Houston, Texas
(Full Disclosure: I was unable to attend the recent Space City Comic Con event. This blogger takes no sides on the issues that occurred there, but is attempting to address what may or may not happen to this event and others like it in the future as a result of what occurred.)
Memorial Day weekend 2016 is usually reserved for Comicpalooza in Houston, Texas. This year, however, a scheduling conflict prevented Comicpalooza from taking place on its traditional weekend and Space City Comic Con, which usually takes place later in the summer, filled the void by bumping their event at the NRG Center up a couple of months.
It looked to be an excellent event featuring comic book artists, authors, and multiple celebrities from across television, the web, and film. Some of the headliners included Billie Piper of Doctor Who, William Shatner of Star Trek, and Ron Perlman and Doug Jones of Hellboy fame. There were many other guests as well such as Camille and Kennerly, known by many as the Harp Twins, and members of the cast of Star Trek Continues.
The main draw, however, was apparently the Sons of Anarchy reunion that featured many of the core cast members including Perlman, Kim Coates, Tommy Flanagan, Mark Boone Junior, and Charlie Hunnam. This reunion found itself at the center of a huge controversy that allegedly took place at the convention. (Again, I take no sides on what went down, hence the word “allegedly.” I’ll let the courts of law and public opinion decide the truth.)
You are welcome to search the web to read all sides of the story, but here’s a brief summary of what supposedly happened: Celebrities arrived on Friday only to find that they were denied access to their hotel rooms because the credit card used to secure their rooms was denied. To make things worse, the power was out at the hotel due to some severe storms blowing through the area. Then the celebs were paid with checks that apparently bounced or were written on a cancelled account. Other celebs and guests were allegedly not paid as well, some VIP passes were allegedly not honored, police were called, crowds got angry, Charlie Hunnam left, returned, left again, etc. In short, it was a cluster.
Social media exploded with upset fans and guests, and despite not getting all of their promised money, most of the guests stayed at the event to meet their fans. A few fans posted positive things about the convention as well. Depending on who you ask, con runner George Comits was either arrested or forcibly removed by the Houston Police department. Things went so far that the web rag TMZ became involved. It was chaos.
Hunnam released a statement on his Facebook page about the whole debacle:
Camille and Kennerly, the Harp Twins, posted this photo directed at Comits and the convention with the caption “Read between the lines.”
I’m sure that there will be plenty of other posts like the ones by Hunnam and the Harp Twins. I know for a fact that attendees are still (justifiably) upset about what went down. Space City Comic Con’s Facebook page went dead for a couple of days, only to crank back up with this photo:
There was also a post featuring the winners of the cosplay contest at the event. This post, as well as just about every other post on the page, is chock full with comments demanding answers, refunds, and lots of other things that shouldn’t be mentioned on a family-friendly blog post.
Sooner or later, though, things on social media will simmer down. But social media is only the tip of the iceberg for the after effects of this event. This miscue will not only damage Space City Comic and any of the people directly involved with it, it will also tarnish other conventions in the Houston area and the Gulf South as a whole. Many of the guests that attended the event (media guests, cosplayers, fan groups, performance artists, etc.) will think twice about attending conventions in the Houston area. Why? Because they may not want to risk having to deal with an event that may or may not have former Space City organizers and/or volunteers involved. Who would want to risk getting shafted twice by the same person or persons?
It doesn’t help that most news outlets outside of the Houston area have referred to SCCC as “a Houston convention” and didn’t mention its name specifically. This means that any time a guest is invited to an event in the Houston area, their agent will probably ask them if they are that Houston Comic Con. I was personally involved with an event a few years ago that headed south quickly in a similar fashion (albeit on a much smaller scale and the con runner didn’t allegedly run off with a ton of money). While working the admissions table, I was left to deal with angry guests, attendees, and artists while the con runner went MIA. Even though this was a small con, the actions of the con runner affected another local con as well. I’ve heard people involved with that convention repeatedly say that they aren’t involved with that convention, and witnessed them work extremely hard to distance themselves from the tarnished event despite having no connections to its failure.
The event that I was involved with (and left about eight months later) struggled over the next few years, and has remodeled itself into a much smaller local event. To this day there are fan groups, authors, and artists that refuse to have anything to do with the event, and they most likely will never return. The con runner had to drastically drop the rates for vendor and artist tables just to try and attract them back to the event. The event has even had to move into an event center out of its hometown because of the sour taste left in the mouth of local venues.
Now, magnify that little convention’s errors onto the massive stage that is Houston, TX. How long will it take for fans, artists, vendors, authors, celebs, and cosplayers to return to the event? How far-reaching will the damage be to other conventions in the area? Will the NRG Center allow Space City to put on events at their venue anymore? If not, will other venues welcome SCCC? One thing is for sure, word has spread about what happened at Space City Comic Con 2016, and it will take a lot of work to gain back the trust of everyone that was burned by the event. No matter who is at fault, things look bad for Space City Comic Con.
With that said, I have personally attended all of the events put on by George Comits and Space City Comic Con except for this year’s event and a winter event that took place in Galveston, TX. I remember attending the first event at the Galleria in Houston and watched the con explode over the next couple of years into what I consider a “big con with a small con feel” to it. I never had any negative interactions at any of the Space City events, and made some lifelong friends there as well. Heck, one of my favorite celebrity interactions was with Michele Specht of Star Trek Continues at Space City Comic Con 2015.
I truly hope that all of the drama that is boiling over about Space City gets resolved. It has damaged the reputations of many good people who were involved with it but were not part of the alleged deception and illegal actions of certain other people involved with the event. If it was anybody’s first convention and they had a negative experience, I hope that they don’t let this one bad event prevent them from attending others in Houston and the surrounding area. As far as the many burned guests are concerned, I hope that they recover anything owed to them and that they will continue to attend conventions despite this negative experience.
As always, thanks for reading. If you attended Space City Comic Con, I’d love to hear what you have to say about this event. Feel free to share this post with anybody that you might think would be interested in it as well.
Here’s to better conventions and better convention experiences!
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