How Much is the Geek Dollar Worth?

In the aftermath of the meat grinder that is San Diego Comic Con and with the relative underperformance of Pacific Rim (in cinemas now! Go see it!) I’ve been wondering how much of a dollar figure can you put on the support of the worldwide, internet savvy nerd. Are films and comic books destined to remain in some form of ghetto? Ignored by the mass audience until something like “The Avengers” or “Harry Potter” breaks out into the mainstream once a decade? Full disclosure, I’m a geek. I play video games, have watched and enjoyed Anime, read comics etc. But I’m also financially minded, I studied Business in college and work in that area, I read a lot of articles about economics and finance. My life is clearly thrill a minute stuff to be sure. As a result of my education, I’ve always been interested in the business part of “entertainment business.” I’ve been known to read a book or two about the topic on my commute to work.

First, let’s talk “Pacific Rim”. I saw it, loved it and will likely try to see it again before it leaves cinemas. I’m sure many of you reading this had the same reaction. My Twitter and Facebook feeds are full of my friends saying great things about the film. It’s probably got the best word of mouth of any film this summer. But the end result is that the movie will struggle to achieve $100 million in its theatrical release in the United States. It’s good money to be sure but it’s far behind several inferior films released this summer. A cinema ticket costs ten dollars, a 3-d ticket somewhere around fourteen dollars. Going by those metrics probably around seven to nine million Americans will pay to go see Pacific Rim in the cinema. When you take into account those of us that will go see it twice or even three times the number of paying individuals shrinks down to the lower end of that 7 to 9 million figure.

That’s a reasonably sized market, but it’s only about 3% of the population of the entire country going to see one of the biggest and best summer films of the year. The film clearly hasn’t hit the mainstream in the way that its makers would have liked. It had a few things going against it: no brand name recognition and no “stars” being the main ones. Studios cannot make money selling a mass released product to 3% of the people, which means that films need to reach a broad audience. One way of ensuring this has been to take product from other sources and adapt it. Comics and books are the old reliables for adaptation as evidenced by the proliferation of comic books on screen we’ve seen since the mid-nineties. World War Z was based on a well-received, though not really mainstream book. Adaptations of pre-existing material have benefits, if they’re good they have a built in fan base and have a story arc mapped out on the page which means less guessing as to how to fix those problems in the third act.

Pacific Rim is an original creation, more or less, it’s heavily influenced by Japanese monster and mecha films and shows but it’s not a straightforward adaption of any of them. As a result it’s not as easy to market it to mainstream audiences. Most peoples experiences with the genres it draws from are “Godzilla” or something brought over from Japan and badly dubbed to be shown to an audience of sugar crazed eight year olds in the mid to late eighties. Telling people that the movie is “Robotech versus Godzilla” isn’t going to sell tickets. We’ve already been burned by that sort of thing thanks to Matthew Broderick. One complaint I’ve read about Pacific Rim is that the trailers didn’t grab people. This is most likely because the coolest stuff from the film isn’t blown in the trailers. This is something that’s infected Hollywood in a big way this past decade. The money shots are used up in two minutes of footage shown four months before the film is released. It drags people in to see the film but it also leaves audiences with a bad taste in their mouths once the film is finished 

Which brings me to San Diego Comic Con, this years’s convention was the biggest ever. 140,000 people passed through the doors of the convention centre to see previews of next year’s slate of geek friendly product. There were massive queues, some crying, new trailers etc. What got good buzz? The Hunger Games, The announcement of Batman versus Superman, The Marvel Studios panel and Agents of SHIELD. These properties don’t really need SDCC to sell themselves, they’re based on pre-existing material with a large fanbase. The trailer for Catching Fire could have been released at any time and garnered just as much attention. Batman versus Superman is a fine idea until you hear that Zack Snyder is directing it because you can then be assured that the plot can be written in two sentences: Batman and Superman are manipulated by some villain to fight each other. They then team up to take down said villain.

SDCC is a great promotional tool but it mainly works for pre-existing properties and caters to those fan-bases. The hype about the show being where projects are made or broken is just hype. There’s very little in the way of evidence to back up that assumption. New properties, whether they’re independent comics or new TV shows don’t break out into the main stream from a good showing at SDCC. I went to SDCC a few years back, one of those years there was reasonable buzz about the “Bionic Woman” pilot that was shown. The result? The series didn’t survive. Good word of mouth from SDCC didn’t help it reach a worthwhile audience share. Maybe there are examples of breakout successes for new properties from the convention but I’m honestly struggling to remember any. The  hype generated by SDCC doesn’t pass beyond the people who were probably going to buy or watch the product anyway and that audience isn’t particularly large to begin with.  

