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Comikaze: Not Just The Other Comic Convention

Last year's Comikaze, seen here in September 2012, attracted tens of thousands of attendees.
AP
Last year's Comikaze, seen here in September 2012, attracted tens of thousands of attendees.

You may be familiar with the San Diego Comic-Con, a constantly expanding convention for fans that started as a niche event for comic-book nerds and is now a sprawling pop-culture event.

You may not be familiar with Comikaze. The brainchild of Regina Carpinelli, a fan who was unhappy with the cost, ticket scarcity, and changing focus of Comic-Con, Comikaze is a smaller festival that costs $30 for the weekend, rather than Comic-Con's $150 four-day passes. On Tuesday's All Things Considered, Tess Vigeland reports on the growing Comikaze and speaks to Carpinelli and some of her peers about how she went from a dissatisfied fan of a huge convention to the proprietor of another.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.