Boston Comic Con took place on July 31 to August 2, 2015 at the Seaport World Trade Center. Boston’s biggest comic book themed event brought in a large number of guests from big names like Stan Lee, Billie Piper, Elvira, and Thomas Jane. Additionally, other media guests inclided Robin Lord Taylor from Gotham, Manu Bennett from Arrow, and Scott Ian from the band Anthrax. Beyond that there are numerous artists and writers from several large and indie comic companies that are there to meet fans and promote their work. However, with the Saturday door price of $45 and photo op tickets reaching up to $100 for Stan Lee the show can be rather expensive for the average fan and in many ways it might not be worth the price of admission for those just looking to have fun.

The location has both good and bad parts of the Seaport World Trade Center. The location is not the easiest to get to due to its stop being off the silver line, which isn’t too convenient for many people living in the city. In addition to that, there aren’t that many restaurants especially for families in the area either. However, the facility is large, the panel rooms are big, and there are plenty of locations for photoshoots and cosplay gatherings. Yet, despite that space it was getting very crowded on Saturday, which makes enjoying the convention much more difficult.

The majority of the event is a large vendor hall. This tends to be the case with comic conventions, thus it is important to have a well set up vendor hall. The hall was divided into two sections. One part was designated for the major photo ops and guest signings. The remainder of the hall was dedicated to the rest of the guests and vendors. The ticketed guest area had plenty of space and it seemed to work well for anyone who paid for the photo ops. The space for everything else was rather crowded, it felt like they squished everything into one area, which made getting around very difficult. In addition, the hall felt disorganized and it was sometimes difficult to find a specific writer or artist. On the good side, the room became much easier to navigate later in the day, but that means you need to find something else to do for the majority of your time at the convention.

When not in the vendor hall there were a few other options. The first are the panel rooms. There are two of them, but you only get between 10-15 panels a day, with 3 to 5 of them being ticketed panels for those who picked up photo op tickets. The panel rooms were large enough for a big audience, but finding an interesting panel can be difficult. We were lucky enough to check out the Scott Snyder panel and listen to him talk about his path to becoming a writer, which involved him being a face character at Disneyworld. It was great hearing him talk about his work with Batman and the stress that comes along with working on such an iconic series. It would have been nice to see more creator panels, but there weren’t all that many options for those types of panels.

Outside of panels there were only a few other options. The most entertaining of these is the game hall. There were several tables set up for free play and at least two tables that almost always had demonstrations going on for those who wanted to learn how to play the new Star Wars X-Wing trading figure game and the new My Little Pony trading card game. Our editor in chief Kagami did a demo and had fun learning a new game. Waits were not that long and everyone was friendly even if you were just sitting and watching. Beyond that the CGC was there for comic grading, for the few who have classic comics, which is interesting, but doesn’t apply to most people. There was also a film festival for those looking for a nice break from walking. They began each day with a classic B movie then followed it up with documentaries and fan shorts. It was a nice, but under publicized, part of the event.

Overall, Boston Comic Con is what you make of it. There isn’t much of a schedule and not much in terms of programming either. The film festival is a great idea as it allows smaller fan films to be shown alongside B-movie classics like Plan 9 from Outer Space and The Giant Claw. However, there isn’t much to do at the convention beyond shopping and checking out one or two panels. There isn’t enough variety to warrant a full weekend pass and it is so crowded on Saturday, it cannot be recommended as the day to go. When it comes down to your choice of going to this event it should come down to whether or not you want to meet a specific artist or writer (or if you can afford it, big name actor) then go on either Friday or Sunday depending on which day that person or persons are available. Otherwise, you will be better off skipping this event. While there are not all that many comic book events that bring in big stars around the Boston area this one is far too expensive for the lack of content and too crowded to remain at the current location.

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