For it's second year show, Detroit Fanfare moves downtown to Cobo Hall in order to put on a much larger show than last year.

Detroit Fanfare Website www.detroitfanfare.com

They stake their claim as being a "Comics First" show. All their media guests have some sort of connection to comics. So far, the media guests are:

Bruce Campbell
Adam Baldwin
Peter Weller
Steven Yeun (Walking Dead)
and BK Taylor

I had to look up BK Taylor, but he has a huge pedigree in non-sport cards:

quote:

In 1969, Taylor created 44 stickers for the Donruss Company's group of non-sports trading card/sticker series, Odd Rods. The series proved very popular with schoolchildren of the time, resulting in a string of sequel series.

In 1988, Taylor created more collectable stickers for Leaf/Donruss, "Awesome All*Stars," a spoof of baseball cards featuring humorously grotesque monsters. There were 99 cards in the series.

In 1989, for Leaf/Donruss, Taylor created Baseball's Greatest Gross Outs, featuring more cartoon parodies of baseball players with names like "Long-arm Lenny" and "Garlic-breath Gary." The set featured 88 stickers as well as a repeat of some of those stickers with a 36-cardback poster.

In 1983 He did another set of collector sticker cards called Zero Heroes, featuring tragically flawed superheroes with names like "The Fantastic Fast Guy," "Lard Lady," and "Milk Man." Each card had a short bio of its character on the back, featuring the character's origin and final outcome. Zero Heroes was a joint venture between General Mills and Donruss. There were 66 cards in the set, including a few non-character designs with various Zero Hero logos, a medal, a name tag, and a do-not-enter sign (presumably for a young boy's or girl's bedroom door).

His credits also include MAD Magazine, Muppets, National Lampoon, and a host of others.
BK Taylor Wiki

I know for a fact that at least one non-sport dealer will be in attendance, and if you hunt around some of the comic and toy guys have cards stashed somewhere.

Looks like a fun show, and the admission for the weekend is a fair $15 for adults and $5 for kids 5-12. Of course, there are many options for VIP tickets, photo ops, autographs, and such. But a $15 weekend pass is cheap these days.

Ed

Super cheap and a good location. . . I'd definitely go if it wasn't so far away. . . please post a report, perhaps we'll make the trip next year!

Jon

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
Super cheap and a good location. . . I'd definitely go if it wasn't so far away. . . please post a report, perhaps we'll make the trip next year!

Jon

Looks like I'm doing the show solo, so I'll be lucky to get out of my 10x10 at all.

But I'll try, even if it's my perspective from my little piece of the con.

They keep announcing comics guests, and are teasing there is another media guest. It's shaping up to be a big deal as long as they can get the people in the door.

Ed

Leaving for the show in the morning.

Long shot that any Card Talkers make the show, but if you do stop by booth 3116 and say HI. And, I don't know who "Dan's Cards" is but his booth is just 2 down from me.

I'll have my P10 promo available as well as all the new releases.

Ed

Good luck at the show. . . looks interesting. . .

How was the show?

Finally recovering from 2 big shows in as many weekends...

Detroit Fanfare was interesting. I always thought they had leaped into the huge Cobo Hall too soon. It would have been better to have been back at the hotel they held it in last year.

Now, I didn't get out of my spot much because I was flying solo this weekend. But the room was much larger than it had to be, but that made for HUGE isles to get around in. There was a pretty good sized area for publishers and a large artist's alley. The Dealer's Area was not as large as I expected, maybe 50 dealers. But there was everything from comics and toys to movie posters and swords. And, of course, one card dealer in the bunch.

The back of the room had the autograph lines for the actors and a draped off area with the stage for presentations.

Some things didn't go as planned, there were some re-scheduled Q&A sessions, Ted Rami was a no-show, and Bruce Campbell was only there on Saturday after we had all been told he would sign for 3 hours on Sunday. I could have told them you cannot have a Q&A at 10am when you open the doors at 10am. It takes at least an hour to get people into the room and where they need to be for events.

I didn't stay at the downtown hotel. The room rate was good until you added the $25 a night for parking. So I drove about 20 minutes to the 'burbs. I heard there were some issues with the hotel but I cannot say what they were or if they were major.

Sales wise, I had a good show. Having regulars to come see me helped. But overall it was a decent show. Not all the toy and comic guys felt the same, I talked to many that said they wouldn't be back.

The promoters know they had some issues and seem to truly want to hear about them and address them. I hear they are committed to Cobo Hall for 2 more years, so I hope they can learn and grow from this experience.

I can say that I'll be back next year. The show built upon things from the first year and I'm giving the promoters the benefit of faith that they will work hard to make things work better.

Ed