Conventions

Festivals and fairs where this work is sold and the people who make it meet: SPX, TCAF, CAB, Comitia and their European equivalents.

Part of Underground Comics

71 moments in this segment.

1. 1970-08-01 - The first San Diego Comic Con in 1970. News coverage of the first San Diego convention at the Grant Hotel, described as one of the city's more unusual gatherings, with a 1940 Walt Disney comic book among the rarities on show.
2. 1971 - 1971 New York City Comic Con with Phil Seuling, Jack Kirby , and Denny O’Neil 8mm footage. Silent 8mm reels from Phil Seuling's New York convention, the East Coast show whose dealer network later became the direct market.
3. 1972-08-18 - San Diego Comic Con in 1972. San Diego's West Coast Comic Convention at the El Cortez Hotel, with Bob Clampett as guest speaker talking to local television about animation and cartooning.
4. 1973 - 1973 New York City Comic Con Footage with Phil Seuling. Silent 8mm footage from Phil Seuling's 1973 New York convention with Jim Warren, Gil Kane, C.C. Beck and Al Williamson among the figures caught on the floor.
5. 1974-08-02 - San Diego Comic Con at the El Cortez Hotel in 1974. Cathy Clark reports from the fourth San Diego convention at the El Cortez Hotel, where the dealer room and the fan tables still fit inside a single floor.
6. 1975 - News 8 Throwback 1975: Comic-Con in San Diego. July 1975 in San Diego, five years after the founding minicon, with the camera moving among dealers and the few costumed attendees of the period.
7. 1976 - 1976 San Diego Comic Con - The Iwin Awards Robert Short. The Irwin Awards at a San Diego convention still small enough to run in a hotel ballroom, hosted by Robert Short with William Malone appearing in a homemade Godzilla suit.
8. 1977 - Chicago, 1977. Catherine Yronwode with her daughter Althaea, Denis McFarling and the photographer at the Chicago convention, five years before the San Diego pictures.
9. 1978 - Le Festival International de la bande dessinée de Montréal en 1978. The Montreal international comics festival at the Universite de Montreal, where Jacques Hurtubise talks with the organiser of the children's day about who the event is actually for.
10. 1979 - Comic-Con San Diego 1979. A reporter works the dealer tables when the show was still chiefly about buying and selling, noting single back issues priced over a thousand dollars in 1979.
11. 1981 - News 8 Throwback 1981: Comic-Con in San Diego. A brief look at the July 1981 San Diego convention, eleven years after the one-day Golden State Comic-Minicon that started it at the U.S. Grant Hotel in March 1970.
12. 1982 - Original art auction. Bidding on original pages, an early sign of the market in artwork that would grow through the decade.
13. 1982 - Minneapolis, October. Yronwode at the smaller Minneapolis convention three months after San Diego.
14. 1982 - Yronwode, Marrs and Schanes. A critic, a cartoonist and a publisher in conversation away from the panel rooms.
15. 1982 - Yronwode and Mullaney. The two would go on to run Eclipse together through the 1980s.
16. 1982 - In the hall. Yronwode and Mullaney photographed among the crowd between sessions.
17. 1982 - Yronwode with the photographer. Light founded The Buyer's Guide for Comics Fandom in 1971 and photographed the conventions he covered.
18. 1982 - Panel three. Another programme session, the speakers framed against a bare wall.
19. 1982 - Panel two. A session in progress with the audience out of frame to the left.
20. 1982 - Panel one. Seated speakers behind the table, the room's fluorescent light flattening everything evenly.
21. 1982 - Speakers in close. A tighter crop on the same table, faces readable across the row.
22. 1982 - Inkpot banquet. Tables laid for the convention's award dinner, the Inkpots having been given since 1974.
23. 1982 - Convention session. Speakers behind a skirted table under house lighting, the standard shape of a programme item.
24. 1982 - At the microphones. A programme item in progress, water glasses and papers scattered across the table.