So in short, the engaged, hardcore geek audience is small, maybe it’s five million people in the United States and a few percent of the global market worldwide. There’s money to be made there for sure. But is it enough money to fund massive films and base an enterprise on? I think this year and next year will show it for certain. The summer blockbusters this year all underperformed except for Iron Man 3 (which was successful on the back of 2 previous films and the Avengers). Will the blockbuster season become one breakout hit per year with a bunch of barely profitable also rans like this summer has been? It’s a scary thought and it would mean that our summer films become ever more generic, mindless and dumb in order to get Joe and Joan Average to attend them in cinemas. Scripts and production design will continue to fall in importance in the Studio’s minds as it will all be about the marketing. Trailers will continue to show the best moments of the movie in order to get people in the doors. Which is exactly what Pacific Rim didn’t do and is now paying for.  Go see Pacific Rim and show the studios that there’s an audience for a superior summer film, before it’s too late

Convention Report: ArcadeCon 7th July 2013

Last weekend my wife and I attended ArcadeCon in the Ballsbridge Hotel (You know the one, Sean Dunne paid over €100m for it thinking that Irish people would queue up to pay €1m apiece for apartments in Dublin’s most charmless area. Yeah, I said it: Ballsbridge can burn in hell, There’s no decent pubs and its full of bankers .)

Anyway, rant over. The hotel isn’t bad except for the insane prices in the bar and the fact that it looks like it was constructed out of bargain basement Lego bricks in the 1970’s. It was filled with a mixture of convention attendees dressed as Anime characters and bemused American tourists. The Convention took over most of the ground floor and some of the first floor. The main attraction for me was the Stephen Mooney and Roger Yuan panels.

Stephen spoke to the rather small but enthusiastic audience about his comic “Half Past Danger”. It’s great, by the way. You should go buy it. I’ve decided that the trade paperback will be my default Christmas gift for those who I feel need some culture in their life. I do that sort of thing a lot, because I’m an unbelievable ass.  Stephen claims to be useless about self-promotion but I think he did a great job. If you get a chance to chat to him then you should. Kim from the Irish Pubcast interviewed him and they made for an entertaining team.

I hit the trade floor for a brief period between panels and picked up some Anime films at very decent prices and chatted to a few of the comics people hanging around. It isn’t really a comics event though, the crowd swings very much towards anime even though the Con tries to cater to many tastes including movies, games and comics and I imagine that people who don’t have at least a passing interest in Manga and Anime may be left feeling a little cold.

Roger Yuen’s panel was an absolute joy to attend, at least for me and my interest in martial arts and action movies. Again, the turnout for the panel was pretty sparse, maybe fifteen people out of the entire attendance of over one thousand. That was disappointing for a guest who has done so much work in Hollywood over the years. He was in “Skyfall” and trained Daniel Craig to fight for the film. If you remember the film there’s a scene where Bond is attacked by three guys in a Casino in Macau. One of those is Roger. He was also the Fiendish Doctor Woo in “Black Dynamite”.  I asked Roger a question about the techniques he would use to train an actor who has no martial arts background and Roger told us to move the chairs into a corner as he took us through a class of the basic moves he uses to train actors to perform in fight scenes. Spoiler: he starts with boxing techniques and moves on from there depending on what style most suits the actor physically.  

I enjoyed the con overall and it’s great to see another successful entry into the nerd calendar in Ireland. I think my future attendances will be based on what guests the organisers get for coming years, if they manage to get people of the calibre of Mooney and Yuan again then I’ll definitely be back.

Convention report: Children’s Books Ireland Conference 2013. May 18th.

In a break from my trawl through the seedy underbelly of Comic conventioneering, (that’s not a real word, don’t use it), I attended the first day of the CBI Children’s Books conference in the Lighthouse Cinema.

If you live in Dublin and haven’t been to the Lighthouse then I recommend it. The Cinema was built underground over three levels. It’s spacious and well kept. It regularly hosts special screenings of classic movies as well as your usual fare.  Just don’t go there when the horse sales are held outside twice a year.  As a conference location it’s actually pretty good with good transport links and a couple of decent places to eat and drink nearby. It’s actually be a really good place to organise a comic or science fiction themed convention due to the large amounts of free space and the screens which could be used for panels.

