CINCINNATI — Tri-State area comic book fans rejoice: this Saturday will see the launch of a new gathering for fans of primary-colored artwork.
Queen City Comicon’s inaugural event runs 10 a.m. through 5 p.m. on Saturday at the Duke Energy Convention Center in downtown Cincinnati. The gathering was organized by the same folks who bring the Cincinnati Comic Expo to the same venue in September each year, according to Journal-News contributor Aaron Epple.
“Fans have been asking us for a second event,” said Matt Bredestege, administrator for the Comic Expo and the Queen City Comicon, in an interview with Epple. “We wanted to space it out because there will be a lot of similarities. It’s a single-day event. We’ll see what the interest is. It would be great to have another event on the other side of the year.”
Frank Brunner, who worked on the Dr. Strange and Howard the Duck comic books for Marvel Comics in the 1970s, is scheduled to appear at the Queen City Comicon’s first event. Other artists slated to attend include Dave Aikins of “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Dora the Explorer” and “Archie” comic alumnus Craig Boldman.
Fans of the Cincinnati Comic Expo should not expect to see the same scale of guests and activities when they show up to Saturday’s event, Bredestege said. Much like the first couple years of the expo, organizers decided to keep the comicon’s list of guests small and then grow from there.
“There are a lot of financial commitments to (bringing in celebrities),” he said to Epple. “We don’t want to start off that way. With the Expo, we didn’t start doing that until the third or fourth year. Whether it will follow the way of the Expo is up to the fans. If it’s successful, we’ll grow it.”
Admission to the Queen City Comicon is $5. For more information visit Queencitycomicon.com and read Epple’s full story here.