25. 1982 - Seated speakers. Another of the day's sessions, photographed from the floor of the room.
26. 1982 - Room and rostrum. A panel underway, the audience visible in the foreground rows.
27. 1982 - Richard Howell. Howell speaking from a panel table, one of the small-publisher voices the programme made room for.
28. 1982 - Sergio Aragones. The Mad marginal cartoonist working the convention floor, where he customarily drew for anyone who asked.
29. 1982 - Aragones and Shel Dorf. Dorf convened the first San Diego gathering in 1970; by this point it had grown into the event that would eventually swallow the city each summer.
30. 1985 - 1985 San Diego Comic-Con TV commercial low budget KTTY. A low-budget local television spot advertising the sixteenth annual San Diego convention, broadcast on KTTY Channel 69.
31. 1989 - 1989 San Diego Comic-Con handpainted sign collection. The hand-painted signage for that year's San Diego convention is photographed mid-production, the work of the same crew who lettered the show through the 1980s, including Rock 'N' Roll Comics co-creator Jay Allen Sanford.
32. 1989 - Comic-Con San Diego 1989 and 1997. Local television teams cover the San Diego convention across two visits, with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman speaking about the self-published route that made the title.
33. 1990 - 1990 San Diego Comic-Con hand-painted signs before showdate. Ten minutes of the hand-painted convention signage photographed before the doors opened, almost all of which was stolen during the final hours of the show, as happened most years.
34. 1991-07-05 - Comic Con 1991 -- the first at San Diego Convention Center. The first San Diego show held at the new Convention Center, reported from the floor with illustrator Dave Dorman appearing in a bonus segment.
35. 1991-10-17 - Signing queue. Don Lawrence working through a line of readers at the Haarlem festival, the table ritual that structures every such event.
36. 1992-05-14 - Stripdagen opens. The opening of the Haarlem comics festival, a biennial that gave the Dutch small press a shopfront.
37. 1992 - San Diego Comic-Con 1992 SDCC - RARE footage of Image Comics, fans, cosplayers, Jim Lee and more!. Camcorder footage from the convention floor the summer Image Comics launched, taking in dealer tables, small-press booths and the crowds around the new imprint's stand.
38. 1992 - News 8 Throwback 1992: Comic-Con in San Diego. August 1992 at the San Diego Convention Center, a snapshot of the show at the point the speculator boom was at its loudest.
39. 1993 - 1993 San Diego Comic Con Home Video Footage Convention & Masquerade. An hour of home video from the 1993 San Diego convention, moving through aisles, small-press tables and the full masquerade programme.
40. 1993 - 1993 Philly Comic Fest footage: Revolutionary Comics, Boneyard Press, more. Interviews taped at the Philly Comic Fest with Revolutionary Comics and Boneyard Press, including Herb Shapiro on the Rock 'N' Roll Comics litigation and on censorship pressure from retailers.
41. 1994-02-01 - Joost Pollmann. Pollmann ran the Haarlem festival from 1994, doing the organising and the fundraising that keep such events alive.
42. 1994-06-02 - Opening, two years on. The 1994 edition getting under way.
43. 1994 - 1994 San Diego Comic-Con TV report, physically challenged comic creators. A San Diego public access programme on disability visits the 1994 convention to cover its access provision and to interview creators and readers about disabled characters.
44. 1994 - 1994 San Diego Comic-Con (25th anniversary). Nearly an hour of 8mm camcorder tape from the twenty-fifth San Diego convention, taking in the main floor, artists working at tables and a small-press panel with Randy Reynaldo.
45. 1996 - San Diego Comic Con Documentary - 1996/1997. A student documentary made at the San Diego convention, cut on A/B roll equipment, with Todd McFarlane, Kevin Smith, Mike Allred and David Lapham among those stopped for interviews.
46. 1996 - Olifant nominees. Piet Veenstra, Willem Snitker, the mayor Jaap Pop, Rob Stam and Joost Swarte at the prize nomination.
