Lucca Comics & Games

43.8°N 10.5°E / 43.8; 10.5

Lucca Comics and Games
A Lucca Comics pavilion, near the San Michele in Foro basilica, in 2007
StatusActive
Location(s)Lucca
CountryItaly
Inaugurated1965
Attendance319,926 in 2022[1] [2]
Organized byComune of Lucca, through the limited company "Lucca Comics & Games Srl"[3]
Websiteluccacomicsandgames.com

Lucca Comics & Games is an annual comic book and gaming convention in Lucca, Italy, traditionally held at the end of October, in conjunction with All Saints' Day. It is the largest comics festival in Europe, and the second biggest in the world after the Comiket.

History
Crowd in Vittorio Veneto street during the Lucca Comics and Games 2012
Entern of a pavilion

The Salone Internazionale del Comics ("International Congress of Comics") was launched by a Franco-Italian partnership, consisting of Italians Rinaldo Traini and Romano Calisi and Frenchman Claude Moliterni (forming the International Congress of Cartoonists and Animators) in 1965 in Bordighera.[4][5] In 1966, it moved to a small piazza in the center of Lucca, and grew in size and importance over the years.

Funding issues reduced the frequency of the festival to every two years, beginning in 1977. In the 1980s, the festival was moved to a sports center outside the city walls, where it remained until 1992, when it was moved to another city (funding issues also forced the cancellation of the 1988 festival).

After the Salone internazionale del Comics ended in Lucca, city leaders launched a new convention called simply Lucca Comics that was a reprise of the old one. In 1996, it changed its name to Lucca Comics & Games. The festival attracted 50,000 attendees in 2002.

Meanwhile, the Salone internazionale del Comics was held in Rome from 1995 to 2005. In 2006, for the festival's 40th anniversary, the Salone merged with Lucca Comics & Games and moved back to Lucca's city center, with numerous tents and pavilions arranged in different squares within and outside the walls of the medieval city.

In 2022 the festival sold 319,926 tickets, beating the record established in 2016, when it had attracted 270,000 attendees.

Awards
The stage of cosplay
The italian actors Herbert Ballerina and Maccio Capatonda at Lucca Comics & Games 2016

Comics awards

From 1970 to 2005, the festival presented the Yellow Kid Award — named in honor of Richard F. Outcault's seminal comic strip character The Yellow Kid — in such categories as Best Cartoonist, Best Illustrator, Best Newcomer, Best Foreign Artist, and Lifetime Achievement. Yellow Kid Awards were also presented to publishers, both domestic and foreign.

The festival also (since 1967) presents a special award called the Gran Guinigi Award (named after Lucca's Guinigi Tower).

In 2020, as the festival redubbed itself Lucca Changes amidst a shift to virtual programming during the COVID-19 pandemic,[6] the awards shifted to a new system under the umbrella term Lucca Comics Awards, consisting of 9 categories (3 Yellow Kids, 5 Gran Guinigis, and one Stefano Beani Award named for a former festival director), "regardless of nationality, editorial format or distribution method".[7]

Yellow Kid Award recipients

Gran Guinigi recipients

Games awards

References
  1. "Lucca Comics & Games 2002, grande successo di pubblico: un'altra incredibile edizione è giunta al termine". Il Quotidiano Italiano (in Italian). 2 November 2022. Retrieved 2 November 2022.
  2. "Lucca Comics & Games, il ritorno della community delle community è da record" (PDF). Lucca Comics & Games (in Italian). 1 November 2022. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 November 2022. Retrieved 3 November 2022.
  3. Lucca Comics & Games Srl - Chi siamo
  4. "Lucca 9", Bang! #11 (1974), p. 55.
  5. Pasamonik, Didier. "Disparition de Claude Moliterni, fondateur du Festival d'Angoulême", ActuaBD (21 January 2009). (in French)
  6. "Che cos'è Lucca Comics & Games - edizione Changes". Retrieved 3 June 2021.
  7. Bottalico, Domenico (24 October 2020). "Lucca Comics Awards i nuovi "Oscar del Fumetto" a Lucca Changes". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
  8. Nordling, Lee. Your Career in the Comics (Newspaper Features Council (U.S.)/Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1995), p. 235.
  9. "History of the Lucca festival". 1972. Retrieved 15 July 2006.
  10. "11° Salone Internationale del Comics, del Film di Animazione e dell'Illustrazione" (in Italian). immaginecentrostudi.org.
  11. Clute, John and John Grant. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (Macmillan, 1999), p. 621
  12. "13 Salone Internazionale dei Comics" (in Italian). Centro Studi Iconografici.
  13. Traini, Rinaldo (1982). "15° SALONE, 1982" (in Italian). Immagine-Centro Studi Iconografici. Archived from the original on 27 February 2011.
  14. Gilbert Hernandez entry, Who's Who of American Comic Books, 1928-1999. Accessed 15 June 2015.
  15. "Hernandez Brothers Win Award", The Comics Journal #95 (Feb. 1985), p. 21.
  16. Immagine-Centro Studi Iconografici. "16° SALONE INTERNAZIONALE DEI COMICS, 1984" (in Italian).
  17. "Bill Sienkiewicz Awards, Exhibits". Wordsandpictures.org. Archived from the original on 7 February 2012.
  18. "17° SALONE, 1986" (in Italian). Immagine-Centro Studi Iconografici. Archived from the original on 7 February 2012. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
  19. "Awards and Honors", NeilGaiman.com. Accessed 16 June 2015.
  20. Origa, Graziano. "Lucca Exhibition is Un Grande Successo: Yellow Kid Awards for John Byrne, François Boucq, Frank Thomas, and Ollie Johnston", The Comics Journal #156 (Feb. 1993), p. 41.
  21. Duncan, Randy, and Matthew J. Smith. Icons of the American Comic Book: From Captain America to Wonder Woman, vol. 1, (ABC-CLIO, 2013), p. 98
  22. Centro Studi Iconografici. "5 Salone Internazionale dei Comics" (in Italian).
  23. O'Neill entry, Who's Who of American Comic Books, 1928-1999. Accessed 8 October 2016.
  24. "Best of Show: i vincitori". Lucca Comics & Games 2011 (in Italian). Retrieved 26 August 2019.
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