April is upon us and before you know it, so will June. With that, Phoenix Comicon will be ramping up and thousands will be descending on Downtown Phoenix to experience the “Crown Jewel” of the SouthWest. I put together this reminder guide recently to help keep up with all things that make Phoenix Comicon so fun.
Panels
At this point, emails are well under way about panel submissions being accepted or denied. If you’re panel has been accepted than congratulations! Take this time to reach out to people within your community/fandom to join you as a panelist. Already have that done because you’ve put on your panel before? If that’s the case, why not revamp your panel? Freshen it up, add new content, change things around. It’s a little disappointing attending a fan panel, than catching it again down the road and it’s just a repeat.
Cosplay
Why are you still reading this? If you haven’t started, good luck! All kidding aside, you have time to finish your screen acurate Wonder Woman costume or even start assembling a cosplay. I’m probably just telling you the equivalent of “water is wet” but it gets hot in Phoenix. Like seriously hot. You want to cosplay as John Snow but don’t want to wear all that heavy clothing? Put a spin on it, do a summer time John Snow who rocks shades and a tank top. Either way, don’t wait to much longer to finish or even start a cosplay.
Comics/Art
So one of your favorite artists are attending Phoenix Comicon this year and you’re wanting them to do a sweet commission for you. Guess what? That’s probably a lot of other attendees favorite artist as well. If an artist you want to get a commission from is on social media, make sure to follow them as sometimes they will open a presale for commissions. You get to tell them what you’d like ahead of time and generally it’s ready for you to pickup in person at the convention. This saves you from being left off the commission list during the convention.
Maybe you’re excited that Art Adams is attending the convention but you don’t really have any of his comics to get signed. Don’t wait until the convention to find something as a lot of comic book vendors raise the price of comics written/drawn by attending comic guests. Take the time to visit a few local comic book stores until you find what you want, or even use an online store, you’ve got time for shipping.
Hotels/Parking
Many of the closest hotels to the Phoenix Convention Center are either sold out or going to cost you quite a bit. A quick search shows a few hotels near the airport, a 15 minute drive, still have rooms available for a decent rate. This is something you don’t want to wait for much longer, the sooner, the better for you it is.
While there are several parking garage options during Phoenix Comicon, they’ll be a bit pricey. I suggest parking at a light rail “park and go” and taking the light rail that stops right next to the convention center. However, if you’re needing to park downtown, Phoenix Comicon has partnered with ParkWhiz and is offering a prepurchase discount. This guarantees you a spot at the Jefferson Street Garage on top of saving you a few dollars.
I hope you found this helpful and I’ll be posting more Phoenix Comicon articles as we get closer to June. Make sure to follow Legion of Sand on Twitter for more updates about Phoenix Comicon and other Arizona conventions!
Legion of Sand 