The sun’s coming out, Free Comic Book Day is on the horizon, hype is building for the big summer blockbusters… it must be spring! No big story is crossing my radar at the moment, but here are a few tidbits of interest.
Hotelpocalpyse is nigh. What if they threw the world’s biggest comic con and no one could afford to attend? Unfortunately for exhibitors, professionals and hundreds of thousands of fans, that is not some esoteric point of philosophy. San Diego Comic-Con, which appears to be back to full pre-COVID blare and scale, is set to kick off its annual scramble for hotel rooms on Wednesday, with smaller blocks, higher prices and stricter terms.
This is always a day fraught with uncertainty, but this year it looks to be even more Hunger Games-ish than usual. According to a disconcertingly cheerful sounding email from CCI, this year’s General Hotel Sale (including the Gaslamp District hotels most convenient to the Convention Center) will now feature “real time reservation booking” based on random assignments into the reservation area, with the possibility that your preferred hotel could sell out as you are completing your booking.
Rates range from the mid-$200s for facilities within shuttle distance like Mission Valley to the low $400s for a swanky room in a deluxe hotel nearby. In the context of vacation-season hospitality in big American cities, those are affordable rates if you can get them. If you can’t and you really want to scare yourself, try looking up rack rates for anywhere in town during the dates of the Con, if they are not completely blacked out.
Also new this year: two nights’ non-refundable deposits will be due at booking, which could be a decent chunk of change to tie up with no recourse if plans fall through. Luckily, we all have so much disposable income sitting around right now that’s not getting sucked up by gas prices, food prices, airfares or fears of bots taking our jobs, right?
For attendees, this complicates the already fraught and expensive process of traveling to Comic-Con. For professionals and staff, it means shrinking availability and uncertainty around lodging. And for exhibitors, it could mean fewer attendees, attendees with smaller budgets, or a show that is too far out of reach for families and younger fans.
CCI is acutely aware of this problem. Whenever Comic-Con communications czar David Glanzer speaks publicly, he raises concerns about the size, cost and terms of the hotel block. He has often pointed portentously toward the “break glass in case of emergency” button: Comic-Con pulling up stakes from San Diego and setting up shop elsewhere if downtown hotels don’t play ball. There are only so many times you can do that, though, before you either have to put up or shut up.
WEBTOON announces new corporate structure. WEBTOON Entertainment made a few changes in its executive lineup on both sides of the Pacific. Current President Yongsoo Kim is consolidating his role over operations, with David J. Lee continuing as Chief Financial Officer and adding duties as President of Wattpad. Aron Levitz, who previously held that position and had also headed up Webtoon Wattpad Studios, has moved on. A source at Webtoon tells me that he’s left to build something new and will be sharing details soon.
The company is also creating a few new executive roles, with Yuki Chase as Chief Product Officer in charge of product roadmap and innovation, Leah Goeun Yeon as Chief Business Officer handling growth and marketing, and Teo Taeyeong Jang stepping into the role of Head of AI. His responsibilities, according to the release, are to “build on WEBTOON’s existing AI capabilities, including content protection and anti-piracy innovations, content discovery, and the newly launched Translation Program, all designed to help creators reach new audiences.”
Webtoon stock (WBTN) is down almost 36% in the past six months after a sharp rise in late summer and fall of 2025, so it’s not surprising that some changes were in order. We’ll see how the restructuring at the top impacts creator and publishing programs moving forward.
Paramount is moving back into publishing. Because of course it is. You can’t be an omnivorous media conglomerate without paying lip service to “legacy platforms” like books. According to a story in The Hollywood Reporter, the new Paramount Global Publishing imprint will “leverage Paramount’s library of characters, stories and intellectual property and support the development of original stories.”
This follows Paramount divesting itself of Simon & Schuster for $1.6 billion back in 2023 ahead of its shotgun wedding with Skydance (see “Private Equity Acquiring Largest Distributor of Graphic Novels“). Apparently, the company has rediscovered the value of books as the launching point for stories and IP.
If Paramount/Skydance succeeds in acquiring Warner Bros, home to DC and a ton of other valuable IP, this could end up being a pretty big deal.
Springtime in New York. New York has two baseball teams, two basketball teams, two hockey teams, and two so-called football teams, so why not two independent comic festivals in late April?
This weekend is the two-day (free) Brooklyn Independent Comics Fest (BICS) at the Box Factory in Industry City, Brookyln, featuring panels and programs, 200 artist alley tables, and special guests including Mattie Lubchansky, Rachel Merrill, and animation legend Bill Plympton. I know of a couple of cool art books debuting at that show, including a collection of political comics edited by Tony Wolf, featuring work by Bill Sienkiewicz, Emil Ferris, Peter Kuper and more, with profits benefiting the ACLU.
The very next weekend in Manhattan, indie comic fans can hobnob with Charles Burns, Frank Quitely, Elene Usdin, Felipe Smith, Julie Rocheleau, Benjamin Lacombe and others at the Comic Arts Fest 2026, sponsored by L’Alliance Francaise. The emphasis here, understandably, is on Euro-style bandes dessinées, graphic novels and visual storytelling. The Fest takes place at the Society of Illustrators on the upper East side, and charges admission.
The Big Apple is also the subject of a new anthology, Real Life Comix: Only in New York, co-edited by Dean Haspiel and Doug Latino. It features a who’s who of New York-based indie creators, from established pros like Roz Chast, Ben Katchor, Julia Wertz, Ann Nocenti, and Ron Wimberly to up and coming talents. All the stories are inspired by life in the biggest of big cities, featuring a variety of takes and styles. I don’t cover a lot of Kickstarters in progress, but this one looks like fun.
That about does it for me this week. To readers for whom Hotelpocalpyse is a thing, may the odds be ever in your favor.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Rob Salkowitz (Bluesky @robsalk) is the author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, a two-time Eisner Award nominee, and a proud longtime contributor to Eisner-nominated ICv2.
Source: ICv2
