Friendly, Intimate San Diego Comic Fest Takes Over President's Day Weekend

San Diego Comic Fest touts itself as “the friendly intimate Comic-Con experience.” This year they moved the event from October to President’s Day weekend.

Not everyone brags about wanting to stay small but Mike Towry wanted to create a convention that harkened back to Comic-Con's early roots with a focus on comics and an intimate feel. So he created the San Diego Comic Fest in 2012.

“We’re intentionally not trying to get too big. That’s the whole reason for the fest in the first place,” Towry said.

“Comic-Con is obviously the large convention," he said. "It’s a very special experience and we all love it but the reason we created the Comic Fest was one of the things that was so much fun about the old Comic-Cons was you could have this small convention where you could have a lot of professional guests but there weren’t the crowds and there weren’t so many demands on their time so that they could just hang out and relax. You could maybe sit by the pool with Jack Kirby or Ray Bradbury and talk about whatever you wanted. It was just a lot of fun and that’s our intention with the Comic Fest, to not try to get too large.”

Towry is the founder and chief organizer of the convention, which is run by an all-volunteer staff.

“Nobody’s on salary. We just do this because we love this stuff and we want to create a good experience for our fellow fans,” he said.

Instead of Hollywood panels and celebrities, Comic Fest will cater to comic book fans with graphic novelists Bryan and Mary Talbot as its guests of honor.

San Diego Comic Fest

Comic book characters will be the focus of Trial of the Winter Soldier, hosted by The Legal Geeks, which will determine if Bucky Barnes (the Winter Soldier) is guilty of treason. The format sounds similar to what the forensic psychiatrists of Broadcast Thought, and the lawyers of Law and the Multiverse do at Comic-Con when they hold mock trials such as Not Guilty By Reason of Zombification. The Trial of the Winter Soldier looks to tap into the same mix.

“Was Barnes guilty of the various assassinations, mayhem, destruction, and treason that he committed? Or is he innocent because, after all, he was kidnapped by Hydra and brainwashed and didn’t even know who he was,” Towry said.

“We have this pretty amazing team assembled to hold what will be seem like a pretty legit trial. We have an actual federal magistrate coming down from the Bay Area who is going to preside and he’s a big pop culture fan. We have two psychologists from pop culture oriented websites touching on psychology and who are going to be the expert witnesses for the defense and prosecution. We have teams of legal students who are also going to be arguing the case and we’re going to have cosplay appearances of the Winter Soldier and Natasha the Black Widow,” Towry said.

For fans of dinosaurs, there’ll be a focus on paleoartists.

William Stout

“We have a lot of great paleoartists coming for the first time including William Stout who did the murals that are down at our Natural History Museum.”

Since this year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Forrest J. Ackerman, the annual Comic Fest Café will be dedicated to him and his pop culture obsessions. Ackerman was the creator of Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine — the first magazine to provide a behind the scenes look at what goes into creating special effects, makeup design, props and costumes for the movies.

Comic Fest runs this Friday through Monday at the Town and Country Convention Center. You can purchase full passes online, which includes special Friday night opening festivities. But unlike Comic-Con, you can attend Comic Fest at the last minute and buy tickets at the door.

Full program is available on the website.