As you can probably guess, the conference dealt with the growing area of Children’s books in Ireland. Ireland appears to punch above its weight in this field. Possibly because there’s nothing else to do in this rainy nation other than make up stuff to keep the children from tearing the curtains from the windows because they can’t go outside.  Bray is full of writers for similar reasons: basically you have to create your own entertainment out here.

Guests at the conference on Saturday included Sarah Ardizzone, (Translator) Hervé Tullet, (Illustrator) John Boyne (bestselling author) and  Sarah McIntyre, Alan Nolan and Rory McConville (comic book writers and Artists).

The panels were pretty good, particularly those with Sarah Ardizonne as she discussed the challenges of translating slang, which a lot of kid’s books make use of and the interview with John Boyne (Dublin native and writer of “The boy in the striped pajamas.”)

The guests were all willing to answer questions and were engaging. I don’t think the conference would be for everybody as it is most suited to those who are actively working in the field or want to break in, such as myself. I can’t imagine it would be of much interest to the general public and it’s also pretty pricey at €100 for a weekend pass.

So, in a nutshell, it was enjoyable and informative but very specific to that small group of people who want to entertain the young with words and pictures, which is fine. Dublin has plenty of opportunities for you to meet and talk to writers such as the upcoming writers’ week.

Back to the short stories next week.

Convention Report: FiComic, Barcelona April 11th to 14th

So, Barcelona Con is done. It's my first time attending a con in continental Europe. I had heard that the larger cons in France and Spain nearly equalled SDCC in terms of headcount (at least until SDCC went crazy with attendance figures in 2007 to the present.) I can confirm that this is indeed the case with there easily being 15,000 at the Barcelona Con on Saturday the 13th.

I only went to one day of the convention because there were a limited number of guests that interested me and I figured I'd be able to see them all in one day. I was wrong. I'll do a quick list of Pros and Cons and then an overview. Away we go!

Pros.

• Ticket prices: €7 for a day pass with a booking fee of €2 if you buy them on-line or in El Corte Ingles. That's an amazing price.
• Location: The Convention takes place in Fira De Barcelona near Montjuic. It's easy to get to via Metro or bus and the area, like most of Barcelona, is lovely looking. The Catalonian Art Museum is five minutes away at the top of a nearby hill. The Sonar Music Festival is held across the road so the area is well able to handle large numbers of visitors.
• Sales floor: The sales floor is easily the equal of SDCC, mostly focusing on merchandise but with comics as well. Most of the comics are in Catalan or Spanish as you would expect. The range of merchandise was pretty impressive. If you were looking for T-shirts, DVD's or action figures etc. then you would have no bother finding what you're looking for at fairly reasonable prices.
• Cosplay: Easily the most impressive Con I've been to in terms of people dressing up as characters. I'd say easily ten percent of the attendees were in costume. Many of these were impressive. A Big shout out to the Danerys, Zatanna, Ezio Auditore and Matt Murdock with Elektra who were as good as their screen counterparts.
• Decent film and TV presence: Fox, Microsoft, Nintendo and Warner Bros all had booths giving out freebies and showing trailers upcoming releases.
• Art displays: There were several of these. One focused on Superman, one for the Avengers and X-Men and another on western comics. The Superman display had original artwork and comics going back to 1943 up to date. The Avengers and X-men display had original art from many of the artists who have worked on those characters (George Perez, Stuart Immonen, John Byrne, Mark Bagley, Jim Lee etc)
• Beer: Beer was sold at a few places inside the convention hall. Think about that for a second.
• Crèche: There was a crèche for the Kids in case you didn't want little Eduardo hanging off you all day.
• Big retailers: FNAC and El Corte Ingles had massive stalls selling books and comics at standard retail prices. It kept manners on the other retailers as they knew they couldn't fleece you. They also took credit cards, which is rare at a convention.
• Media: The con was well advertised with posters on bus stops, the metro, lampposts and even TV coverage. It drew lots of crowds of day trippers and families which added to the atmosphere.
• Editors: Marvel and DC and Spanish publishers were there looking for talent in a portfolio review area similar to that of San Diego.

Cons.

