What’s It Like Being At Lake Como Comic Art Festival?

Most of us are lucky to make it down to our local city’s comic convention. So being able to travel to northern Italy to spend a weekend with some comics elite is beyond most fan’s dreams. Since most of us won’t ever make that journey, here’s a photo collection to make it feel like your on the show floor at Cernobbio.

You can’t have lunch or a gelato in town without running into Frank Cho or Bill Sienkiewicz taking photos of the local sculptures or sitting at a table next to Warren Louw, who was busy working on a beautiful Wonder Woman sketch cover.

Inside the convention hall, most of the artists were busy sketching, painting, or signing when they weren’t catching up with each other. For the fans, many of them were there to see J. Scott Campbell – and hoping against hope that he would make it to their commission request. Dave McKean was also busy as he took the time to sketch in virtually every book that fans brought to him or bought at his table.

Simone Bianchi was hard at work the entire weekend paining a Doctor Doom or selling a massive Spider-Man that was displayed in his booth. And, just as at last year’s festival, Frank Quitely sketched his way through many an All-Star Superman while Gabriel Dell’Otto delivered a pair of stellar Spider-Man commissions.

Of course, the ability to connect with artists is one of the hallmarks of LCCAF. You would never have the opportunity to have an in-depth conversation with superstars like Adi Granov or Tula Lotay at most cons. It also makes you privy to some behind-the-scenes sausage making. (The intent here is not to embarrass anyone, but to give you a sense of the show and its intimacy. So we won’t be using any names here,)

Here’s what you missed:

• One artist was telling us the story about how someone accused him online of using AI because the character he was drawing had only three fingers and a thumb. Of course, the character was the Thing, who is only supposed to have three fingers and a thumb.
• Another artist told a group of us around his table that he had been blackballed by Marvel because he upset Star Wars head Kathleen Kennedy with some sexy Princess Leia illustrations.
• An artist with a particularly long line for sketches and signatures wasn’t doing himself any favors by very carefully – and slowly – choosing the precise color of pen to sign each individual comic.
• The show only ran Saturday and Sunday (Friday is just a reception with no art changing hands), but some artists barely made it to their booths.
• One art rep for a well know artist not in attendance was going around the festival with his client’s work making some deals.
• Every con has the problem of exhibitors taking advantage of their access to jump in an artist’s line before the show opens. LCCAF co-founder Arnaud Lapeyre saw a pair at the front of Quitely’s Sunday line and asked them to step out.
• Speaking of getting in line, the amount of line cutting early on Saturday reached near epidemic levels. For example, I was still jetlagged, so I got into line at 4 am, which put me second in line. (I had no real agenda; for me half the fun is hanging out in line with people I only see one time a year.) By the time I got to into the festival hall, I was 20th. Lapeyre is aware of the issue (it’s not a new one and certainly not unique to LCCAF) and is looking at changing up the queue for 2026.