Ithaca College

Ed Catto, Lecturer in the Business School and Naomi Hanson (History ’19) chaired panels at this year’s Comic-Con, extending the work done in the Spring 2019 co-taught Business/English ITHACON course.

San Diego Comic-Con, the annual gathering of fans, collectors and the entertainment and publishing industries, celebrated its 50th anniversary this year.  Comic-Con International hosted over 180,000 official attendees, but as the sprawling event has expanded far beyond the convention center to “take over” San Diego, total participants are estimated to be closer to 250,000.

Recent Ithaca College graduate Naomi Hanson led a panel called Pirates: Fact & Fiction Beyond Four Colors- analyzing historical pirates and their fictional manifestations.  Hanson was an active student in the 2019 ITHACON and Pop-Up Start-Up courses.  Ed Catto, a lecturer in the Business School, was the moderator and also participated in other panels including How to Generate Press Coverage (a primer for PR efforts), Licensing! (an examination of licensing in entertainment) and Captain Action: Adventures in Animation (detailing the entrepreneurial efforts of the original super-hero action figure).

San Diego Comic-Con, considered by many to be the industry’s premiere show, is the world’s the longest running comic convention.   Of note, ITHACON, the convention now hosted at Ithaca College, is the second longest running comic convention and will be celebrating its 45th anniversary during the upcoming Spring semester on April 20-21, 2020.