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Outlaw Comicon, Failing at Social Media, and How Not to Deal With Guests

For reasons beyond me, talking to the public seems to be beyond the skill set of a surprisingly high number of convention runners. I swear, every year I end up writing a couple of posts about some con being incredibly rude to potential customers or mass deleting negative comments… it just keeps happening.

And yes, this is one of those stories.

Outlaw Comicon is a first year event that won’t be held until 2018 in Phoenix, AZ. I’d tell you exactly where, but the con hasn’t actually announced a venue yet (despite having dates). I mean, that’s weird enough, right?

Anyhow, despite not having a venue, the convention has started selling tickets already along with exhibitor and artist booth space. That exhibitor and artist space is what brought this con to our attention originally though, because despite being a first year con with no guaranteed attendance, the booths are priced… rather high.

Pricing

While it’s true Comic Cons tend to be more expensive than, say, equivalently sized Anime Cons, these prices are downright bananas for a first year event run by relatively unknown organizers.

Again — organizers who don’t have a venue yet.

(Update 1/18: It should be noted that since press time, these prices have been altered. We continue to include them because those are the prices vendors complained about. Show runner Mike Wheeler also now claims that the site was not meant to be publicly visible, though it was clearly linked from the convention’s social media, guests were being announced, and the show was being promoted. The original article continues below)

Needless to say, people began to complain about the pricing. I mean, if you were a vendor or artist, why wouldn’t you? Convention owner Mike Wheeler wasn’t too happy about it though, and took to Facebook (in a now deleted post) last week:

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Needless to say, criticizing experienced vendors for expecting your con to better reflect the market price of other first year events did not go over well with a lot of people. People began to respond to the post negatively, again pointing out that these are prices associated with cons with 20-40k attendance numbers (and not first year shows with zero history). The post began to make the rounds on vendor and artist Facebook groups as well, which drew more and more attention to the show (as the vendor and artists communities actually talk to each other).

Initially Wheeler responded to these comments, but after a while he started to delete and ban pretty much any person who dared complain.

To make matters worse, late last night Wheeler made an additional post to the page (which he has also deleted now):

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Besides the fact that there are plenty of attendees who care solely about what vendors are at a show, it just smacked of the tone deaf misunderstanding Mr. Wheeler seems to have about his relationship as a con runner with his customers. While everyone knows attendees are your customers as a show runner, so are vendors. If your customers are telling you your prices are too high, whether you agree or not, it’s usually best to listen to them at some point. It’s your job as a con runner to explain the high price, not insult your customer for balking at it.

And, frankly, it’s hard to take someone charging up to $1000 for a booth at a first year con (which has not booked a venue) seriously when they say they aren’t “money grubbing.”

At some point Wheeler must have come to his senses (or the firm he hired to help manage his social media about a week ago must have finally started yelling at him), because he deleted these posts, and replaced it with this (Update: This post seems to have been deleted now):

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They’ve also begun to unban people that Wheeler had kicked from the page in his overzealousness. Wheeler also attempted to defend himself in a thread discussing his antics in the Rate that Comic Con Facebook group:


Here’s the thing though – these are prices he is currently accepting money for on the convention’s website. Any talk about them not being “final” doesn’t matter when he’s currently set up payment forms for them. If a naive buyer who doesn’t know this show is a first year purchases one of these tables at the listed price, I doubt they’ll be happy if they go down later.

And Wheeler’s excuse that he only went too far in the last few hours makes zero sense on the timeline, when you consider that the post that angered people in the first place was made Wednesday of last week.

Ironically, this isn’t even why we were going to write a piece on Outlaw Comicon to start with. You see, what brought this to our attention was a completely unrelated bit of ridiculousness on Outlaw Comicon’s facebook page. Namely, we were shocked by this post regarding artist Jim Lee.

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There are some things you never ever ever do as a convention organizer, and one of them is publicly outing a guest for saying no to an invite. Another thing you never do is tell your events potential attendees to bug the guest until he says yes.

No means no, and you move on. Frankly, this is exactly how you get your show blacklisted.

What all of this tells me is that Mike Wheeler doesn’t have the first clue as to what he’s doing as a show runner. I mean, one of the biggest things you never do is announce dates without a venue, and he started out by doing that before any of the shenanigans started. And while he’s got, like, fourteen months to get his stuff together, if Outlaw Comicon want’s a remote chance at success he’s going to have to start getting his crap together now.

