After setting a new attendance record in 2023 with over 170,000 visitors, COMICON – International Pop Culture Festival returns to the Mostra d’Oltremare in Naples from 25 to 28 April 2024 with the XXIV edition which promises to reach new records for areas, exhibitors present and expected visitors. Among the largest cross-media festivals in the world, COMICON Napoli arrives at the starting line with over 560 events scheduled and more than 450 guests from three continents, as always with a central nucleus at the Mostra d’Oltremare and an OFF program of appointments and exhibitions spread across the city. “This year too, Comicon presents itself as an event with a great international scope, as a Region we are proud to support this reality” – declares President Vincenzo De Luca – “I would like to underline how an event of this kind manages to bring together digitalisation, modernity and new technologies with physical meeting and human contact, this has enormous value for the new generations. In addition to the fact that every meeting of different cultures and traditions, of young people from different parts of the world, is a contribution to Peace. Also from this point of view we will have an event of great beauty and importance”.
The programs of all the thematic areas are very rich: Comics, Cinema and TV Series, Videogames, Games, Asian, Music, Cosplay, Kids, Neverland, the themed food spaces PizzaCon and J-Pop Manga Niwa to which is added the new Urban Area which , for the first time in a pop festival, enhances the connections between street culture, art, sport and fashion. There will be no shortage of exhibitions, which have always been COMICON’s flagship, with over 20 exhibition itineraries. And precisely in the name of the link between comics and street culture, COMICON has decided to entrust the creation of the magmatic official poster of the festival to Mike Del Mundo, a designer who marked the decade with his award-winning covers for Marvel and other publishers.
The role of Magister has been attributed to Igort (Japanese Notebooks, Fats Waller, 5 is the perfect number), one of the best-known and most influential Italian cartoonists on the international scene, a pioneer in the creation and exchange with Japanese publishing, as well as a director , publisher and driving force behind the diffusion of the graphic novel in Italy. The perfect Magister in an edition full of Asian artists like never before. Among the guests and the most anticipated events of COMICON 2024: the talk Elodie meets Manara, a conversation conducted by the writer Valeria Parrella to celebrate the partnership between two protagonists of Italian creativity after the collaboration for the cover of the Elodie Red Light club tape created by Master of Comics; an unmissable event for fans of Liberato, the Neapolitan artist with an unknown identity: the first and very secret images of the film The secret of Liberato by Francesco Lettieri will be revealed, in the presence of Giuseppe Squillaci and LRNZ, directors of the animated sequences of the feature film; Hitoshi Sakimoto – New Gaming Worlds, the first concert dedicated to the Ennio Morricone of videogame music Hitoshi Sakimoto, a show that will celebrate one of the most important composers in the history of videogames with the extraordinary performance of the Nuova Orchestra Scarlatti; the celebrations for 50 years of Dungeons Dragons with Frank Mentzer – legendary figure of the iconic role-playing game that became a mass culture phenomenon, as well as author of the legendary “Red Box” – and the exhibition “50 years of Dungeons & Dragons”; the cartoonist-symbol of Spider-Man stories over the last 40 years, designer of the masterpiece Daredevil: The Man Without Fear and living legend of American comics John Romita Jr; the meetings and showcases of the sensei Iwamuro, Umezawa, Minami Seira authors respectively of Shibatarian, Darwin’s Incident, The Rise of the Shield Hero; the arrival of Yasumi Matsuno, game designer whose contribution was crucial in titles such as Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story and in the Tactics Ogre series; the special event dedicated to the most loved, incorrect and discussed animated series of the moment, Hazbin Hotel, in the company of Italian voice actors; the concert by Giorgio Vanni, singer-songwriter and voice of the most beloved cartoon theme songs of the 2000s; Comicon Cosplay Challenge PRO and Comicon Cosplay Challenge KIDS; the meeting with Giampaolo Morelli, Ciro Priello, Fabio Balsamo, Giovanni Esposito, Desirée Popper, Valeria Angione and Gianfranco Gallo who will present the preview of the film Let her turn 2 Offline; the COMICON 2024 Palmarès Awards ceremony, which this year will award the COMICON Special Lifetime Achievement Award to Alfredo Castelli, the master of Italian comics who recently passed away; the return of Casty, the legendary author of Disney stories, who signed the variant cover of Mickey Mouse #3570, a pearl for all collectors, with Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Pluto immortalized in a “souvenir photo” in Naples; the talk with astronaut Paolo Nespoli, who together with popularizers Luca Perri and Adrian Fartade will explore the spatial boundaries of video games.
A special initiative, then, is the program of activities labeled “K-OMICON”.
On the occasion of the 140th anniversary of the beginning of diplomatic relations between Italy and Korea, COMICON meets KOMACON, Korea Manhwa Contents Agency, and together they host a delegation of artists, professionals, chefs and companies in Naples, to offer the festival public a vast overview of the K-world consisting of an exhibition, meetings, drawing performances, the experience of traditional clothing, culinary events, contests and K-pop music shows. COMICON’s cultural activities and exhibitions benefited from support from the Campania Region which also sponsored the festival.
