Convention News

Press Release: The New York Anime Festival (NYAF) and Crunchyroll today announced auteur Japanese animator and director Makoto Shinkai will participate in this October's New York Anime Festival. The New York Anime Festival will take place October 13-16, 2011 at the Javits Center in Midtown Manhattan as part of the sixth annual New York Comic Con (NYCC). NYCC, which attracted 96,000 attendees in 2010, celebrates comics, television, movies, toys, games, and the popular arts from around the planet. NYCC's Anime Festival shines a specific spotlight on anime, manga, and Japanese pop culture. NYCC has already announced guests including Kevin Smith, Felicia Day, and Robert Kirkman. NYAF guests include voice actress Junko Takeuchi and manga author Hiro Mashima.

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Press Release: Thursday August 11th thru Sunday August 14th Brimstone (pro-wrestler, actor, author, comic / animated hero & philanthropist) will be making a celebrity appearance along with ‘Brimstone and the Borderhounds’ lead artist, Sajad Shah, Allen 'Vandal' Chickering, Hound Comics Artist Mina Sanwald, former Disney artist Terry Naughton, and everyone’s favorite Borderhound 'Luscious' representing Hound Comics, Inc. Shah, Chickering, Naughton, and Sanwald will be accepting commissioned art over the course of the four-day extravaganza. This special event will be taking place at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center (Rosemont), located at 5555 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018.

The times are as follows:

Thursday (5pm – 9pm); Friday (12 Noon – 8pm); Saturday (10am – 7pm); Sunday (10am – 5pm)

Join the Hounds’ celebration by stopping by the booth and picking up your signed copies of Brimstone and the Borderhounds.

Brimstone and the Borderhounds is the flagship title of Hound Comics, Inc. and has broken barriers within the comic book industry while taking the entertainment industry by storm. The title has become one of the first, if not the only; independently owned and operated comic books sold in Barnes & Noble across America. It has been announced that as of July 2011, the title’s B&N distribution will be increased to now be available at every one of the over 700 national Barnes & Noble locations.

For more information, please visit http://www.HoundComics.com or http://www.wizardworld.com

Press Release: The New York Anime Festival (NYAF) and Kodansha USA Publishing (KUP) today announced Hiro Mashima, creator of the successful Fairy Tail manga and anime series, will be coming to this October’s New York Anime Festival. The New York Anime Festival will take place October 13-16, 2011 at the Javits Center in Midtown Manhattan as part of the sixth annual New York Comic Con (NYCC). NYCC, which attracted 96,000 attendees in 2010, celebrates comics, television, movies, toys, games, and the popular arts from around the planet. NYCC’s Anime Festival shines a specific spotlight on anime, manga, and Japanese pop culture. NYCC has already announced guests including Kevin Smith, Felicia Day, and Robert Kirkman. Voice actors Todd Haberkorn, Colleen Clinkenbeard, Cherami Leigh, and Newton Pittman — all in the anime adaptation of Fairy Tail — have been previously announced as guests and will appear at NYAF.

Hiro Mashima is a Japanese manga author and artist most known for his fantasy titles Rave Master, published in Japan from 1999 to 2005, and Fairy Tail, ongoing since 2006 and adapted into an anime since 2009. In the world of Fairy Tail, sorcerers band together in Guilds to take on paying assignments, including hunting monsters, finding lost items, and running odd errands, for non-magic users. In this fun-packed action-fantasy manga, the main characters are Natsu, a dragon slayer who can control fire at will; Happy, a cat who magically flies; and Lucy, a rookie wizard. They belong to the Fairy Tail Guild, whose members tend to overdo everything and often cause a lot of trouble. The Fairy Tail manga is published in the US by KUP. The Fairy Tail anime is available through FUNimation Entertainment.

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Press Release: Anime-ZAP!, the Illinois anime convention that started as an "instant" anime convention, will return to Peoria this January 14-15, 2012 at the Peoria Civic Center in downtown Peoria, Illinois.

Anime-ZAP! first started in 2010, after the organizers of QC Anime-zing! had learned that a nearby con, Pokettokon, had been cancelled. The first Anime-ZAP! was created with less than three days of planning, and still had over 160 fans attend that first year. The second year moved to the Holiday Inn City Centre, with around 400 people attending.

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