In the four years since entrepreneur John Simons launched Comicpalooza as one-day signing event at a theater in a Houston suburb, it has grown steadily into the biggest and most popular fan convention not just in Texas but in the entire U.S. Southwest. Today, the annual event is geared toward fans of comic books, science fiction, fantasy, video and table top gaming, anime, music and film, and also serves as a trade show and showcase for studios, manufacturers, and publishers associated with those industries. d sat down with Simons to find out what prompted him to start Comicpalooza and why it has become so successful in such a short period of time. Highlights of that interview appear here.
In the five years since entrepreneur John Simons launched Comicpalooza as one-day signing event at a theater in a Houston suburb, it has grown steadily into the biggest and most popular fan convention not just in Texas but in the entire U.S. Southwest. Today, the annual event is geared toward fans of comic books, science fiction, fantasy, video and table top gaming, anime, music and film, and also serves as a trade show and showcase for studios, manufacturers, and publishers associated with those industries. d sat down with Simons to find out what prompted him to start Comicpalooza and why it has become so successful in such a short period of time. Highlights of that interview appear here.
d∞: What motivated you to start a convention like Comicpalooza?
Simons: You know, it was really a confluence of things all coming together at one time. As a retailer in this area for years, with virtually no convention scene, it was one of the points that we would rail about. Comic book retailers in other parts of the country have a convention circuit they can go to sell product that isn’t moving, where they can buy inventory, where they can get more exposure. And the conventions here were not big enough to accomplish any of that. We were a little bit better in gaming, anime was OK, but still, there was no major con here. So, as a retailer, I felt the loss like a missing leg.
But there were a few other things, too. The cons that were here I supported. I exhibited at many of them. Some of them I helped out by showing them how to promote, or helping them promote, or organizing their gaming sections. I did some things like that.
d∞: Do you mean regional cons like OwlCon?
Simons: Yes. And there were a number of one-off cons. Maybe they weren’t meant to be that way, but there were a few that ended up that way. So, there were a few things like that which happened here, and I supported them. But no one really moved in to fill the gap in Texas, and that gap is really one for a major event.
d∞: You mean a gap for the state of Texas overall, not just the city of Houston?
Simons: Yeah, you know, aside from anime, which is well-supported in Texas, the entire convention scene is understrength. Almost one in 10 Americans live in the Texas-Louisiana region, and for this region not to have a convention of more than 4,000 people for comic books was just phenomenal. And if you lived in Houston you had to drive over five hours to get to a convention that had more than 5,000 people.
Now that’s been changing, because of the entire market. I noticed about 10 or 12 years ago — I could see it coming from a good ways off — that the whole market was mainstreaming. By that, I mean if you go back far enough, conventions were the domain of your geeks, who would wear Star Trek costumes, and it was a very niche market, and the average person would not be caught dead at one. But, starting in the mid-’90s, superhero and science-fiction movies started to become really big — horror movies have always been big — and much more accepted. It really started with the Batman movie franchise, and those were really the first ones where Hollywood was saying “We don’t have to do these movies for kids,” and they began targeting a different crowd. Then, Blade came along, and it was the first Marvel (Comics) movie that did not completely suck ass, because Marvel movies had been terrible. As soon that happened, you had these two companies, Marvel and DC (Comics), both trying to transition into making movies, because they realized they could make money at it. Even though Blade number two and three weren’t so hot, that franchise was a milestone for Marvel.
Meanwhile, companies like Dark Horse Comics, and later Image Comics and some of the others, had some of their non-superhero properties made into films. A lot of the indy movies that come out these days that are a pretty good are going to be comic book movies. The Pro, you might remember that, A History of Violence was a comic book movie, you had spoof ones like Mystery Men, Men in Black was a comic book. Red was a comic book movie, and a lot of people wouldn’t even know that. The Losers was a comic book movie. There are a lot of them. That industry is huge, I think it is like $18 billion worldwide in the past 15-20 years, maybe more. Now, that has evolved to the point where the comic book movies are the leaders for each year, they are the tent pole movies. And science fiction at the same time has become more mainstream. So, the biggest movies are going to be your new Star Trek release, your new Batman or Spiderman, or whatever.
On those smaller properties, what they get is that the comic books are already storyboarded, so they are already taken to a stage where the companies don’t have to pay for any of that, it’s all done, and it saves them a lot of money.
So, the whole sci-fi and fantasy genre, which is tied up in gaming, and all of these things that are somewhat interconnected, went from being a super-niche market to being mainstream. There is a very large percentage of the population now that is going to go see a new Spiderman movie. It’s not niche anymore.
d∞: So you’re saying that all this makes the demand for a fan convention in Houston even more profound than it otherwise might be?
Simons: That is absolutely, absolutely what I am saying! And I could see that coming a dozen years ago. There were other people who could see it coming too, but I could feel that as these movies became popular the whole market would broaden. I am not sure that I properly envisioned that it was going to become this mainstream, that we would look at a summer of movies, and say “What are the top movies going to be?” and pick out the top three comic book movies and a sci-fi movie. I didn’t think that would happen, but that’s kind of where we are. Or, think about the number of movies that have been done about video games even. And role-playing video games are all ultimately based on D&D. I mean, you go back far enough, and the “role-playing” video games all derive originally from D&D. This is a geek’s world.
