Flame Con, the World’s Largest Queer Comic Convention, Announces Tenth Annual Expo
Tenth Anniversary Expo to Take Place in New York City at The Sheraton Times Square Hotel on August 17-18, 2024
New York, New York – February 5, 2024 – Flame Con, created and produced by the LGBTQ+ non-profit Geeks OUT, celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. The tenth annual Flame Con expo will take place on August 17 - 18at the Sheraton Times Square Hotel in New York City. Featuring a comics, arts and entertainment expo and showcasing creators and special guests from all corners of the LGBTQ+ community of fans, the two-day venture will include thoughtful discussions, exclusive performances, cosplay and more.
Tickets for the con are now available HERE.
“For years, the constant refrain we’d hear attending other conventions was ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if..?,’ says Nic Gitau, President of Geeks OUT. “‘Wouldn’t it be cool if… there was a safe space for LGBTQ+ fans to connect?’ or ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if… there was a show that proved audiences were hungry for unapologetically queer storytelling?’ Over the last ten years Flame Con has become a home for queer fans, championed queer stories, and celebrated queer creators as their careers have sparked and exploded. We're grateful for a community that's grown exponentially each year and we're excited to gather the best of LGBTQ+ comics and pop culture once more, in what will be a standout 10th anniversary show."
Flame Con is excited to announce Molly Knox Ostertag as the first of its special guests for this year’s expo. Molly Knox Ostertag is the acclaimed ABA Indies and New York Times bestselling graphic novel author-illustrator of The Deep Dark, The Girl from the Sea, and the Witch Boy trilogy: The Witch Boy, The Hidden Witch, and The Midwinter Witch, as well as a writer for animation. An animated musical adaptation of The Witch Boy has been announced by Netflix.
To celebrate the expo and its special anniversary, Fireball: The Official Flame Con After Party will be held on Saturday, August 17 at Hell’s Kitchen’s Industry bar. The event will be hosted by Megami, cast member in the current season 16 of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Get tickets for the tenth annual Flame Con and the Fireball After Party HERE.
Last year’s con featured many queer-oriented vendors, creators, and special guests including Maia Kobabe (Gender Queer: A Memoir), Terry Blas (Rick and Morty, Steven Universe), Alyssa Wong (Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, Batman: Urban Legends), and Stephanie Williams (Nubia and the Amazons). Among the panels and presentations held last year were “Demystifying Game Design,” “How to Make Your Independent Queer Comic,” and “What A DRAG!: A Panel on Drag and Cosplay.” The expo also featured a live edition of host Connor Goldsmith’s CEREBRO podcast and a special LGBTQ+ comedy showcase with a lineup that included Calvin Cato (Netflix) and Veronica Garza (MTV, NPR).
“Flame Con is always my favorite convention of the year!,” says Josh Trujillo (Blue Beetle, Hulkling& Wiccan), Flame Con guest and comics writer and designer. “It’s a unique opportunity to meet with friends, peers, and fans in a more intimate setting. The stories we share as queer people can be so personal, and it means the world to know that readers connect with it.”
GLAAD Award-winning author and film programmer Anthony Oliveira (Steven Universe) shares, “Flame Con is easily my favorite comic convention. Nowhere else feels so much like home. It feels like someone took all the best parts of a con and just kept those, like if you made a whole con out of the weird queer section of every other expo’s Artist Alley!”
Tickets to Flame Con are available through Eventbrite and will feature daily and weekend passes, as well as passes to the official 2024 Flame Con party. Tickets can be purchased at flamecon2024.eventbrite.com.
Exhibitor table sales dates will launch later this month. Stay tuned for announcements.
For more information on Flame Con, please visit www.flamecon.org and for more information on Geeks OUT, please visit www.geeksout.org
Neil Patrick Harris to Star in Uncoupled | Streaming July 29 on Netflix
Neil Patrick Harris | Santiago Felipe / Getty Images
Creators & Executive Producers: Darren Star (Sex and the City, Emily In Paris) and Jeffrey Richman (Modern Family, Frasier) globally premiere Uncoupled, starring Neil Patrick Harris July 29, 2022 on Netflix with eight-30 min. episodes
Michael (Neil Patrick Harris) thought his life was perfect until his husband blindsides him by walking out the door after 17 years. Overnight, Michael has to confront two nightmares - losing what he thought was his soulmate and suddenly finding himself a single gay man in his mid-forties in New York City.
Executive Producers: Tony Hernandez (Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Younger) and Lilly Burns (Emily in Paris, Younger) of Jax Media, Neil Patrick Harris.
