CONTINUED FROM PART ONE ( HERE! )

Boston Comic Con has been rescheduled for this weekend, August 3-4, at The Seaport World Trade Center. Founder Nick Kanieff joins us for the epic conclusion of our two part interview (Part One HERE) about the challenges of moving this great independent comic book show and the incredible growth Boston Con has seen since its first years.

The Boston comics community was looking forward to the show in April, and now are even more ready to get together this summer as a celebration of comic books and pop culture at the rescheduled date and venue.

DIGBOSTON: We have portfolio reviews, cosplay contests. Is there anything you are looking forward to as an event organizer?
NICK KANIEFF: The ongoing joke is that as the organizer I never get to enjoy my own show. I’m really excited this year about the original art auction. We had our first art auction last year and a portion of the proceeds goes to the Mike Wieringo Foundation, a scholarship for aspiring comic book artists to attend a program at the Savannah College of Art & Design. Our first art auction was very successful.

This year we are still donating to that particular charity and we are also donating to The One Fund.

Once we put that out there to the artist’s community, the support was overwhelming. People that would not normally donate to an art auction—there aren’t that many of them in the comic book convention world (Heroes Con, Baltimore Comic Con, and us)—probably because we are the three conventions that are considered more comic book purist and comic art driven shows. Mike Mignola(Hellboy) said “I am putting a piece of original art at your auction.” That’s gigantic. Mike Mignola’s huge and his art goes for tons of money. Everybody is stepping up to the plate, so I have a feeling the art auction is particularly huge this year.

The Amazing Screw-On Head - Mike Mignola

We have the costume contest, every year that gets bigger and bigger and bigger. The cosplay community keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

I’ve been to Anime Boston and I scratch my head because it’s all cosplay. It’s a social event. There’s not a lot going on, but it is a huge social event.

It’s mindblowing to me how big the cosplay community really is. That’s always exciting.  We have IDW showing up as a publisher this year. That’s pretty cool. We’ve got a Magic the Gathering tournament going on.

DC Comics and IDW will be doing portfolio reviews for you aspiring comic book artists out there. We’ve got our exclusive Boston Comic Con t-shirt by Tim Sale. We have our exclusive My Little Pony Boston Comic Con variant comic (Agnes Garbowska) – limited to 1000 copies.

[READ MORE at DIGBOSTON.COM]