• No artist alley: I usually try to buy comics and get sketches from Artists and writers at conventions. There was no opportunity to do this at Ficomic.
• Guest access: There were some great guests but they were difficult to talk to or even meet. The fact that they had no set tables that they were going to be at during the day meant it was hard to find them. Signing sessions were generally short and crowded, limiting chances to speak to the creatives.
• Panels: The three rooms set up for the panels were fairly small so you'd little chance of getting into them. The one for the artist presentations was minuscule. Barely one hundred people would fit in it.

Overall? It was fine. There would be better cons to attend if you wanted to break in to comics or chat to creators (i.e. smaller ones) but the location was great and the sales floor was worth it if you had an infinite amount of money and were into vast amounts of merchandise. (I ended up buying more Mass Effect T shirts at reasonable prices, which is never a bad thing.)The art displays were very impressive. Worth going to if you want the SDCC scale experience without the €1,500 in air fare. It's probably best done as a one day con attendance in the midst of a larger city break (which is what I did) as I don’t think that there’s enough going on to keep you there for multiple days

Next up is Arcade Con in July, DICE in September and Roll Out Roll Call in October.

Convention Preparation! Part Two of Three.

Hopefully the three people reading this found last week's post to be interesting. Today I'll cover accommodation and personal matters.

Accommodation.

Unless you’re planning on buying a copy of Spider-man number 1 then this is probably going to be one of your biggest single expenses. There are ways of getting this figure down but they aren’t pretty.

Many cons are held in hotels or in convention centres connected to hotels. These are usually your best bet for accommodation. Reduced room rates are generally offered to attendees and these can be good value they often throw in free parking or Wi-Fi as well.

Another reason to stay in the con hotel is that there’s also a bit more of a buzz around the con location with attendees and guests often mingling in the bar into the small hours of the morning. UK and Irish cons are really good for this kind of thing in my experience. Go on, have a drink with your favourite cast member of Doctor Who. It’s worth paying for that isn’t it?

Sharing a room with another attendee can bring down the cost but ideally make sure you know your roommate. I’ve heard horror stories about people being left in the lurch by randomers they’ve agreed to share a room with at a convention. (Room service they didn’t order, breakages, being locked out of the room and forced to sleep in the hall etc).

Most conventions will be held in a city centre or within a short bus journey of same so you’ll have other options if you want to spend less on your place to stay. Tripadvisor is your friend, or ask someone with local knowledge.

As regards SDCC, Hotel rooms in San Diego can run on the expensive side though many hotels offer reduced convention rates. These reduced rates will still run you around $150 a night or more and they’re as hard to get as tickets for the convention itself. This year’s allocation was offered via the comic con website and is gone already.

Expect to pay $200 a night for a standard (i.e. clean and not rat infested) room at SDCC. Three star hotels in NYC will run you around the same price but there’s many other options to get those costs down if needs be. Such as staying away from the convention and using the subway to get around.  

If going to SDCC, try to get a hotel on one of the convention organised bus routes. The buses run through the night from the convention centre to the hotels and are a safe way to get around. I’ve never experienced any trouble on them no matter what time I got one. Most of the convention approved hotels are within walking distance of the con as well and San Diego is reasonably safe even at night.

Personal matters.

The usual tips for travelling in any city apply: Don’t look too much like a tourist or leave your bag hanging off the back of your chair. Try avoid any areas where membership of a gang is a prerequisite.

Now, this next part isn’t addressed to you, don’t be insulted. But….there is always, ALWAYS some people at every con I’ve been to that smells like Satan’s armpit. These people (again, not you) clearly didn’t like the price of the hotels and decided that sleeping in a dumpster was the way to go.

There’s probably a shower in your hotel. Use it at least once a day. They have unlimited hot water. You have no excuse: SHOWER!!!!!  No amount of deodorant or eau de toilette will cover up your stink after standing in line for hours on end if you haven’t had a shower. (Though a good deodorant is also necessary. Roll on ones work best. Body spray cracks under the pressure.)

Also, brush your teeth and use mouthwash, you may end up chatting to Stan Lee or someone equally as famous. You do not want your breath to stink like a horses’ hairy hole. 

What should I bring to the con with me?

Firstly, bring a backpack, one you can carry comfortably for hours. It'll be extremely handy and will allow you to have you hands free. Your backpack should contain:

Food and water. Nothing too crazy. Just a bottle or two of water and something to graze on. It’s often difficult to find time to get food if you have a full itinerary and on site food provision at cons is stupidly expensive (think airport prices.) and usually rancid.

