
Comics! Anime! Video Games! T-shirt vendors! Whovians! Uglydoll! This never-before-shared file photo from C2E2 2011 has it all! (Unlike Indianapolis. For now.)
Several theoretical names have floated fancily through my head over the decades, ever since the erstwhile Comics Buyer’s Guide taught me about the magical world of comic book conventions when I subscribed to them in 1986. I’ve always wondered if Indianapolis would ever be respectable enough to merit a large-scale comic-con of its own. We had little comic book shows on the east side a few time a year that occasionally drew one or two special guests. Circa 1989 or 1990 someone threw a shindig in Indy called HoosierCon 1, but I had to work the entire weekend and missed it. I never heard a peep about it after the fact, sequels never manifested, and Google tells me no one in world history has ever rhapsodized about it online. I presume plans went awry.
This week the Indianapolis Star reported that someone out there wants to make my pipe dream a reality. A young Florida-based company called Action3 Events and Promotions has scheduled a comics convention for March 14-16, 2014, in our very own Indiana Convention Center. It’s as yet unnamed and not yet listed on their official site, but official enough that they’re proclaiming its proposed existence in public interviews. That much alone is a positive sign.