Cindy Crushes Programming: Tips for Hosting a Con, or things I’ve learned from Comicopolis, by Teen Librarian Cindy Shutts

This weekend my library district is holding its 8th annual Comic and Fandom Con. We call it Comicopolis. This convention is happening in Lockport as part of the City’s Summer Art Series. This all-ages event that annually attracts over 1,500 attendees will take place in downtown Lockport on Saturday, July 20, 2024, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. 

Because this is our 8th year of Comicopolis, we have learned a lot about how to run a convention and seen a lot of changes over the years, and I’m excited to tell you how we put this event together.

Some Things to Keep in Mind:

Community helps us a lot. We partner with the city and we are very lucky to have the support of mayor of Lockport Steven Streit and wife, Wendy. They help us fundraise to pay for the tents and picnic tables and other items to make the outdoor section of our event work so well. We are even able to close off a small section of the street that day to make room for the welcome tables and event stage.

Sponsorships and partnerships are key to making this affordable. The first 500 attendees at Comicopolis get a tote bag full of toys, coupons, and other freebies. We were able to get some amazing donations this year.  I emailed over 300 companies and we got a over20 donors.

In order to keep attendance, we have divided the lanyards into batches of 100. We also have separate lanyards for vendors and staff for Comicopolis. 

We have committees that work on different sections of the event.

 

Crest Hill Adult and Teen services Supervisor  Yumarys Polanco-Miller and Katie Deters of Crest Hill Adult and Teen service. 

We try to have events for kids in the children’s programming room. We always try to keep this low cost since we get hundreds of kids coming through the day. Lockport Children’s Department Supervisor Dawn Scuderi is excited to share: “ We are going to have tons of fun and engaging activities for kids this year!  Our programming room is going to feature a Jedi Padawan Training Program, where your little Star Wars fan can cross the galaxy and defeat the Death Star, families can build and decorate their own Pokeball and, for Marvel fans, you can try to climb through a Spiderman Web Challenge.”  This year will also feature face painting for the kids by a professional face painter as well as teen volunteers, superhero temporary tattoos and a place for “littles” to play and decompress during the day’s events.

We have Over 60 local artists, illustrators, writers, and vendors coming. We put out a vendor application and we filled all of our spots very quickly this year within the first few weeks of the application being available. We have a good reputation in the community and have many repeat vendors each year. We charge for vendors to table at our event $45 for 1 inside or 2 outside . 

Outside in the parking lot we will have our game gallery. We have a “Nerd Card” which you can get by knowing fandom trivia. We will also be having a Mario game for families to play. Katie Deters in adult and teen services at Crest Hill  has updated the games this year with more current fandoms such as Five Nights at Freddy’s. Katie is excited about “Our not-quite-video game gallery gives you a chance to jump right in as a part of a game – with Pokemon Throw, Minecraft Archery, and other options, you have a chance to win fun prizes!”

Our Nerd Card. We have used this for a few years. It does have the older fandoms on it.

Photo by Storm Gocek used with permission

We also have a cosplay contest!

Katie Deters was excited to share: “The cosplay contest is always a great chance to show off your hard work and your enthusiasm for your favorite characters! We have six categories – 0-5 years old, 5-12 years old, 13-17 years old, 18+ years old, handmade 0-17 years old, and handmade 18+ years old.”  

We work with our local sewing and quilting store Thimbles to come up with a cool patch we can give the winners of each category along with an amazon gift card.

We have made a longer list of rules this year so that we can make sure that people know not to bring weapons that look realistic,  and also understand that harassment of our cosplayers will not be accepted. 

We have also hired cars for people to take pictures with, such as Gran Torino from Starsky and Hutch and Kitt from Knight Rider and the Delorean from Back to the Future. We had these sponsored by the local community. We plan on having food trucks, Chicago Game and Go Truck which is a video game truck, We also have a photo booth and will have charity cosplayers come and take pictures with the patrons.  

This event is a huge event made from the effort of so many people. We love seeing the smiles on our patrons’ faces as they come to our event, they make it worth the effort. 

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