides not to pay you that day, do you owe it to your customers to still work your shift? No.

The Sons Of Anarchy don’t own anybody anything.

100% of the blame is on the promoter. If Hunnam were to stick around, he’s basically rewarding the con for unacceptable behaviour. I suppose he could have gone to a Denny’s or somewhere and tweeted that he’d be there for a few hours to sign, but even then, he was there to sign for money.

This whole paying for autographs and photos is still a baffling business to me. Charging for an autograph itself seems like punishing your fans.

Some of this is true, some of it is false. I will openly state this – the Sons actors did NOT “revolt” by not doing the panels. The AVI business that was brought in was not paid on the first panel. The “reunion” panel that had 4 actors was canceled, then on then canceled then a few actors were told it was on or to go or not. One actor I spoke with thought it was a joke but decided to double check because of all the lies and misinformation, and he arrived halfway through the 4 person panel.

On Sunday, all the actors but Charlie (who had left the night previously) and Ryan Hurst (who was downstairs signing autographs), attended a shortened panel, despite being on their 3rd day, without pay – shoved into a tiny room, where half the cast had to literally stand on their feet behind the other 8 chairs wedged on this tiny stage.

I am Mary Peterson and I’m spokesperson and co-admin of the Facebook group of disgruntled VIPs who were so readily screwed while the actors profusely apologized to us and treated us like royalty. I couldn’t say enough especially about how awesome and apologetic Kim Coates, Michael Beach, Chris Reid, Danny Trejo, and even the twins parents were to us and more, knowing how screwed we were. Feel free to message me on Facebook if you have any questions.

The SOA cast didn’t punish their fans, the convention organizers did. Remember that many of the guests are still active in the industry. That means it’s on the Space City Comic Con organizers to make it worth their while to attend. If these people arrive only to find that the con is suddenly not going to pay them, THEY DO NOT HAVE SHOW UP! The SOA cast had every right to demand payment, and the promoters had taken on the responsibility of doing so. I get that there were SOA fans who went there to see their favorite actors from the show, and I can understand how frustrating it is to learn that the cast wasn’t going to be there, but the only way to keep the fans happy is to run a tight ship on the business end of things, something the SCCC people failed to do.

I went to a rally in Newton, Iowa several years ago to meet Charlie Hunnam. The event was mismanged and people including myself waited over 8 hours in line even with wristbands. After we were the last group to get in and there were still about 200 left outside promoter was trying to shut things down and turn them away Charlie sat with no break and made sure all those fans were let in. He was charming (no pun intended) and saw all his fans were treated well. If he left this event there was a good reason I’m sure.

“but the show apparently has a good rep before that.”

No, they didn’t, but no one reported on it. At the Galveston event in ’14 they failed to pay guests and Moody Gardens, screwed over their investors, and had to change names and legal stakeholders to The Houston Con to avoid lawsuits. George Comits has a storied history of this sort of behaviour if you dig into it, I’ve seen some of it firsthand.

The Cast didn’t screw over the fans, THE PROMOTER DID. The Cast deserved to be paid for their time, the same as anyone else. These huys do care about their fans, but you cannot expect them to work for free. The only ones who deserved to be tarred and feathered or the unscrupulous promoters. YOU DON’T !@@#$# WITH SAMCRO!!

In case someone doesn’t have a cell phone, just an idea – You could probably use a Google Voice phone number (it’s free) to get the text messages, assuming you don’t need to receive new texts when you’re not at a computer.

I attended NYCC last year and I do not have a mobile phone. However, if you click on the ‘get code’ with no number in the box, it will give you an option to have a robo-call made to a land-line, which is what I did. But yeah, it’s not obvious.

You should really fact check your information prior to publishing it. If you select get code after entering your phone number you can select “Get code via phone call” and an automated call will be placed. Also you can have multiple codes sent to a single phone via text, so you can use one phone to fulfill the requirement of text messages if you wish to use that method.

I can confirm that the Google Voice phone numbers don’t work. IIRC, it gives a message along the lines of “phone number not part of a valid provider”.

The BookCon will likely continue. The big question is will they expand it beyond BEA and would enough publishers be willing to exhibit for even more weekends?

I was in Chicago primarily for the SFWA Nebula Award Weekend. While I didn’t do BookCon, I did go by BEA for a couple of days. Was somewhat disappointed in the lack of SF/F presence by the major publishers (Penguin Random House was especially light in that regard for BEA). IDW definitely made an impression with the Bloom County sampler.

