NYC Comic Fair

April 27th & 28th, 2019
Bureau of General Services, Queer Division
 208 W 13th St #210, New York, NY 10011

 

 

Overview

The NYC Queer Comic Fair is a small convention put on by the Bureau of General Services Queer Divison, Carmine Street Comics, and Wabisabizinez. This is their third year running, but the first one I was able to make it to. As a creator, I have grown to love small conventions with low table prices. When they cater to niche markets and communities that I’m a part of, that’s even better. I also love a show that doesn’t start at or after 12pm. The first day was a bit slow, which was in all likelihood due to the beautiful spring day happening outside, but the busy second day more than made up for it. The space was tight, but it ended up being a great opportunity to meet a bunch of other queer creators in a way that I don’t always get to when tabling. I was exhausted by the time I lugged everything home on Sunday night, but I’m glad I did the show.

 

 

Highlights

•  Having fliers for the new short comic that I made with Eleonora Kortsarz, which will be featured in an upcoming anthology from Prism Comics and Stacked Decked Press. Be on the lookout for that Kickstarter soon!

•  Sharing a table with Lucky Sanford, talking about Flame Con, and geeking out about Power Rangers.

•  Sharing lessons learned from cons and navigating the bizarre world of selling your passion projects to strangers with my table neighbor Edward Ficklin, writer and artist of the Lavender Menace.

•  Not throwing up in my mouth just now when I was struck with the idea of starting a blog with convention tips and calling it Conventional Wisdom.

•  Catching up with the always friendly and super talented John Jennison.

•  Great conversations with Carlo Quispe of Uranus Comics,  Kyle Anderson of Doable Guys, and Lena Green, also of Doable Guys and Ship Jumper.

•  Meeting (but not getting to spend enough time with) Jasjoyt Singh Hans, James Dillenbeck, Liam Donelly, and Salvatore Marrone.

•  NYC Queer Comic Fair taking photos of all of the vendors at our tables, posting them on their Instagram, and tagging us. It was not only good promotion personally speaking, but it made finding all the new faces I had met that much easier.

•  It was the first weekend of The L Project with trains only running every twenty minutes, but my commute to and from the con ended up being seamless and super easy.

 

 

Would I Go Back?

Absolutely. It’s a local show with low table prices. It’s only 2 days. It’s an easy commute. I starts at 1pm on both days. It caters to the queer community. I not only broke even but actually turned a profit. This one checks off a lot of boxes for me.

 

And finally…

The Obligatory Convention Selfie