Long Beach Comic & Horror Con Celebrates 5 Years of Collectors, Families, Enthusiasts

When it comes to comic book/pop culture events, the annual gatherings in San Diego and New York always get serious buzz. The Long Beach Comic & Horror Con, which takes place this weekend (November 23-24), may be a somewhat smaller show, but it is rapidly gaining ground.

When reached by phone before the show for an interview, Phil Lawrence, sales director for the convention, offered insights into the origins of the show and the direction it is heading in its fifth year.

Q: How did the Long Beach Comic & Horror Con get started?

Probably 8 or 9 years ago, there was a show in Long Beach put on by another company; they had left Long Beach. What happened was my partner and I had worked for that company. We still stayed tight with the comic creators, the publishers and whatnot.

They came up to us and said “Hey, we really like the city of Long Beach; we liked having a show there. Would you guys be up for putting on a show?” [It was] literally “If you build it, we will come.” Obviously, five years later, we are still here, alive and kicking.

There has been a renaissance, especially in the last five years, with comic books; people are really getting interested in exploring the medium more.

It’s in everything out there, from TV to movies to video games. The pop culture in general has been inundated with comic book culture. It’s a good way to get your up-and-comers, whether it is artists, writers, publishers. I think we created a great venue from them to come in and introduce their things to the general public, especially since we are a very family-friendly environment.

We kind of go back to the grass-roots: the old comic book show in the hotel ballroom. That was the genesis of it. We tried to re-create that, and hopefully we stayed true to it by still standing out as we have gotten bigger.

I think we tried to create that environment, granted on a little bit larger scale than the hotel ballroom. The funny story is that the first year’s show did so well, everybody was like “Hey, why don’t you guys do this again? We can’t wait another year.” So, actually, what we did is create a one-day show in the spring in one of the large ballrooms within the Long Beach Convention Center.

We did a one-day show, and that’s grown so much that over the course of four years, next year we are actually going to make it a two-day show. It will still be in a hotel ballroom, but we are going into the largest hotel ballroom space at the convention center.

These days, it seems quite common for older readers to bring their children along to introduce them to comic books.

The thing that the comic book community still needs to do-and they are still trying to do-is to hook in that younger reader. There’s so much stuff that goes around: Twitter, social media, video games, and everything else, which are great. At the end of the day, you still want them to come back and read your comic book.

Is there any influence from movies and TV right now, or are the shows 100 percent comic books?

There’s definitely movie and TV stuff involved. Just from our programming standpoint, we try to focus on a little bit of the TV and some of the movie stuff. We try to do it where it is comic book-centralized.

Our second year, we were forced because of the timing to go on to Halloween. So we’ve got a horror angle to the show as well. We always try to mix in some horror movies; we have a lot of dealers who deal in horror stuff. [Director] John Carpenter does a comic book, and he sets up.

There are these elements of comic books and horror with the fall show that we try to keep in. You’ll still see the TV, movie, and even video game stuff, but everything still has some kind of comic book genesis to it.

A bit of that seems to have been lost with the San Diego Comic-Con and the New York Comic Con. In San Diego especially, it seems that the movies and TV have taken over the event.

Hollywood has definitely taken over in the last 10 to 15 years. I’d like to think at our show, where we promote stuff other than comic books, I don’t think you’ll find anything that doesn’t seem out of place.

It’s funny: “Walking Dead” actually premiered at our second year show. It premiered on that Sunday night and we actually had cast members there. We did an exclusive book, but no one knew what [the show] was going to do.

The Long Beach Comic & Horror Con continues through Sunday, November 24.