FlameCon 2026 Redefines Queer Fandom

The 2026 edition of the LGBTQ+ comics convention Flame Con took over the fifth floor of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square on August 15–16, complete with panels, signings, gaming areas, and a cosplay contest.

The day before the annual gathering kicked off, Marvel Studios had revealed the cast of its upcoming X-Men reboot film at Disney’s own D23 convention. But the relatively subdued reaction to the news at this year’s Flame Con made clear that comics fandom no longer means breathlessly hanging onto Disney’s corporate press releases.

That’s not to say X-Men, which has long been particularly popular among queer comics fans, didn’t have a notable presence at Flame Con. A couple X-Men characters were represented at the cosplay contest (though not any more than the Australian animated series The Amazing Digital Circus). A Comics Reading Comics panel on Saturday featured queer comedians doing campy readings of comic books featuring Scarlet Witch, while a panel with the hosts of the podcast Mutant Studies 101 focused on a relatively obscure X-Men comic storyline from 2003.

Yet another queer X-Men podcast,Cerebro, also held a panel on Saturday, where host Connor Goldsmith discussed his in-progress Dark Horse comic, Did You Hear About Mimi Green, a body horror media satire with art by frequent Cerebro guest Josh Cornillon.

“When the people in this room heard ‘Oh, those two guys from the X-Men podcast I love so much are doing a comic book,’ I don’t think anyone in a million years would think this is what that comic would look like,” panel moderator Anthony Oliveira remarked.

“That was part of the goal,” Goldsmith admitted.

“It was important for both of us,” Cornillon added, “that this doesn’t look like anything else on the stands right now.”

Though comics were centerstage at Flame Con, romance also had a significant presence at the event. Rachel Reid’s gay hockey romance Heated Rivalry, and its recent TV adaptation, was the subject of three distinct programs, all of which were fan-led.

On the main stage on Saturday afternoon, cosplayer Heather Boddy hosted a core workout designed to help attendees get strong like beloved fictional hockey players Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. Early Sunday afternoon, there was a fan-organized meetup focused on bringing Heated Rivalry fans together with rans of another queer romance, Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue.

The main event came later on Saturday, with a presentation by Ezra Crimmen—a self-proclaimed hockey fan—about Heated Rivalry and its impact on pop culture.

Crimmen spoke about the NHL’s response to Heated Rivalry’s success, calling it “delayed, if not nonexistent.” According to Crimmen, the only NHL team to acknowledge the phenomenon has been the Ottawa Senators who, like the books and TV show, are Canadian; earlier this year, the team created and sold jerseys with the characters’ names and numbers, with proceeds going to a local LGBTQ+ hockey rec league.

But other corners of the sports world, Crimmen noted, are now taking notice: later this month, for instance, the Boston Red Sox are teaming with Harlequin to host a “Heated Rivalry Night.” Crimmen also speculated that the success of the show helped Ngozi Ukazu’s long-running webcomicCheck, Please!, another gay hockey romance, get optioned for television earlier this year.

But Heated Rivalry wasn’t the only queer romance celebrated at Flame Con. At the Queer Modern Romance panel moderated by Michele Kirichanskaya (Ace Notes), authors Page Powars (But I Hate Him), Adeline Kon (Just Between Us), Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue), and Ally North (Bloom Town) stressed the importance of writing without too much regard for market trends.

Kon released their graphic novel Just Between Us, about two rival figure skaters, earlier this year, but said it had been in the works since the 2018 Winter Olympics. While promoting the book, they named Heated Rivalry as a comparable title, but got pushback from online commenters who believed they should choose a comp title with lesbians instead.

“People were mad because it’s YA, but my book is about two characters who are rivals at the top of their sports, and that’s the plot of Heated Rivalry,” Kon said. “I wanted my voice and people with my background to be represented [in that kind of story], too.”

Kirichanskaya asked panelists for their thoughts on the popularity of gay male romance novels compared to other queer identities, and all writers argued for more queer stories to be published in general. McQuiston, who also wrote the sapphic romance One Last Stop, lamented a lack of popular sapphic romances in particular.

“That bums me out,” they said of the dearth, “because isn’t the whole point of books empathy and curiosity, and learning about experiences, living vicariously, and escaping your own point of view?”

In keeping with its DIY sensibility, Flame Con also offered various programs for attendees who are creators themselves. A dedicated mentorship room, for instance, included illustration portfolio review sessions and Q&As about comics publishing with Tea Fougner, executive editor at BOOM! Studios, while writer Klaudia Amenabar moderated a panel with agents Claire Draper (Au Literary Management), Shannon Lechon (Azantian Literary), Maria Regina Napolitano (KT Literary) about how to work with a literary agent as an independent author or comics creator.

One of the most popular events of the weekend was a live edition of Drawfee, a weekly YouTube show where hosts Nathan Yaffe, Jacob Andrews, and Julia Lepetit participate in drawing challenges. More than 100 attendees submitted characters like Scooby Doo and Gandalf to a Google Form for the hosts to draw under various constraints.

Ultimately, the weekend-long event was a celebration not only of queer art, but of queer fans making their ownart. Connor Goldsmith’s closing words on the Cerebro panel perhaps best summed up the energy at this year’s Flame Con.

As a public-facing fan of X-Men who went on to pursue comics himself, he said, “it means a lot that people who listened to us talk about other people’s stuff showed up for our own stuff.”