Comic Con New Mexico
Sidney Watkins (above), of Taos, said, “I’m a Jackalope,” when describing her homemade costume at the Santa Fe Comic Con. “I’ve been working on it for a month. I work in arts and crafts and I like to crochet and sew — anything I can do with my hands, really. Last year I was a unicorn. I had a big glowing horn. I love costumes. My little brother started going to conventions first and I thought it looked like fun. He’s The Shadow. Last year was my first year and I fell in love. It’s great to be something else.”
It’s quite possible that if you randomly asked people in costumes at any given Comic Con or Cosplay convention, you’d get a similar answer to Watckins, “It’s great to be something else.” Or someone else, such as a superhero.
“I enjoy the event,” said Comic Con organizer Jim Burleson. “I got my start in promoting cage fighting, back in 2001. I did them all over the world. I did the first fights in Australia, the first fights in England, the first in New York and Texas.”
In 2009 Burleson retired from that thinking he wanted to “bring my chidren to work.” When Burleson was younger, he always hid the fact that he was a dork.
“By the time I started having a ton of children I stopped caring about that — I have seven children. 24, 22, 18, 17, 14, seven and two,” Burleson explained while the Santa Fe Comic Con was being set up at Buffalo Thunder. “Basically I stopped caring about what people thought of me, but being a dork now is sort of cool, so it worked out for me. If only it had been the case in high school, I would have been the coolest kid on campus.”
Burleson enjoys getting the people together and giving them access to the stars they grew up watching. He enjoys the access it gives him to fans that might not have a way to be recognized. Such as opening the doors early on Fridays for sensitivity openings, which allow children with various disabilities to attend the Con in a more sedate and less populated environment, which might over stimulate them otherwise.
Burleson makes a good living from being involved in the film industry, so he doesn’t need income from the Cons he produces, so he can pass those revenues on to some of his other projects.
“We are also raising money to build tiny homes that we give away to homeless veterans,” Burleson, who is a veteran, explained. “We just launched a partnership with Buffalo Thunder where they are going to help finance us and help market us to get different VAs and different smaller communities involved. The company is called Tiny Town, Tiny Homes. That’s my company, my non profit. The larger cities have access to resources to help homeless people. They have the homeless shelters. Even Soccorro, N.M., (where Burleson lives) we have a three day a week shelter, but it doesn’t do over nights. It’s time to get them a place to live.
“What we’ve done, we’ve actually created a program where they can get a lease for these homes — we don’t give the homes to these vets — with the consideration that they might not be in the best place in their lives — we don’t want them to be able to sell them and be homeless again. We give them a lease for a dollar and they live in this home and they get good rental history. They can live in it for as long as they want, there is no term limit. If they want to live in it forever, they can. But if they want to eventually live in a larger apartment or home, they’ll have a good rental history. We’ll serve as a good reference for them.”
In Soccorro, Burelson’s non-profit is working with the county compliance office. They’re the ones who issue the rental agreements. The non-profit gives them the title to the house with the hope they can put the homeless in touch with the homes.
“That was my end goal when I started doing this (the Comic Cons), not per se houses, but I wanted to be able to create charity opportunities,” Burleson said. “We raise money for children with cancer. Every year we find a child who has found out they are going to be fighting cancer and put a booth together and set them up next to the movie stars and get donations from all the vendors and we do auctions and raffles and we just them take off with that money and do whatever they want with it.”
Helping with his charity projects isn’t Burleson’s only reward.
“I also get to meet some of my iconic heroes,” Burleson said. “Gil Girrard has become one of my closest friends. I was five when I was watching Buck Rogers. Sam Jones, Flash Gordon, we talk all the time about work and kids and Lou Ferrigno and I chat all the time. It’s given me the opportunity to meet these people who, when I was a kid, they were bigger than life, and now that I know them personally, they’re even better. They’re even bigger than they were portrayed. That makes me happy.”
That’s a neat thought, meeting one’s childhood hero, which isn’t ruined by a horrible personality or an inflated ego.
This year Burleson decided to stop offering free booths to professional cosplayers.
“I used to donate booths to cosplayers who would show up as guests and what was happening, every time there was some kind of drama in the industry, it would always come back to the event,” Burleson explained his decision. “I don’t keep my mouth shut, so I always respond and I get attacked by social justice warriors. What I decided is that I have cosplayers that walk in the door who have bought a ticket, that are better cosplayers than the people who fly in from somewhere else. I’ve always thought that cosplay should be supported locally. Anybody can buy a booth. Cosplayers (professional cosplayers) can buy a booth. I’m just not going to place them on my celebrity guest list as if they had some immaculate film career. Would I put them on the same website as William Shatner, for example? Cosplayers who were made famous because of events like mine aren’t famous at events like mine. I have people who come in the door who are amazing cosplayers.”
