oops

[davemerrill]

We were driving around yesterday and I saw some sort of comic-con looking people wandering away from the CNE grounds, and I figured the Wizard thing was this weekend. Only it was last weekend. Wizard held a comic book convention three blocks from our place and nobody noticed!

I'm not the most informed citizen in the city, but I do listen to the news going to and from work, and I try to stay up on what's going on, and other than a kind of poorly informed article in the Torontoist about a month ago, it's as if this convention snuck in under cover of darkness and tried really hard to not cause any trouble or disturb anybody. Which I appreciate, actually.

We spent Good Friday putting the bed frame together. We did drive up to the York Regional Forest and did some good solid deep-woods walking. It's a nice time of year when the weather is warm enough for shorts but the bugs haven't come out yet. It lasts about ten minutes, so enjoy it! Had lunch at the other Ajisen Ramen location in Toronto - if you can handle the Asian Christian muzak (hint, it all sounds like BGM from 80s Matsumoto anime), the ramen is fan-tastic. And they go as spicy as you like, which is good when you've got a cold.

We might go out somewhere today, maybe out to the sticks. Usually I choose a direction based on some kind of vague idea or a hunch, and that seems to work out OK in that I'm always finding crazy things. On the other hand my criteria for success in these operations is pretty loose, so there may be some selection bias there. Anyway everybody have a happy Easter and eat the ears first!

Comments

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

The guy who owns Wizard is spending insane money buying up local comic cons in order to have presence in major cities. I have no idea why, other than he seems to hope to challenge SDCC and become the king of all media or something.

Anaheim is trying REALLY HARD to get SDCC to move out of San Diego but Wizard's World is already there shouting "ME! ME! LOOK! ME!".

I suspect what the guy wants is Hollywood begging for floor space, which would make him a 'player' in the entertainment industry and all that nonsense. It's all about that sad need for mainstream acceptance/approval of the geek I'm guessing.

Let's face it, if Warner Bros. throws $10 Million at you to buy a chunk of floor so they can pimp 'next big geek movie', that's validation of a kind.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

My personal feeling is that Wizard is trying to leverage their visibility into a TV show or something. These comic shows aren't making enough money to justify their own existence, let alone make a profit for Wizard.

The Torontist article had a great comment from a former Paradise employee - Paradise used to run the comic show that Wizard bought, and this employee worked for Paradise until he quit to go work for Hobbystar, who runs the Fan Expo. He was vilified in the fan community for "jumping ship" to go work for "the bad guys", but as it turns out Paradise had been promising him a paycheck for years and never delivering, and for all their noise about being a independent show, they went and sold out to Wizard at the earliest opportunity.

From what I understand Anaheim doesn't have the room for SDCC. Neither does San Diego, either, really, but people keep going. People keep complaining about the crowds, the Hollywood, the inability to get tickets or hotel rooms - and yet people keep going. I have a handy solution to all those problems; I don't go.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

From what I've been reading SD has a real love/hate relationship with the SDCC, the same that Hollywood has with home video. They LOVE LOVE LOVE the money, the big fat money that's being generated, but the HATE HATE HATE that it's something as worthless and meaningless as *gasp* comic books. Not that there's that much comic book going on at the SDCC for the past 15 years or so.

SD would be much happier if it was wall to wall World Series and Superbowls and the like, and *maybe* if SDCC was just Hollywood.

But you're right, even with recent expanding Anaheim isn't big enough. Really, the only venue that could properly hold SDCC is Las Vegas. And that is a whole 'nother set of issues.

(Hollywood likes SD because it's really not an effort to truck stuff there.)

[kikaiju.livejournal.com]

SDCC should never go to Las Vegas, unless they change the dates. July in Vegas is about 30 degrees hotter than San Diego at the same time. This is not a little warmer. This is hot enough to kill people warmer.

And SDCC is a daytime-only con. There is no night side to the con, not that Vegas is that much cooler at night.

The point is, the average SDCC attendee will die in the Vegas heat. That's not going to do a lot for anyone. Except casket makers. I dunno.

Besides the "there are no rooms in SD" is a red herring. There are plenty of rooms locally in SD. Maybe not downtown but around the area. And there is no problem at all finding rooms if the range is extendted out to 90-minutes drive, a commute that is actually reasonable for a con like SDCC. People who give a damn that hard will drive that far for it.

So all people need to do is look farther out and plan better.

SDCC is just trying to get a better deal from the SD powers-that-be.

[kidfenris.livejournal.com]

"These comic shows aren't making enough money to justify their own existence, let alone make a profit for Wizard."

I would be surprised if anything makes a profit for Wizard at this point. The company's been shrinking for years. To put things in perspective, Wizard had about 70-80 employees, five magazines (six if you counted the CEO's pet quarterly guns-and-ammo project), and its own spacious building in 2005. Today, Wizard has about fifteen employees, two magazines, and a small Manhattan office.

I think they're backing conventions just because their conventions have lost slightly less money than their numerous other ventures over the past five years.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

And I tell ya, looking at the recent Toyfare issues, I suspect it won't be long before he pulls the plug on that and folds everything in a 'new, improved' Wizard magazine.

Maybe he can call it PIQ. :)