1/9/20: Wizard World New Orleans!

It’s hard to believe we have started the new decade and our first comic show is already completed! A big thank you to those who were a part of New Orleans Comic Con experience. As we do every year, we left a few days early to stop at as many comic stores as possible before we can get to the show. This year, we were able to purchase several boxes of nice raw books to be added to the website/show inventory in the next few weeks that included runs of Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Strange Tales, and Tales of Suspense.

During the past week we were also able to pick up a few graded books that should be listed within the next 24 hours. Some of these books include a very nice looking Amazing Fantasy #15, X-Men #1, Tales to Astonish #39/#42 and Brave and the Bold #28. If you are looking for some other books, make sure to check out our Recently Added section where we just added a short box of keys that were awaiting our arrival at home.

Now on to the show! We arrived into town early Thursday morning to set up our booth. After a few months off the road we had a lot of organizing to do, but the humidity in the convention center kept us from spending more than a few hours in the building before we decided to call it a day. Instead, we decided to spend our day at the World War II museum located a few blocks away from the convention center and finish getting ready the following day. If you have been to New Orleans, you probably know about all of the other great attractions it has to offer. Whether that’s catching a game at the Superdome, spending some time in the French Quarter or eating at one of the many great restaurants,  it’s hard to go wrong. As we had heard about the museum before but always been drawn to other activities, we decided it was time to go check it out. Alex and I spent about 3 hours in the museum and let me tell you that it did not disappoint! I tried to take my time, but even then I think I only managed to catch about 10% of the information thrown my way. This is a place you could easily spend several days at, and I highly recommend making it a point to go if you are ever in town. Here are a few pictures from the museum: (you know I had to snap some pictures of the comics they had on display, though I did suggest they could use a Captain America Comics #1).

We spent the rest of the evening walking around town and taking in the architecture and food of the city. Having done this show for several years, it is great to see the many parts of New Orleans that are continuing to be rebuilt and revitalized. Our recommendations for restaurants from this year include the Butcher Shop and it’s attached restaurant: Cochon. Honestly, if you are in town, you could almost blindly walk into a restaurant and it’s probably going to be good.

On to the show itself! Overall, this show was a bit disappointing compared to years past. There are a number of factors I think contributing to this, and mostly it was a bit of bad luck. For one, the Saints were playing on in New Orleans on Sunday, so you could pretty much cancel that entire day. Second, the dates were so early on the calendar year that it seemed like most people were traveling for other reasons on the same dates. With the showing being pushed to the 7th-9th next year, I am hopeful that we will see an increase in attendance.

The good news about a slow show in the beginning of the year is that we were able to get a lot of necessary “show work” done. Last summer we bought a massive Marvel collection and we were able to add 5 new long boxes from that to our show stock. We bolstered our selection of Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Strange Tales, X-Men, and many more Marvel titles. In addition to that, we had added several long boxes of CGC books to our inventory, and all of those needed to be sorted and put away. Going into our next show (C2E2), we will have one of our best inventories to date.

Friday and Saturday were certainly not record breaking days by any means, but we did sell some books to returning customers and met some new ones this year. As is true from past years, this show sees more raw books sell than graded books, and I believe we only saw a handful of graded books sell to retail customers throughout the entire weekend. I expect the exact opposite to be true when we travel to Chicago next month. As the CGC sales were so slow, I don’t have a “what were we being asked for” list this show. That being said, over the past few months these are the books that have been abuzz:

X-Men #1

Fantastic Four #1, #5

Incredible Hulk #181

Tales of Suspense #39

Daredevil #1

Sub-Mariner #1

The only real changes here from the past few months are the addition of Daredevil #1 and Tales of Suspense #39 back onto the list. While these books are always going to be popular, you can check some of my previous show review blog posts and you will notice that these books were absent and a few other books were on everyone’s radar. I’m interested to see what books I am going to be asked for as we head into the Spring and Summer.

Here are a few shots of the wall that I took during the weekend, all of these are currently available on the website and will be brought to C2E2 next month! 

If you came out to see us last week, thank you very much and we hope to see the rest of you sometime this year! As always, feel free to contact us if you need anything.

-Austin