Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum throws open its doors Sept. 20 for the 12th annual CrockerCon, a free, all-day mashup of comic books and fine art that runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This year's edition carries extra weight, with a dedicated panel and gallery display honoring native Sacramentan Sam Kieth, the comic artist behind The Maxx and Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, who died in March.
A Museum-Wide Celebration of Comic Art
CrockerCon is billed as the Crocker Art Museum's annual pop-culture celebration, and this year's event will host roughly 70 exhibitors selling and showing their art, according to the Sacramento Bee. That's a dramatic jump from the festival's earliest days, when it launched with just 20 exhibitors. Eben Burgoon, the Crocker's public program supervisor who helped found the event, told the paper that CrockerCon bridges comic-book fans and the art museum, and that around 5,000 people attended last year.
The festival focuses on the wide range of comic art, from editorial cartooning to animation, and attendees who arrive in costume as a favorite pop-culture character will find their cosplay welcome throughout the galleries. Attendees can also access the museum's regular galleries and art exhibits as part of admission, and can test video games under development from the Sacramento Developers Collective. The event started as an after-hours Thursday night gathering before becoming an all-day convention two years ago, according to the same report.
Remembering Sam Kieth's Sacramento Roots
The Kieth tribute anchors much of this year's programming. CrockerCon will host a panel commemorating the artist, alongside displays of reproductions of his work and line art. Kieth, who worked with Image Comics, Marvel and DC over his career, was a native Sacramentan whose distinctive visual style made him one of Image's original breakout stars in the 1990s, according to The Comics Journal. He died at age 63 from complications of Lewy body dementia. That same lineage runs through this year's official festival poster, designed by Sacramento illustrator Chris Wisnia, which parodies Jack Kirby's 1963 cover for Tales of Suspense #39 and folds in homages to regional art figures including Wayne Thiebaud, Mel Ramos, Robert Arneson, and Kieth himself, according to the Crocker Art Museum.
Comedy, Cartooning and a LEGO Masterpiece
The day closes with Picture This!, a live show pairing stand-up comedians with cartoonists who sketch the jokes on screen in real time as they land. This year's lineup includes Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward and BoJack Horseman animation director Mike Hollingsworth, alongside stand-up comedians James Adomian, Rick Wood and Brandie Posey, per the Bee's report. Earlier in the day, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jack Ohman hosts a live drawing presentation, and cartoonist Mimi Pond joins for a separate conversation.
Family-friendly programming rounds out the schedule too. Attendees can help build a LEGO recreation of Charles Christian Nahl's Sunday Morning in the Mines, a painting in the Crocker's permanent collection. Local group Sacramento Brick Builders, active since 2003, is coordinating that hands-on mosaic build, bringing adult and youth builders together for the exhibition. Music comes courtesy of Sacramento DJ collective The Sleeprockers, who return as the event's resident act providing live hip-hop and pop-culture remixes on the gallery floor.
Museum Rules Meet Convention Cosplay
Because CrockerCon unfolds inside a working art museum rather than a convention center, security rules are tighter than typical comic conventions. The museum bans purses larger than 8 by 6 by 2 inches and prohibits realistic prop firearms, metal swords, and other pointed objects, per the Crocker's posted guidelines. Burgoon underscored the stakes to the Bee, noting that the event takes place in a museum with precious works of art, and the festival has a cape check at the gallery entrance while asking attendees to leave fake weapons and potentially dangerous props at home.
The Kieth memorial also lands roughly ten months after Sacramento leaders moved to unwind an old piece of the city's legal code touching the comics world. In repealed comic ban coverage, city officials began unwinding a 76-year-old ordinance from 1949 that had banned distributing crime-focused comic books to minors, following a campaign led by Burgoon himself. Visitors looking for a coffee break during the festival can also stop by the Teel Family Pavilion, where Sacramento vendor Anchor & Tree now runs the Crocker Café, serving small-batch roasts and art-themed dishes since taking over operations there in May.
CrockerCon is free to attend, and the Crocker Art Museum provides the full schedule and ticket-reservation information on its website. The festival's growth from a three-hour after-hours mixer to a full-day event drawing thousands reflects 12 years of expansion, according to the museum's own event listing.