Many see costumes by locals and compare them with some of the professional cosplayers costumes, and the dedication and ingenuity far surpassed the professional work.
“They (professionals) are too busy managing their business instead of managing their cosplay,” Burleson said. “What I don’t want to do is make it sound like I don’t like cosplay, I love cosplay, and I want it to be a part of the show, but what I don’t want is some local cosplayer to feel discouraged because they can’t get a free table. I was giving away five thousand dollars worth of tables and it got to the point where I’m like, ‘I could build a tiny home for five thousand dollars.’ So with my three shows I could build three tiny homes for my charity. Why wouldn’t I do that?”
Was there any backlash to this decision?
“There is backlash,” Burleson said. “Just like when I gave moms free tickets on Mother’s Day at the Duke City Con. I got backlash. What about single dads? What about LGBTQ? I’m like, if everyone who is complaining has a mom that would like them to take her to the show — don’t complain about me giving free tickets — I can’t be nicer.”
Burleson’s Cons are also known for giving free tickets to police, military and firefighters.
“My ticket people were getting were getting death threats from prison guards and EMTs — death threats — “I’ll meet you in the parking lot and I’ll shoot you,” because I wasn’t giving free tickets to them. How much nicer can I be? My ticket people in Albuquerque almost quit on me because of the death threats. These are people who sit at the ticket table for eight hours and don’t get to enjoy the event. We stopped advertising it, but if anyone shows up their badge or military ID, of course they get in. We’re not going to turn them away. I can’t believe the amount of entitlement that people have,” Burleson said with a bit of incredulity present in his voice. “Here’s the biggest controversy about me no longer doing cosplay guests. I’ve now have been called predatory because I am making them buy a booth. The people who come in to judge my cosplay contest are providing a service, and they don’t have to pay for a booth. So I’m predatory for either making them pay for a booth or work for it. When I was a kid it was called earning it, but now it’s called predatory.”
Burleson was asked why he thought Comic Cons and Cosplay had grown so popular.
“What has finally happened is that the technology has made it possible to make a comic book movie and make it affordable,” Burleson said. “Not that they are doing that, they are still spending 300 million dollars, they could have done that in 1980 if they would have had 300 million dollars. But what they have done is create a mainstream (following). A film doesn’t require any kind of great imagination or any great intellect to enjoy. Whereas comic books required a certain amount comprehension. You had to involve yourself with the characters. What we found out was that comic book fans were no longer just the intellectuals, now comic book fans are people who know every number to every athletic team that they watch. They know every name of every football player. (they are processed and anal retentive) So what movies has done is it’s given people an opportunity to enjoy the industry without having to immerse their lives in it. Whereas people like me, I knew all the names, the real names, the aliases, of every comic book hero of every comic book out there. That kind of attention was required to enjoy the industry when I was a kid. It’s not longer necessary. Now you can just watch a two hour movie. And the merchandising now — it’s in your face. It’s made it easier to be a fan. So it’s grown the industry and Comic Cons have become a fad.”
Cody Candaleria and her aunt were selling saint candles at the Santa Fe Con, but instead of religious saints, the candles features pop icons such as Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie, to name two of about 100 different “saints.”
“We just started the business in March,” Candaleria explained. “My aunt has MS so she is kind of homebound, so it’s something my aunt and I could do together. She does the designs on the computer but we collaborate on all of them. Some of the candles, if you look at them really closely, have little hidden things. Baby Groot has a little rocket in the corner. We talk about what we want to stash in them. It was just a fun idea and it has grown pretty quickly. We’ve done a lot of custom orders. There is a food truck guy in Califormia that we did them for with him and his little truck in the corner. We did one for Jamie Henshaw, the King of the Cage, complete with the fighting belt. We did one for Eric Estrada and I’m going to talk with him later as he said, ‘I’ve got some ideas for you.’ It’s just been something fun to kind of honor pop culture in a kitschy way.”
Asked about the popularity of getting dressed up and coming to a Comic Con or Cosplay convention, Candaleria replied,
“ I really think dressing up gives you a few things: one, it gives you a creative outlet, especially because most of the people who wear their costumes have made either the entire costume of pieces of it and accessories. It gives people a creative outlet in a world where a lot of us do tedious jobs, where you do the same thing over and over. That creative outlet gives you balance in your life. Two, I think that people enjoy being recognized for something that they did, and when you come in costume people want to stop and take a picture with you and tell you how awesome you look in it. Positive feedback is always something that we crave, and that is an avenue to get it. I also think at the end of the day we’re all big kids and if we could have Halloween every other week, we would. If you can dress up and be something that you want to be and go somewhere and people enjoy it, why not.”
