LA Comic Con parking prices cause Halloween horror

This weekend it was the Los Angeles Comic Con, down at the LA Convention Center. The show has a long history, starting out as a Stan lee-branded event, but has become something of a fixture over the Halloween weekend, with a strong horror emphasis. 

But perhaps the most terrifying thing about the weekend was the price for parking in the convention center garage: $60. The exorbitant price drew lots of social media takes over the weekend, and even helped dissuade one exhibitor from returning on Sunday, preferring to go live on his WhatNot channel:

As artist Jamie Sullivan wrote on Threads:

Well, what a crazy weekend so far. LA Comic-Con. Halloween. Lots of rain. Daylight savings. And $60 parking. A LOT to take in to be sure. We’re extremely appreciative to Karen and the entire staff at LACC, but with the cost of gas, the incredibly expensive parking, and what we made through the end of today, Erin, myself, and our bank account had to make the very difficult decision to not go back to the show for Sunday. 

We just legitimately didn’t have the money to pay for the gas and parking for another day. So tomorrow brings a fresh outlook. I’m diving head first into a massive project with more NDAs than I care to think about. And we’ve got our Whatnot Stream at 4pm! And boy o’ boy, do we have some amazing stuff planned for all of you. Lots and lots of surprises! 

I don’t know Sullivan personally, but he has a solid body of work for IDW, Skybound, Upper Deck, etc. While one artist is just an anecdote, the idea that going live on WhatNot is more profitable than setting up at a comic con is definitely Peak 2026 and fits in with our recent brooding over the economics of Artist Alley in general. 

Another comment about LACC this year was that Artist Alley was in yet another parking garage, as it was last year. I’ve only been to the new convention center a few times so I don’t have the layout memorized, so I’m not sure how this really stacks up. The floor plan shows Artist Alley in a large space long with autographs and photo ops. I don’t think it’s actually a parking garage, but a lot of people feel like it is, and that itself is telling. 

I am not car equipped so I don’t know what normal parking prices are in SoCal these days, but $60 seems ridiculous. And The Beat’s own Nikita Francoisposted another garage that had jacked up the price to $80!!! Adding this on to the price of buying a ticket – it’s actually MORE than the price of a ticket to the show!!! – makes attending even more out of reach for fans on a budget. Or maybe just FANS, period. There is a Metro stop not far from the convention center, which costs less than $2 a ride, BTW. 

Of course, the con had other things to offer and a lot of people also had a good time. (People on socal media are pre primed to complain about everything, so I take it with a grain of salt.)

For instance, it featured the debut of Henverine! 

Comic Con LA has begun! Come down to Kenta Hall AA K39! I’ll give you a shave with my claws!

A report at The Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student paper, captured the more positive vibes:

Artist Don Ho said he returns to Comic Con every year for the fans. This year marks the comic artist’s 15th time attending, and he added that he enjoys meeting readers, who get excited to put a face to the name and ask questions about his work. Ho set up a booth in Artist Alley with his wife, who sells perler bead pixelated art alongside Ho’s comic art. He said Comic Con offers her the chance to turn her hobby into something more.

“Sometimes a lot of people are afraid to express themselves,” Ho said. “But when you come here, everyone is expressing whatever they want.”

This is what comic con is all about, after all.