Fanaticon Kicks Off Tomorrow!

It's time for the first annual Fanaticon and are we ever looking forward to it! Fanaticon will be held tomorrow, Saturday May 15, 2010, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. in downtown Asheville, NC at the Asheville Art Museum at Pack Place.

Why are we looking so forward to Fanaticon? Glad you asked.... Mainly there are two reasons: 1) the con is local - no driving two hours or more to begin setup - forget something? Just go back and get it... 2) More importantly, show director Chance Whitmire and his staff have been promoting the show relentlessly. Examples: Several radio spots, guest spots on local TV news programs, setting up a table at Hickory-Con last week along with a Superman actor to promote the show, having folks dress up like super-heroes to distribute flyers in downtown Asheville, front page of the Mountain Express (our Creative Loafing up here - click on the the "This Week In Print" block for a fabulous Fanaticon article) and front page of the Entertainment section of the Asheville Citizen-Times...just to name a few.

There are pre-convention parties, post-convention parties and even - get this - an Opening Ceremonies Saturday morning at 9:30...luv it...

Oh, and probably the best one-day show website that we have ever seen. No stone unturned by Chance and his staff in our humble opinon.

And did we say admission is FREE! Like you folks need another excuse to come to Asheville, the freakin' Paris Of The South, daggone it...

OK, time to get back to work and figuring out what we will take to the show - We will have a post-mortem of these last two one-day shows early next week.

New Comic Collection to debut at Hickory-Con!

We'll be bringing a new collection consisting of 30 long boxes - Bronze Age to present - to Hickory-Con this Saturday, May 8th, 2010 at the Hickory Metro Convention Center in Hickory, NC.

The collection is interesting for not only it's breadth but depth as well. Everything from superheroes, golden age reprints, independents - you name it, it is in there. The individual from which we purchased this collection is a finish carpenter and all of the books came in 32 boxes made of luan plywood. The boxes are even stackable with sort of a tounge-in-grove deal where the comics are not touched by the box above - very interesting but we will need to sell them as they are tough to use for transport due to the weight and no handles. But I digress...

The even better news is that ALL BOOKS ARE $1.00 - that's right - just a buck a piece and ALL of the books are freshly bagged and boarded by yours truly (not so many) and by the always able assistant Melissa (she bagged and boarded a TON of books...). Admission to Hickory-Con is just $3.00 and runs from 10:00 in the morning to 5:00 in the evening.

Whatever we don't sell at Hickory-Con, we will bring to a new show - Fanaticon at the Asheville Art Museum in Asheville, NC on Saturday, May 15, 2010. When it's up, they have by far the best one-day show website that I have ever seen. They are promoting this show RELENTLESSLY so I'm hoping for a great turnout.

After that, we'll be heading to Charlotte, NC on June 4 - 6 for the venerable Heroes-Con 2010. The guest list is absolutely amazing with creators like Mike Mignola (Hellboy), Brian Bolland (fabulous covers like The Killing Joke, Animal Man, Wonder Woman and a TON more), Frank Cho (Liberty Meadows), Bill Willingham (Fables, Elementals) and just too many more to list. We'll be bringing a ton of trades, graphic novels, CGC books and - of course - deeply discounted comic books.

We have a few more shows to do like Charlotte Comicon on August 1st and Dragon*Con over Labor Day weekend but more about those two great shows later.

Hope to see you in Hickory on Saturday - first come, first served for this fabulous comic book collection!