It’s quite possible that if you randomly asked people in costumes at any given Comic Con or Cosplay convention, you’d get a similar answer to Watckins, “It’s great to be something else.” Or someone else, such as a superhero.
“I enjoy the event,” said Comic Con organizer Jim Burleson. “I got my start in promoting cage fighting, back in 2001. I did them all over the world. I did the first fights in Australia, the first fights in England, the first in New York and Texas.”
In 2009 Burleson retired from that thinking he wanted to “bring my chidren to work.” When Burleson was younger, he always hid the fact that he was a dork.
“By the time I started having a ton of children I stopped caring about that — I have seven children. 24, 22, 18, 17, 14, seven and two,” Burleson explained while the Santa Fe Comic Con was being set up at Buffalo Thunder. “Basically I stopped caring about what people thought of me, but being a dork now is sort of cool, so it worked out for me. If only it had been the case in high school, I would have been the coolest kid on campus.”
Burleson enjoys getting the people together and giving them access to the stars they grew up watching. He enjoys the access it gives him to fans that might not have a way to be recognized. Such as opening the doors early on Fridays for sensitivity openings, which allow children with various disabilities to attend the Con in a more sedate and less populated environment, which might over stimulate them otherwise.
Burleson makes a good living from being involved in the film industry, so he doesn’t need income from the Cons he produces, so he can pass those revenues on to some of his other projects.
“We are also raising money to build tiny homes that we give away to homeless veterans,” Burleson, who is a veteran, explained. “We just launched a partnership with Buffalo Thunder where they are going to help finance us and help market us to get different VAs and different smaller communities involved. The company is called Tiny Town, Tiny Homes. That’s my company, my non profit. The larger cities have access to resources to help homeless people. They have the homeless shelters. Even Soccorro, N.M., (where Burleson lives) we have a three day a week shelter, but it doesn’t do over nights. It’s time to get them a place to live.
“What we’ve done, we’ve actually created a program where they can get a lease for these homes — we don’t give the homes to these vets — with the consideration that they might not be in the best place in their lives — we don’t want them to be able to sell them and be homeless again. We give them a lease for a dollar and they live in this home and they get good rental history. They can live in it for as long as they want, there is no term limit. If they want to live in it forever, they can. But if they want to eventually live in a larger apartment or home, they’ll have a good rental history. We’ll serve as a good reference for them.”
In Soccorro, Burelson’s non-profit is working with the county compliance office. They’re the ones who issue the rental agreements. The non-profit gives them the title to the house with the hope they can put the homeless in touch with the homes.
“That was my end goal when I started doing this (the Comic Cons), not per se houses, but I wanted to be able to create charity opportunities,” Burleson said. “We raise money for children with cancer. Every year we find a child who has found out they are going to be fighting cancer and put a booth together and set them up next to the movie stars and get donations from all the vendors and we do auctions and raffles and we just them take off with that money and do whatever they want with it.”
Helping with his charity projects isn’t Burleson’s only reward.
“I also get to meet some of my iconic heroes,” Burleson said. “Gil Girrard has become one of my closest friends. I was five when I was watching Buck Rogers. Sam Jones, Flash Gordon, we talk all the time about work and kids and Lou Ferrigno and I chat all the time. It’s given me the opportunity to meet these people who, when I was a kid, they were bigger than life, and now that I know them personally, they’re even better. They’re even bigger than they were portrayed. That makes me happy.”
That’s a neat thought, meeting one’s childhood hero, which isn’t ruined by a horrible personality or an inflated ego.
This year Burleson decided to stop offering free booths to professional cosplayers.
“I used to donate booths to cosplayers who would show up as guests and what was happening, every time there was some kind of drama in the industry, it would always come back to the event,” Burleson explained his decision. “I don’t keep my mouth shut, so I always respond and I get attacked by social justice warriors. What I decided is that I have cosplayers that walk in the door who have bought a ticket, that are better cosplayers than the people who fly in from somewhere else. I’ve always thought that cosplay should be supported locally. Anybody can buy a booth. Cosplayers (professional cosplayers) can buy a booth. I’m just not going to place them on my celebrity guest list as if they had some immaculate film career. Would I put them on the same website as William Shatner, for example? Cosplayers who were made famous because of events like mine aren’t famous at events like mine. I have people who come in the door who are amazing cosplayers.”
Many see costumes by locals and compare them with some of the professional cosplayers costumes, and the dedication and ingenuity far surpassed the professional work.
