Just Too Darned Popular: Phoenix Fest Sells Out In Person Immediately — Online Places Still Available

Happening 20 July 2024 in Oxford, UK – Phoenix Fest 2024 brings together some of the finest comic artists from the Phoenix Comic, including Jamie Smart and Neill Cameron. Tickets went on sale on Monday and immediately sold out.

I mentioned this one a while back on the regular Sunday Spotlight feature, but now we have a lot more info on Phoenix Fest 2024, the annual one-day in person festival and online festival for fans of comics, all put on by one of Britain’s finest comics for children (of all ages) – The Phoenix!

There’s a rather impressive line-up of artists involved, obviously headlined by the million-selling Jamie Smart, he of the excellent Bunny vs Monkey and Looshkin, but there’s plenty more, along with plenty of workshops, events, and much more. The whole thing is hosted by Robin Etherington, who’s bound to bring a hell of a lot of fun to proceedings.

The whole thing happens on Saturday 20th July 2024 and tickets went on sale on Monday, only to almost immediately sell out the in-person event at the New Theatre Oxford – this really is a kids comics equivalent in the UK to something like Glastonbury or the Taylor Swift tour. This obviously led to a hell of a lot of disappointed fans and parents who’d been trying to get hold of tickets and there’s been quite a bit of bemoaning the fact that folks couldn’t get the tickets they wanted.

And, like all good organisers, The Phoenix has taken note and addressed the problems and the disappointment with posts online like this one…

So, should you be a Phoenix fan, or know a young Phoenix fan, all is not lost, as the online attendance is still available.

Something like this is always a difficult thing for the organisers as it’s vital that they sell enough tickets to cover the costs of putting the event on, hiring the venue, paying the creators, hiring stewards, laying on extra facilities and so much more that goes into putting something of this scale on.

Of course it’s disappointing on all sides that The Phoenix Comic underestimated the huge clamour for seeing the creators in person but it’s also understandable that it happened – after all, if they were to go too big and make a big loss on the event (and big, big losses can and have been suffered by comic event organisers in the past) then the financial security of the comic could be affected.

But full credit to Tom Fickling and his team for coming out and addressing the issues this year and it sounds like they’ve got plans for increasing the size of the event in future and even expanding it to take in other locations.

All the info you need and links for tickets are here – Phoenix Fest 2024.