Comic Con is Dead! Long Live Comic-Cons! – Collectors Confessions

Comic Con is Dead! Long Live Comic-Cons!

By Brian VanNostrand

Below is a slideshow of photos from this year’s Comic Con, taken by Sean Fitzpatrick: 

 By the time you read this, it will all be over.

 The 2026 New York Comic Con will have taken place from Thursday, October 8 to Sunday, October 11; autographs will have been given and paid for, cosplayers will have had their pictures taken, and the tens of thousands of people who filled the Javits Center will have purchased a king’s ransom in goods and merchandise.

 And, this year, I will not have been among them.

 This is not an unprecedented event – I’ve missed New York Comic Cons many times before – but this will be the first time I will miss it as a co-host of a successful comic book YouTube channel, someone who marginally works in the industry itself (or at least reports on it). This is also no accident; I have decided not to attend and I feel my reasons for this deserve some consideration.

 2026 marks the twentieth year of New York Comic Con as it exists in its current form. The convention is run by the for-profit group ReedPop, a division of the RX and Reed Elsevier company who are a runner of trade shows across the nation and brings in many millions of dollars to ReedPop and New York City each year. It only takes a little time at the convention to see how all this money is made.

 The first generator of profit is the ticket sales. Tickets average about a hundred dollars for each day, but you can buy a four day pass for about 370 dollars, and for this money you get the privilege of walking into the building. Vendors, who have to pay pretty high prices for a table in the convention (around 1700 dollars) end up charging higher prices for the merchandise they are selling in order to try and recoup some of the investment they’ve put down. If you want an autograph from a movie star, that will also cost you some money – Sebastian Stan, the Winter Soldier in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is charging around 300 dollars to write his name on something for you; Hayden Christensen and Nicholas Cage are charging the same, but Rosario Dawson is only charging around 170 dollars, so that’s a bit of a bargain, I suppose.

 Movie stars aren’t the only people charging for autographs. The writers and artists of the comics themselves, once treated as honored guests, are now charged for table space like the merchants, and are forced to charge for autographs or sketches that they once gave to fans for free. A friend of mine spent almost a thousand dollars on autographs from artists and writers last year, both for the honor of meeting creative people he admired and for possibly raising the resale value of the comic books.

 Taking all of this into account, I’ve decided that New York Comic Con has become too extractive for me to attend. Like so many other things we enjoy in our daily lives – streaming music and movie services, audio book services, Amazon Prime, amusement parks, social media – Comic Con has perfected nickel-and-diming the fans and the merchants and the artists to the point that many people are starting to ask whether it’s worth it at all.

 I don’t think it is anymore, so this year I’m not going. I prefer to hold onto my spending money and use it to attend the smaller, independent conventions that are consistently put on by fans and vendors all over the Tri-State area. King Con, Super Jersey Comic Expo, Staten Island Comic Fest, Queens Comic Party and all the other smaller conventions are where the heart and soul of the hobby has moved to, and I believe any and all of them are better for fans than New York Comic Con.

 So, for me at least, Comic Con is dead. Long live the comic cons!