47. 1996 - Group in the Vishal. Cartoonists assembled in the old fish hall during the festival, Swarte third from the right in the second row.
48. 1996-07-05 - San Diego Comic Con in 1996. The twenty-sixth San Diego convention, where digital and CD-ROM comics shared aisles with print, and Verotik's adult titles sat a few stands from Donald Duck.
49. 2007-08-20 - Meredith Gran at TCAF. The webcomics author signing at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, an event founded in 2003 and run free of charge inside a public library.
50. 2008-11-01 - Nate Powell at APE. The artist at the Alternative Press Expo in November 2008, eight years before the March trilogy won a National Book Award.
51. 2008-11-01 - Lilli Carre with Tales of Woodsman Pete. The Chicago artist at the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco, holding her first book.
52. 2013-05-31 - Gilbert Shelton in Munich. The creator of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers at the 2013 Comicfestival, decades after leaving Texas for Paris.
53. 2016-10-20 - SPX panel on making comics. Aimee de Jongh on the Small Press Expo panel You Can't Not Make Comics, a conversation about why cartoonists keep at it.
54. 2017-05-25 - Festival merchandise. Mugs and other objects on sale at the Munich Comicfestival, the small-scale trade that funds a non-commercial event.
55. 2017-05-26 - Aisle of stands. A corridor of exhibitor tables at the 2017 Munich festival.
56. 2017-05-26 - Stands inside the hall. Publisher tables fill the Alte Kongresshalle during the 2017 Munich festival.
57. 2017-05-26 - Sales stand. A table of comics-themed goods at the Munich festival, where publishers sell directly rather than through distributors.
58. 2017-05-26 - Alte Kongresshalle, Munich. The 1950s hall that houses the Munich Comicfestival, a biennial event weighted toward independent and European publishers.
59. 2017-08-16 - Ferris on the SPX panel. A frame from a recorded Small Press Expo panel, the year My Favorite Thing is Monsters appeared.
60. 2017-09-17 - DeForge on the Koyama panel. The Canadian cartoonist speaks at Small Press Expo alongside his publisher Annie Koyama.
61. 2017-09-27 - Charles Forsman at SPX. The author of The End of the Fucking World speaking on a Small Press Expo panel, extracted from the festival's own recording.
62. 2018-05-12 - Inio Asano in Toronto. The author of Oyasumi Punpun at the 2018 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, one of the few North American appearances by a Japanese alternative author.
63. 2018-05-12 - Jocelyne Allen at TCAF. The translator, whose English versions carry much of the Japanese alternative catalogue, at the 2018 Toronto festival.
64. 2018-05-12 - TCAF from the fourth floor. The festival floor seen from above inside the Toronto Reference Library, where exhibitor tables occupy the public reading areas.
65. 2019-04-05 - The Saxifono collective. A group portrait of the Valencian fanzine's contributors at the Barcelona fair where their publication was recognised.
66. 2019-04-05 - Saxifono takes the fanzine prize. Members of the Valencian fanzine collect the award for best fanzine at the 2019 Barcelona comics fair.
67. 2019-06-20 - Denis Kitchen in Munich. The founder of Kitchen Sink Press, which published Crumb and Spiegelman from 1969, at the 2019 Munich festival.
68. 2019-09-14 - Valero-O'Connell at SPX. The cartoonist speaking on the Small Press Expo panel Queer Science Fiction and Fantasy.
69. 2020-09-13 - Lindell on fictional structures. The artist speaks on a Small Press Expo panel about using invented characters to carry lived experience.
70. 2024-09-07 - Freon founders on stage. William Henne and Xavier Lowenthal, of the Brussels publisher Fremok, speak with the critic Didier Pasamonik in September 2024.
71. 2024-09-08 - Panel at the BD Comic Strip Festival. Four contributors including Thierry Tinlot, a former editor of Spirou, in conversation at the Belgian festival.