Gareb Shamus has purchased another convention, the New England Con in Boston. According to the PR, it’s a 35-year-old show run by Larry Harrison, owner of Harrison’s Comics & Collectibles, and Jimmy Tournas and dates will be announced.

Given Shamus’s recent track record of aggressive competition with existing shows, it would seem the move to Boston enters a rather low-key market. But a Google check of the principals raises more questions than it answers.

A search for “new england comic con” and Larry Harrison yields almost no results. Dig around a little and you get a “North East Comicon” site run by Harrison’s Comics which looks to be a modest one-day hotel/dealer show set for January 10 with Ethan Van Sciver as a guest.

Adding to the confusion, there’s a listing for the Boston Comics Spectacular which announces

THE BOSTON COMIC SPECTACULAR IS NOW The New England Comic Con – Boston’s Longest running show gets a new promoter and a new name! http://www.necomiccon.com/ .

The Boston Comic Spectacular shows a previous event in September, again with Van Sciver.

There is also an existing Boston Comicon, with the next event set for April. The last one was held in October, to some local interest.

No matter what this show’s pedigree and provenance, it is NOT Shamus’s first foray into Beantown: A Wizard World Boston was held in 2005, to what most attendees thought was a very, very disappointing turnout. (At the time, the Sunday of the show was described to us as “The slowest day I’ve ever seen.”)  A second WW Boston, planned fro 2006, was canceled.

Is this going to be another battlefront in Con Wars? What event is Shamus going to plan THIS confab against? It could go up against the same weekend as Reed’s Pax East, also held in Boston, but Shamus already planned his own Toronto Comic-Con against that. DEVELOPING, Hell yeah! Complete PR in the jump.

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Gareb Shamus, CEO of New York based Wizard Entertainment, announces today that he has purchased New England Comic Con, in a move to further expand the Wizard World Comic Con tour.

“We’ve known Larry for many years, and his exceptional 35-year old New England Comic Con gets us into Boston in a big way. New England has a long legacy of cartoons and comics embedded in their history, making the fans there very appreciative of comics’ impact on society and pop culture,” said Shamus. “I’m excited to bring these discerning fans an even better Con experience and everything they expect from a Wizard run show.”

Larry Harrison, owner of Harrison’s Comics & Collectibles, and Jimmy Tournas, the former owners of New England Comic Con, will be intimately involved in the new show production to ensure fan favorite traditions are maintained.

“Working with Gareb is an awesome experience. The folks at Wizard World have a great sense of how to grow the show in a way that I’ve always wanted to see it flourish. This should be the best comic con the city of Boston has ever seen,” said Harrison.

The New England Comic Con acquisition is the first of several Comic Con tour expansion announcements expected in the weeks ahead.

“We bring together more fans, in more cities than anyone, to celebrate their passion for pop-culture. We’ve had such a strong positive fan and industry reaction to our new show launches that expanding the tour just made sense,” said Shamus.

New England Comic Con venue and dates will be announced soon.

Well, it’s been a busy week in the ongoing (choose one):

a) war between Reed Exhibitions and Wizard/Gareb Shamus

b) “flaming Viking Death Ship” for Wizard/Gareb Shamus

And some kind of roundup post seemed warranted. While we’ve been on semi-vacation, Sean T. Collins and Rich Johnston did the heavy lifting of finding posts and messages now deleted. But a few lagniappes, as it were, remain to, perhaps, garnish the story.

If you’re sick of all this already, then pass by, unmolested. If you have a strong stomach and a few minutes…click on the more link.
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So, for everyone who asked us, this weekend’s Big Apple Comic-Con at Pier 94 in Manhattan drew a big crowd, and was a well-run show. Wizard’s conventions have always been well run, professional events, and this was no different, with lots of signage to guide people around the somewhat rambling and stark venue.

From what we could see, crowds were light on Friday and Sunday, but very busy on Saturday. Paid Wizard blogger Rich Johnston reported that the Fire Marshal came to slow the line and a video of the queue to get in shows a line that — by New York City standards — was nothing out of the ordinary but still bustling.

In fact, if it weren’t for all the controversy over Big Apple choosing the same dates as New York Comic-Con in 2010, the headline for this year’s Big Apple would probably be what a huge improvement Pier 94 is over the Penn Plaza Hotel as a venue. While the last few small Big Apple shows moved to a high floor ballroom, (which we didn’t attend) for years they were held in a low ceilinged, leaking cavern draped with blue tarpaulins that kept light out and smells in. It was a dismal, demoralizing place, that Evan Dorkin only last year described as “the worst convention I’ve ever had the displeasure to sit through.”
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