Extra bags. Plastic bags are necessary if you’re planning on buying merchandise. If you’re thinking of getting a lot of stuff or something particularly grandiose then pack one of those massive bags that Toy’s R Us give out when you buy something there or even one of those IKEA blue bags.

Camera. Holy cow! That’s (insert famous person name here)! I really wish I had a decent camera to take a once in a lifetime picture…

Seriously, photo opportunities will happen. Be prepared to capture them.

Batteries. For your camera.

Money and credit card.

Baby wipes. Yes, Really! You may break out in a cold sweat at certain times. Have something to clean yourself off with.

Dress comfortably for the con if you can. You’ll be standing for long periods in queues etc and will probably walk quite a bit to get to panels and on the trading floor if it’s a bigger show. I've heard of people losing several pounds at SDCC due to the amount of walking that needs to be done to get around the convention centre. Hence why you should bring water and why people get really sweaty.

 

If you're cosplaying, well...good luck.

Next Week: At the convention!

Convention Preparation! Part One of Three.

I’m taking a break from the short stories for a few weeks as I wait for the inspiration fairy to deliver some ideas. I thought I’d throw up a few articles over the coming weeks on various things.

 

The first thing I though I’d talk about is attending a comic or science fiction convention. I have some experience in this kind of thing having attended multiple cons in the past including San Diego Comic Con and some in the UK.

 

This year I’m planning to hit up four or five cons including the Barcelona comic con next month, Roll Out Roll Call in the UK and DICE, Dublin Comic Con and Arcade Con in Dublin. I’ll more than likely do write ups on those after the fact as well.

 

This article will be in three parts, the first will cover tickets, getting there & finances, Accommodation, general preparation and what you should bring with you will be part two. The final part will cover convention etiquette, attending panels, signings, buying stuff and getting your luggage / purchases home.

 

What convention should I attend?

 

Depends on what you’re after. The main event in the geek calendar is San Diego Comic Con (SDCC). San Diego is an amazing experience and is worth attending at least once just because of the sheer scale of the thing. 130,000 people pass through the doors of the convention centre in a weekend.

 

Most of the movie studios attend as they try to shill what they think will sell to the geek audience. Anyone starring as a superhero / vampire / girl fighting against an evil capitol next summer will most likely be there. However, you WILL NOT be able to meet any of the actors or celebrities who attend it; they’re on a studio financed junket and are usually being interviewed by the media all day except for a brief panel appearance. So if you’re hoping to meet Robert Downey Jr at SDCC then you are out of luck my friend. The best you’ll get is a view of him on a video screen as he presents a clip of Iron Man 4 from a stage about 100 metres away.

 

Which isn’t to say it’s a waste of time. Those massive panels are often a lot of fun to attend. The actors are usually charming and trying their best to be funny: They’re trying to get you to spend money on what they’re selling so they put on a show. Also it’s one of the few times in their career they get to bask in the glory of having thousands of fans so they’re generally up for a good time.

 

Smaller cons are the way to go if you want to have a chance to actually talk to writers, artists and actors about their work. I’m hearing good things about the Phoenix comic con which is held in Arizona in the early summer, it seems to offer a high calibre of guest line up but it’s smaller and you might actually get to talk to Leonard Nimoy or whoever.

 

Local comic cons are an enjoyable cheaper alternative. If you’re trying to break in to the industry they also offer opportunities for networking that are hard to beat.

 

Tickets.

 

San Diego is pretty cheap for what you get; it’s priced similarly to a middle of the road music festival. It is steadily getting more expensive though. Of course there’s the fact that tickets are now almost impossible to get. All the tickets for this years’ con went in about an hour a few weeks back. Unless you’re lucky, Tom Cruise or get a cancellation then it’s going to be pretty hard to get in the door. Personally I blame the increasing numbers of PR people attending it; those bloodsuckers leave less room for actual fans to get in the door.  

 

Tickets generally go on pre sale some months in advance of the con, even for the smaller, more fan focused ones. It allows the organiser to plan their budget out and have cash to pay for deposits etc. It’s a good idea to purchase early as then you can spread out the cost over a few months rather than buying everything at the last minute. Occasionally there’ll be discounted early bird tickets or goodie bags for early purchasers too.

 

Getting there!

 

Going to America for a con will cost you. Flights to the West Coast can easily run to €1,400 from Europe and there are few options, particularly from Ireland. Aer Lingus used to run direct flights to Los Angles and San Francisco but stopped a few years back. A stopover, either in London, New York or Atlanta will probably be necessary. Prices and timetables will be better to New York as well. Maybe plan a couple of days sightseeing there on the way over or back?