“They (professionals) are too busy managing their business instead of managing their cosplay,” Burleson said. “What I don’t want to do is make it sound like I don’t like cosplay, I love cosplay, and I want it to be a part of the show, but what I don’t want is some local cosplayer to feel discouraged because they can’t get a free table. I was giving away five thousand dollars worth of tables and it got to the point where I’m like, ‘I could build a tiny home for five thousand dollars.’ So with my three shows I could build three tiny homes for my charity. Why wouldn’t I do that?”
Was there any backlash to this decision?
“There is backlash,” Burleson said. “Just like when I gave moms free tickets on Mother’s Day at the Duke City Con. I got backlash. What about single dads? What about LGBTQ? I’m like, if everyone who is complaining has a mom that would like them to take her to the show — don’t complain about me giving free tickets — I can’t be nicer.”
Burleson’s Cons are also known for giving free tickets to police, military and firefighters.
“My ticket people were getting were getting death threats from prison guards and EMTs — death threats — “I’ll meet you in the parking lot and I’ll shoot you,” because I wasn’t giving free tickets to them. How much nicer can I be? My ticket people in Albuquerque almost quit on me because of the death threats. These are people who sit at the ticket table for eight hours and don’t get to enjoy the event. We stopped advertising it, but if anyone shows up their badge or military ID, of course they get in. We’re not going to turn them away. I can’t believe the amount of entitlement that people have,” Burleson said with a bit of incredulity present in his voice. “Here’s the biggest controversy about me no longer doing cosplay guests. I’ve now have been called predatory because I am making them buy a booth. The people who come in to judge my cosplay contest are providing a service, and they don’t have to pay for a booth. So I’m predatory for either making them pay for a booth or work for it. When I was a kid it was called earning it, but now it’s called predatory.”
Burleson was asked why he thought Comic Cons and Cosplay had grown so popular.
“What has finally happened is that the technology has made it possible to make a comic book movie and make it affordable,” Burleson said. “Not that they are doing that, they are still spending 300 million dollars, they could have done that in 1980 if they would have had 300 million dollars. But what they have done is create a mainstream (following). A film doesn’t require any kind of great imagination or any great intellect to enjoy. Whereas comic books required a certain amount comprehension. You had to involve yourself with the characters. What we found out was that comic book fans were no longer just the intellectuals, now comic book fans are people who know every number to every athletic team that they watch. They know every name of every football player. (they are processed and anal retentive) So what movies has done is it’s given people an opportunity to enjoy the industry without having to immerse their lives in it. Whereas people like me, I knew all the names, the real names, the aliases, of every comic book hero of every comic book out there. That kind of attention was required to enjoy the industry when I was a kid. It’s not longer necessary. Now you can just watch a two hour movie. And the merchandising now — it’s in your face. It’s made it easier to be a fan. So it’s grown the industry and Comic Cons have become a fad.”
Cody Candaleria and her aunt were selling saint candles at the Santa Fe Con, but instead of religious saints, the candles features pop icons such as Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie, to name two of about 100 different “saints.”
“We just started the business in March,” Candaleria explained. “My aunt has MS so she is kind of homebound, so it’s something my aunt and I could do together. She does the designs on the computer but we collaborate on all of them. Some of the candles, if you look at them really closely, have little hidden things. Baby Groot has a little rocket in the corner. We talk about what we want to stash in them. It was just a fun idea and it has grown pretty quickly. We’ve done a lot of custom orders. There is a food truck guy in Califormia that we did them for with him and his little truck in the corner. We did one for Jamie Henshaw, the King of the Cage, complete with the fighting belt. We did one for Eric Estrada and I’m going to talk with him later as he said, ‘I’ve got some ideas for you.’ It’s just been something fun to kind of honor pop culture in a kitschy way.”
Asked about the popularity of getting dressed up and coming to a Comic Con or Cosplay convention, Candaleria replied,
“ I really think dressing up gives you a few things: one, it gives you a creative outlet, especially because most of the people who wear their costumes have made either the entire costume of pieces of it and accessories. It gives people a creative outlet in a world where a lot of us do tedious jobs, where you do the same thing over and over. That creative outlet gives you balance in your life. Two, I think that people enjoy being recognized for something that they did, and when you come in costume people want to stop and take a picture with you and tell you how awesome you look in it. Positive feedback is always something that we crave, and that is an avenue to get it. I also think at the end of the day we’re all big kids and if we could have Halloween every other week, we would. If you can dress up and be something that you want to be and go somewhere and people enjoy it, why not.”
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To contact Bob Eckert for assignments, consultations or workshops, please email [email protected]
or use the contact form on the About page
or use the contact form on the About page