Update (1/12/16 5pm): Outlaw Comic Con has now deleted their “apology” post, and instead posted a message saying they will no longer be interacting with people on Facebook:

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Trae Dorn

Trae Dorn has been staffing conventions for over twenty-five years. They also wrote and drew the now completed webcomic UnCONventional, and produce the podcasts BS-Free Witchcraft, On This Day With Trae, Stormwood & Associates, The Meatgrinder, and The Nerd & Tie Podcast. This leads many to ask how the heck they have the time to get it all done. Trae says they have the time because they “do it all quite poorly.”

33 thoughts on “Outlaw Comicon, Failing at Social Media, and How Not to Deal With Guests

    • Yep, we were aware. Honestly, I had to cut a lot of material writing this because I just had so much stuff though.

      Reply
      • Matthew To

        I was thinking “Why not make an additional article to keep the hits coming?” but then realized that it might border on promoting what sounds like a trainwreck.

        Reply
    • Yeah, we knew about that, it was just too much to fit into the article.

      Reply
    • J. Z. Belexes

      Holy crap, you KNOW this guy has screwed up when even ROB LIEFELD speaks out against him.

      Reply
  • Canadianknight

    The Facebook page has been scrubbed clean, and posted that they will no longer interact over FB; posting of info only.

    Reply
  • Blue Dilly

    Oh, it gets better; Mr. Wheeler also went to a pro-Trump “deplorables” page and stated there that he was being “trolled” by “lIbtards” about the show and asked for people from that page to come to the comicon page to “have some fun” with them. Also, the masked bandit artwork he’s using for the comicon logo is stolen from a dirt bike dealership. That guy is low, and I don’t see anything good coming to anyone who works with him.

    Reply
  • Michael Pullmann

    This is a remarkable amount of stupidity.

    Reply
  • Shadow

    As if the Arizona convention scene couldn’t get more WTF… O.o

    Reply
    • Shadow

      Well, for the most part. I know of another set of shows that work hard to be drama-free when it comes to the public eye.

      Reply
  • J. Z. Belexes

    I’m recommending everyone in the cosplay communities I am part of to boycott this con, if it ever even gets off the ground. At this point, Wheeler has shown nothing but disdain for the community he is trying to profit off of and doesn’t deserve our patronage.

    Reply
    • Terence Clark

      I’m not usually a fan of boycots because it’s a tough line to tread to operate an event/business without taking an unpopular stand or two. But when the stand you’re taking is against the fans and community you’re supposed to be serving? Yeah, that dude doesn’t deserve a penny.

      Reply
  • Anastasia Hunter

    Excellent article. There have been too many cons popping up, taking fans money, then flaming out. Thank you for posting.

    Reply
  • Terence Clark

    I find it amusing that he feels the vendors and community are spoiled and entitled yet he somehow expects that he’s entitled to their business after publicly insulting pretty much everyone involved.

    Reply
  • You know the social media people they supposedly hired? Well apparently, even though at the time it was posted on their FB page, they denied they had even started working with Outlaw. 😂

    I’m guessing they won’t be in the future either unless a miracle happens.

    Reply
  • Valerie Finnigan

    Please, Mr. Wheeler, don’t invite me!

    Reply
  • I audibly gasped when he referred to artists as peddling crap… I have been to several cons where there were no outstanding guests and it was in fact the artist alley and vendor’s hall that were the big draws. I can’t wait to see the reviews for this con.

    Reply
    • NerdLore

      Seriously. “Peddling crap?” He’s a fan who owns a comic book store, how does he *not* realize that vendor floors are a huge draw to some conventions? I and some other vendors I know get people contacting us to *ask* if we’re going to be at certain cons, sometimes even as a deciding factor whether to go.

      How utterly clueless this guy is.

      Reply
  • Sylvan012

    How old is this guy? I know he says he’s married but is he 16 or something?

    When I ran my first gaming con, many years ago, the public face of the event had to be maintained. It was common knowledge, even before the Web was a big thing.

    I’d back away, slowly, and not make eye-contact with this con…

    Reply
  • NerdLore

    As a con vendor–and a button vendor at that–I’m glad I’m far away enough I’ll never have to deal with this guy. And I hope he realized that, yes, those prices are outrageous. They’re on a DragonCon level, not a first-year local con.

    Reply
  • Sean Arteaga

    Hmm, Facebook pages and his Ebay store is empty…

    Reply
  • Sorry to bring up an old post but he and his wife are still at it as far as being terrible people. He was kicked out of a show recently in Indiana and posted that he was gonna stand outside the show and hand out fliers of his and Mindy’s table at C2E2. He verbally harassed the cops that took him out too.

    Reply

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