 

Booking early doesn’t seem to shave much off the price either in my experience.

 

Remember to get a tourist visa in advance. Apply directly to the US government immigration service for it online if that option is available to you. It’s quick, painless and you get an answer within a day or two. You’ll see lots of companies offering to middleman it for you for an additional fee. It’s a waste of money.  

 

European cons are much less hassle to attend from a travel perspective, Thanks Ryanair! But the usual warnings about flying apply as you will get creamed for overweight luggage, which isn’t as much of a problem for the U.S. with the generous transatlantic luggage allowances.

 

Finances.

 

Full disclosure: I am a Qualified Financial Advisor. I know. You’re jealous. Women positively melt when I tell them that.

 

I’m kidding. I’m so desperate for human contact that I hug the postman every morning. Anyway, the good thing is I actually know that of which I now speak.

 

Get travel insurance with health cover included if you’re going to the USA. This is a MUST. If you get sick after bad Mexican food (a probability) or beaten up by ravenous trekkies (also likely) then you’ll be glad you did. Plenty of places do it for €20 - €30 for a single trip and can cover you for a whole year for a reasonable sum. It’s also not a bad idea for Europe either, though at least in good old socialist plagued Europe there’s functioning public health care. They don’t leave you to die by the side of the road of a burrito fuelled spastic colon in Madrid like they would in some parts of the States that will go unnamed…(Alabama).

 

How much spending money will you need? Budget $100 (€70, £55) a day to cover food, drink and transport etc. Eating out anywhere is expensive unless you’re consuming horse burgers but it’s doubly so in the Peoples Republic of California also you should at least attempt to eat a decent (i.e. not McDonalds) meal every day to avoid the aforementioned spastic colon issues. California is amazing for sushi by the way.

 

Save money by buying basics (bottled water, Oreos, yoghurt) in the local store and leaving it in the fridge in your hotel. Some supermarkets don’t charge you the sales tax in the USA on food items if you’re obviously foreign, so practice your funny accents! I saved twenty cent on yoghurt that way.

 

Always have your credit card with you. If you can (and you should!) load a few hundred euro onto it in advance of the trip so you aren’t in danger of breaching your limit should something happen.

 

Warn your bank in advance of a foreign trip, particularly if you’re planning any big purchases. They’ll put a flag on your account to expect increased activity from the foreign location for the time you’re away and therefore won’t cancel your card or stop you buying a new Ipod.

 

Use the card to buy the expensive items (like electronics, for example) as your purchases will be insured by the card company and you can claim a refund via the card if you need to. Keep your receipts but don’t let the customs guy find them on the way home!

 

Taking money out via an ATM is doable overseas (check if your ATM card has a maestro symbol on it). Maestro cards should be accepted at ATMs connected to bank branches but may not work in those standalone machines you sometimes see in shops. A sign on the machine will tell you either way. I once spent 30 minutes wandering around Las Vegas looking for a compatible machine a few years back. Things have improved since though.

 

You will be charged ATM transaction fees, which can be steep, so use it sparingly and take enough in a single transaction to last you for a few days at a time. The exchange rate on any card isn’t as good as that at the foreign exchange desk in your local bank but it’s far safer than buying a weeks worth of foreign cash at the bank branch and walking around with it on your person.

 

Keep your credit and ATM cards in separate places in case you get pick- pocketed. I know that seems like pretty basic advice but I see it ALL the time. It’s like people leave their common sense behind them when they go on holiday. Remember, at a con you will be brushing up against people all day. Not all of those people have your financial interests at heart.

 

You’ll know yourself what you intend buying at the con and can therefore budget appropriately but do bring a little bit extra in case a Holy Grail item that you always wanted is somehow available at a decent price.

 

Use cash at the con itself as very few vendors have portable credit card machines and the queues for those few that have them are normally huge anyway.

 

Do not expect the convention centre or hotel where the con is being held to have a working ATM. These will be tapped out within a few hours of opening time, if you’re staying off-site then pick up your cash on the way or make a run to the nearest bank and get your money out during down time.

 

 Try hold onto small notes as many dealers or artists selling their work will run out of change in no time and exact change is always welcomed.  

 

That’s it for part one. Next week: Accommodation, General preparation and what you may like to bring to the con with you.