Indiana Comic Con 2022
Indiana Comic Convention is the second largest nerdy event in Indianapolis, after GenCon (and that one takes up so much more room primarily because it's centered around gaming, and rooms full of gaming tables take up more space than rooms set up auditorium style). This year it was back to its usual spring dates, April 15-17, 2022.
Now that it's been taken over by FanX (the promoters of Salt Lake City Comic Convention), they're steadily making it their own. The graphic design of the badges and the website are now more like what they do at SLCCC, rather than the colorful tropical designs of the old Imaginarium badges, that freely played upon their Florida background. Now the badges are more sober in color, with simpler stick-figure images and very basic fonts, almost like something for a business convention.
It's a hometown convention, so we only have a daily commute, rather than a long overland trip and a hotel stay. Because we're vendors, we had to go downtown to the Indiana Convention Center on Thursday to load in. This year the convention's back in the area that GenCon usually uses for their dealers' room, so we were down in the back part of the loading dock. Security was being super annoying about wanting us all unloaded and gone in an arbitrary amount of time and were hassling people who weren't moving as rapidly as they thought they ought to. I was drinking a peach flavored hydration drink and joking about it putting me in a Georgian mood -- and when they bugged me, it was even odds whether that Georgian was from Atlanta or Tbilisi.
However, we still were able to get everything out of the van before Security could make good on their threats of stickering us to be towed, and I took the van over to the usual parking lot. Then I had to hike back to get as much set up as possible before going home. We got all our structures built and even had time to put a fair amount of stuff in them.
When we got home, I gathered up everything we'd need to do business on Friday. Then I managed to scribble some more notes on some of my stories before turning in for the night.
On Friday we got up early and headed back downtown. I dropped the rest of the family off at the convention center with the additional equipment I'd loaded, then took our car to the parking lot. I hiked back to the convention center and set to work finalizing our setup. Then we settled in to sell.
Sales were very slow, although we did have some spots of busy here and there. I had quite a bit of time to do stuff on my phone, which is not a good sign at a convention.
In the evening we came home for supper, and I was just as glad of it, considering how little we'd had in the way of sales. After supper I ran up to the storage unit to retrieve some merchandise we'd forgotten, as well as some restock items. Then I did some more work on my writing before turning in for the night.
On Saturday we headed back downtown and I delivered the stuff I'd gotten out of the storage unit while I dropped off the rest of the family. Then I parked the car and hiked back to the convention center to finish getting us set up for the day. I was without the phone for a while because it hadn't been charged overnight and was dangerously low -- but a neighbor was willing to let us charge it on their power pack.
Most of the time we were busy, but there were some lulls here and there. Once I got my phone recharged, I spent those periods using it to work on my various writing challenges. No use letting the time go to waste.
When we got home, I did the newsletter for the cosmic horror list. I also managed to get the accounting done for consignment sales for the previous week's show before turning in for the night.
On Sunday we drove the van downtown to the convention center. This time they let us park in the loading dock so we could start loading out as soon as the convention was over. That saved me a day's parking and the time hiking back from the lot, so I even had a little time to look around. Not a lot, but I did check out a few friends' booths.
Then it was time to get back to our booth and get to work on selling as much as we could manage. Sales were still slow compared to what I was used to, but we wondered if it was the result of this convention following so soon after last year's Indiana Comic Con, which was delayed until October as a result of the COVID-19 restrictions that were still in place in April and May.
By mid-afternoon we could delay packing no longer, although we would've liked to see some more sales. We had some excellent help in packing and loading out (although a bunch of our signs went AWOL somehow in the haste, including a good laminated one), and I was able to get loaded while it was still light out. Then we headed home and went up to IHOP for supper, since we'd been disappointed by our experience with Steak 'n Shake the previous year.
All told, ti was a reasonably good Indiana Comic Con, if not a spectacular one. We decided that unless the promoters raised the rates markedly, we'd continue with our 20x20 island, since it's an opportunity to offer a lot of low-priority backstock merchandise we don't usually even take to shows were space is more limited.
Copyright 2022 by Leigh Kimmel
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Last updated June 16, 2022.