Studio: MTV Entertainment Studios
Review to follow release.
Darren Star & Neil Patrick Harris | Stefanie Keenan / WireImage
Neil Patrick Harris | Source: Fandom
Dad Throws Teen Party to Celebrate Her First Period.
Ok, not exactly, but not-not exactly.
The Karuk Tribe (Northern California) have long performed a ceremony called a Ihuk. Not familiar?, neither was I. Ihuk is a coming of age celebration for a young girl’s transitions into womanhood following her first menstrual cycle. Not something many girl’s might want announced, let alone celebrated with friends and family.
But why is the subject of menstruation taboo?
Long Line of Ladies is a documentary short directed by Rayka Zehtabchi and Shaandiin Tome. While both fairly young, they’re no amateurs to filmmaking.
Rayka Zehtabchi is an award-winning director. In fact, her film Period. End of Sentence (available on Netflix) made her the first Iranian woman to win an Oscar. Shaandiin Tome has some bragging rights of her own. Her award-winning, break-out short film "Mud (Hashtł’ishnii)" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018.
Loves it.
We got the opportunity to ask some questions to these accomplished and talented directors about their new documentary short, Long Line of Ladies, being featured this March at SXSW 2022.
Pinkies up, now sip!
Directors: Shaandiin Tome & Rayka Zehtabchi
What inspired you to make this documentary?
This documentary has been a long time coming. On Rayka’s side, this short doc is almost like a reprise, but with a different approach, on menstrual equity in communities. Her short documentary Period. End of Sentence., was an exploration into a community that treats menstruation as taboo. With the help of The Pad Project, there was the wish to make something that was more of a celebration rather than a detriment. On my (Shaandiin’s) side, I have been in the space of Indigenous Film and Media since I’ve started my career. So, I’m always on a trajectory of finding ways to uplift and make the Indigenous narrative known and celebrated.
How did you first hear about The Karuk Tribe and Ihuk.
Rayka did a lot of research, I think weeks or months, of exploring different communities that celebrated menstruation. She found a website that was a recent documentation of the Ihuk ceremony by Ty’ithreeha Allen; it was from her perspective, having recently gone through it. Rayka reached out to Pimm Allen (her mom) and then found out that she had another daughter, Ahty, that was about to go through her ceremony. So, the stars aligned in such a lovely way for us to begin meeting with the family and finding ways to listen and understand more of their story.
Was it a culture shock to see something that is not openly discussed be celebrated?
Speaking more for myself (Shaandiin), it wasn’t as much of a culture shock. I am Diné (Navajo), and we have a similar coming of age ceremony called the Kinaaldá. However, because of boarding schools, my family wasn’t as established in tradition, and I opted out of mine because of how intimidating I thought it was. I think if I saw something like this when I was younger, it would have inspired me to take pride in who I was at the time and delve deeper into what it meant for me to be a young Diné woman. It’s astonishing to see a family that is so in tune to who they are and how they pass knowledge to their children; I think a lot of what people might see as a culture shock isn’t necessarily just how menstruation is talked about openly, but how the whole community is so much different than what we see in a western culture.
What do you hope this documentary helps accomplish for young girls and the public’s perception of menstruation?
Ahty should be the one to answer this question. She is the reason this whole project came together, and all because she wanted to put a positive image out there of what it means to be a young woman coming of age. Rayka and I have talked about it a lot where we wish we could grow up again, knowing what we have learned from this process. Overall, this documentary helps create a perspective of how a whole community comes together to uplift a woman, and she isn’t able to go through this process alone. I think that speaks for what a lot of young women are hoping for at this time in their lives; it’s not an individual taking. It takes a strong community.
Any upcoming projects we should look out for?
We are always working, haha. But we actually have a similar journey in wanting to go back to our originating passion of film, narrative! We have been on a fortunate journey of being able to document life in front of us, but we also both love to craft worlds and find expression through them. So hopefully, we will both be working on narrative projects (but if I had to bet, Rayka will have something out sooner than me!)
So let's hear it for the girls!… and these accomplished young filmmakers who took it upon themselves to share a culture and tradition that celebrates, uplifts, and makes women feel seen, respected, and included. Let’s see to it that one day conversations like these will be normalized. Period.
Long Line of Ladies premiered at the 2022 Sundance Festival and is scheduled for SXSW 2022:
March 13, 2022, 11:30 AM Rollins Theatre at The Long Center
March 14, 2022, 9:00 AM Online
March 17, 2022, 6:45 PM Alamo Drafthouse Lamar D
