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Lucca Comics & Games

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43°48′N 10°30′E / 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, Tuscany
CountryItaly
Inaugurated1965
Attendance319,926 in 2022[1] [2]
Organized byComune of Lucca, through the limited company "Lucca Crea Srl",[3] in which flew the previous Srl " Lucca Comics & Games" and "Lucca Polo Fiere e Congressi" [4]
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

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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 [fr] (forming the International Congress of Cartoonists and Animators) in 1965 in Bordighera.[5][6] 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.

For the first time, the 2024 edition will see the poster of the fair designed by the famous Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano, the illustrator of the Final Fantasy series. The three event posters created by Yoshitaka Amano are inspired by the works of Giacomo Puccini, the centenary of whose death occurs this year.

  • The first poster Ouverture inspired by the dedicated to the opera Tosca by Giacomo Puccini.
  • The second poster Crescendo inspired by the dedicated to Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini.
  • The third final poster, Finale Fantastico an unpublished work by Amano that will be created during the event.

Awards

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

Comics awards

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Main article: Yellow Kid Award

From 1970 to 1992, 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. Before taking on the name "Yellow Kid", the Lucca prize was known as the "Gran Guinigis" (named after Lucca's Guinigi Tower).

The Yellow Kid Awards were presented at the Salone Internazionale del Comics (International Comics and Cartooning Exhibition) in Rome from 1994 to 2005, at which point the Yellow Kid Awards were retired.

In 2006, Lucca Comics & Games brought back the Gran Guinigi as a career accomplishment award.[citation needed]

In 2020, as the festival redubbed itself "Lucca Changes" amidst a shift to virtual programming during the COVID-19 pandemic,[7] the awards shifted to a new system under the umbrella term Lucca Comics Awards, consisting of nine categories (three Yellow Kids, five Gran Guinigis, and one Stefano Beani Award named for a former festival director), "regardless of nationality, editorial format or distribution method".[8]

In 2024, a special mention was awarded in an emotional moment to Mahasen Al-Khateeb, Palestinan illustrator and character designer killed in an Israeli bombardment in her home town of Gaza.[9][10]

Yellow Kid Award recipients

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Main article: Yellow Kid Awards

Gran Guinigi recipients

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From 2006.

Games awards

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References

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  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 Crea
  4. ^ Lucca Comics & Games Srl - Chi siamo
  5. ^ "Lucca 9", Bang! #11 (1974), p. 55.
  6. ^ Pasamonik, Didier. "Disparition de Claude Moliterni, fondateur du Festival d'Angoulême", ActuaBD (21 January 2009). (in French)
  7. ^ "Che cos'è Lucca Comics & Games - edizione Changes". Retrieved 3 June 2021.
  8. ^ Bottalico, Domenico (24 October 2020). "Lucca Comics Awards i nuovi "Oscar del Fumetto" a Lucca Changes". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
  9. ^ "Passerella di premiazioni al Teatro del Giglio: tutti i riconoscimenti 2024 di Lucca Comics and Games". Luccaindiretta (in Italian). 31 October 2024. Retrieved 10 November 2024.
  10. ^ "Over 50 killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza, including children". Ahram Online. 19 October 2024.
  11. ^ "Best of Show: i vincitori". Lucca Comics & Games 2011 (in Italian). Retrieved 26 August 2019.
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