So, I could see that all these things were coming together and that all the media were joining. But by about 2004, it was dawning on me that there was no one in the Houston area who was going to make this kind of an event happen. I knew the people around here who were organizers, and they had their own agendas; it was something they did for fun, or something done by a club, or something that didn’t have a plan … Even a really good event, if you’re just doing it for fun, won’t go anywhere. So, I really began looking at the numbers and trying to dissect the business model for a convention, and I had the business plan for that done by 2005. But there is a big leap from doing the business plan for something like this to taking it into actual practice.
d∞: So what led you to finally take that big leap?
Simons: Well, for me it was accidental. What happened is that in 2008 I was planning to start ramping up to doing more events. I had just moved into a new location with my store, Midnight Comics, and had more employees and so had more time and thought, “I’m going to get back to doing events the way I used to!” You know, the way I did years before, before I got too busy. I wanted to do some things to support the local comic book guys, because they’re really shafted living in Houston.
So, we put together this little event at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema on Mason Road in Katy, and I decided that we were going to make it have no possible chance of failure. So, I arranged it with the manager — who was great to work with for the event; he was the new manager and he was just super great — and we set it up for the Saturday of the weekend The Dark Knight came out. That was July 19, 2008, and it was just a six-hour signing event and didn’t have a name. I was talking to a reporter or calendar editor from the Houston Chronicle and they asked me the name of the event. I was on the spot! Someone in a letter about 24-Hour Comic Book Day had been talking about naming things and doing stuff like this, and they had mentioned a “Comicpalooza.” So, I said, “Oh, we’re going to call it Comicpalooza!” So, it was a throw-away event, but it was pretty popular, we got good coverage, and we helped the local comic book guys.
A couple of months later, I ended up talking to the manager at West Oaks Mall, which has always had a lot of competition and always struggled to bring in as many people as it could, and they wanted to do an event. “Well,” I said, “we did this thing called Comicpalooza, and now it’s got some name recognition.” So, we ended up doing this comic con in the mall and turning it into a free, two-day, comic book art festival. And that was May 2-3, 2009, which was the weekend of Free Comic Book Day, and we had something like 1,500 people, which is better than any comic book convention here going back 20 or 30 years; maybe there was something better in the ‘80s. And after we had this event, I realized that I had the vehicle. I hadn’t intended for it to be this throw-away event called Comicpalooza, but I had name recognition now. I had vendors, I had artists, I had a track record — and I had the biggest con in the city!
So, after that I ended up talking to the city of Houston. And Houston as a city, not just the city itself but also many public and private institutions throughout it, we have this sort of under-the-surface frustration that we’re the fourth-largest city and no one knows anything about us or cares about us, that people outside of Texas have described as “a pit.” It’s horrible. When I talked to my high school guidance counselor at John Glenn High School (Bay City, Michigan) about taking a scholarship in Houston, that was how she described the city: “a pit.” And these things are not true; they are not. I could go on for a long time about the city’s positive aspects. Houston, for example, is the most international city in Texas; many people will think that it’s Dallas, but it’s not. Go ahead and Google “consulates in Houston.” Austin has three or four, there are 10 or 20 in Dallas, but Houston has something like 81. But this is a city with oil and gas and all those countries want to deal with our industries. So, it is a hugely international city.
d∞: So you started Comicpalooza because it turned out there was a huge demand for it?
Simons: Yeah, that was definitely one the reasons, but there were a few things that kind of came together, including this “accidental” event, the fact that I had already been studying it and was predisposed to do it … But I had a different name, I had a different marketing plan, I had a completely different idea. I had not meant for the initial one to take off and had not intended for it to be the vehicle to realize the business plan that I had already been working on.
d∞: Part of the reason you launched this event was to support the local hobby retailers. Did they respond positively? And have other people?
Simons: Yeah, they did, they did, but it took a little while. You have to understand, Houston has for like the past two decades had the reputation for having the worst cons in Texas. So, it was very hard to start convincing retailers that they wanted to come and exhibit with me. But now there’s a lot of buzz. I can go places and people will say, “Oh, Comicpalooza, it’s amazing!” I’ve had people tell me it’s the biggest con in Texas. Maybe, maybe not yet; I’m sure it will be soon. But these are things that other people are telling me. There is a tremendous amount of excitement. Now, space-wise, it absolutely is. Events-wise, this is a convention where you can go for three days and not see everything. You are not going to come close, and it is the only comic con or pop culture con like that. Some of the anime cons do a fair amount of programming, but we do a tremendous amount, and it’s high level.
And there are a few characteristics about Comicpalooza that are unique. Comicpalooza started as a means of promoting the industry. It was not started as a dealers’ room, and that’s really how most comic cons start. There’s a dealer’s room, you walk in and buy some stuff, and you leave, and that’s it. Ours started as a promotional thing and then went to an art show for the second year, and it has really maintained that. So, we get more media attention than any other con in the state, and some of them are much older than us, and some of the anime cons are much bigger than we are. But we’re the place to go if you want to show off your new products, or announce the new thing that you’re going to do. That’s quite an accomplishment, and it’s really hard to replicate.
Left: John Simon shows the colors in a red Comicpalooza shirt during an appearance at a local news station, where his entourage included a number of super heroes and those other perpetually popular pop culture creatures — zombies.
Right: Simons has managed to put together an impressive guest list in the four years since starting Comicpalooza, and those that have attended in past years have included Tony Todd of Candyman movie fame.
