Mile High Comics Pulls Out Of SDCC After 44 Years, Displeased With Unapologetic Event Management

Mile High Comics, an institution of geek culture for comic book fans, has announced they’ll be pulling out of the San Diego Comic-Con after 44 years. The announcement on their website was made by Chuck Rozanski, president of Mile High Comics. According to them, they cannot take on the “mile high” costs of the event. They also mentioned that a change in demographics was also an influence in the decision.

Apparently, considering their long-time involvement, they decided to move on as they noticed a considerable change from a basic comic book-focused event to that of the SDCC currently catering to a pop culture crowd and media-related content. According to Mile High Comics, the current climate is no longer a good fit for the vendor.

Chuck also recalled that back in 1973, a booth space cost $40 for an entire weekend. Now it is in the five-figure range, for example, $18,000 for a space of 70 feet. Also, there was a serious lack of foot traffic on the comic book end of the exhibitor hall. There is also the stiff competition from the surrounding buildings with many free events going on involving Game of Thrones and Pokemon, just to name a few. That said, there’s no incentive for fans to take a visit to Mile High Comics’ neck of the woods.

So if you take the lack of fan/customer traffic and rising costs of booth rentals, that doesn’t make for a good mix if you do the math. That said, this could result in a loss and not profit for a vendor trying to make a living.

Be that as it may, the final straw that broke the camel’s back was how San Diego Comic-Con’s management handled a mishap involving their freight handlers taking care of the business’ inventory booth delivery. Chuck Rozanski felt they were indifferent about the fiasco and were not even apologetic. He said no one even stopped by to “commiserate” about what had occurred. Comic Book Resources reported how Chuck felt when he said that the convention wouldn’t even notice they’d be gone.

“The final straw, however, was the utter indifference of the San Diego Comic-Con management to the fiasco that we endured at the beginning of last year’s show, when the freight handlers that they hired failed to deliver our comics to our booth.”

The Mile High Comics president felt that such apathy was too much to handle to continue offering up his services to a place that handles such situations.

Do you think it was a good idea for Mile High to pull out? Can you think of other places they could set up shop or do you think this took the wind out of their sails for good?

[Featured Image by Mario Tama/Getty Images]