Remember the trade show at Comic-Con back in the 90s?
You had mainstream publishers attending (like Random House) to promote books which overlapped with fans’ interests.
NYCC ALREADY has a books section… up front, where Penguin Random House, DK, Quirk, etc are found.
Oh, and Lance… he used to run BEA.

@Lee,
Penguin Random House offers hundreds of new titles each MONTH.
Aside from signings, they didn’t promote much outside of their major titles and authors.
I did send them a suggestion to perhaps create category booths, like SF, or Cooking, or GNs.

I’m not sure how much of a “precedent” will be set: in WA law (as well as CA, where I live) it is illegal for a for-profit corporation to utilize unpaid volunteers. That seems pretty black & white, and it seems plausible that even someone knowingly signing away their right to pay in order to be volunteer may still constitute an illegal labor practice by Reed-POP. While it may be unfortunate for ‘minions’ who were willingly giving up pay to volunteer in order to get free admission, the law is the law, and is in place to protect corporations from exploiting people (NOT that I’m saying in any way Reed-POP is willfully breaking any law, and/or trying to exploit its fans).

Volumnteers?

class action lawsuits like this are awesome, because if they win, the Lawyers will bill 99% of the award money to legal, paperwork and admin fees and give .25 to each actual “victim”

ReedPOOP. That’s too good.

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New York Comic Con scans badges by having staff hold portable PADDs which verify the badges.
This accommodates a variety of visitors, and offers IMMEDIATE security presence if something is amiss.
This also offers flexibility, as the gatekeepers are the gates.

As for lanyards… I’m always leery of the clips, so I thread the end of the lanyard (the end opposite the clip) through the badge hole, using the clip to act as a backstop. The clip gets hidden behind the badge.) https://goo.gl/zroCyi

Why would Kylo Ren be able to lift the hammer? He isn’t worthy. Force or no force, that doesn’t change.

Speaking as a lifelong Micronauts fan, I have to ask, WHAT CARTOON? What the hell is Scott even talking about?

Micronauts never once had a cartoon, it was from before the boom of Reagan-era toy-cartoon tie-ins. It had a comic adaptation with Marvel and that was it. The Japanese Microman line it was based on got a reboot in 1999 and an anime then, but neither ever made it to Western shores.

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.”

Hmmm… well, that IS interesting. I wonder if Marvel will pull out of SDCC to a smaller presence again? I have to admit, as a company move it makes sense. Why compete with all the other content when they can beat everyone to the punch less than a week earlier (since SDCC starts on Wednesday).

And who from Marvel wants to fly out to one show, fly back for a couple days, and then fly back out for the next one? Or would the hotel fare be cheaper to have them stay there? It probably would be for that many days versus a cross country flight, but who wants to leave their families for two weeks for it?

Most of the rank and file at Marvel would likely just go to SDCC, but the higher level folks attending both would cause a budgetary nightmare for Ike Perlmutter….

I bet you don’t see much crossover between the show, that’s for sure. maybe just Axel Alonso and Joe Quesada…

1) This allows Disney to own the news cycle the week before CCI.

2) Disney can fly in talent ONCE, having them appear at D23 and CCI.

3) Disney will still have programming at CCI. They dropped the mic in Hall H last year with Star Wars. Disney only needs to do that ONCE to “win” Comic-Con each year.

4) Disney controls these events. Remember the cast announcements at the El Capitan? Anything Disney does, anywhere, will garner publicity. They don’t need CCI.

5) Marvel won’t give up space at CCI. That many people on the show floor equals lots of activations buzz, and publicity.

6) Expect Warner Brothers or another big media conglomerate to rent out nearby hotel space and stage a parallel mini-con. The corporation can control hours, programming, access… at probably a similar cost to renting a nearby warehouse.

7) Disney rakes in the revenue with D23. Almost all of it. It’s an extension of the theme park, with the gift shop INSIDE the attraction.

8) Hoo BOY! Will WonderCon 2018 be held in Los Angeles? Both WonderCon and D23 are held in the Anaheim Convention Center. Neither will be using the new space (which goes online in Fall 2017), not that either needs more space.

9) Hall D, where the theater was at D23 last year, seats 15,000 in a theater configuration. Compare to 6,130 at Hall H in San Diego.

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