The Four Color Media Monitor

Catalan News announced the 42 gathering of Comic Barcelona, Spain's most prominent convention:

The largest comic book convention in Spain, Comic Barcelona, kicked off their 42nd edition on Friday in Fira de Barcelona, until Sunday.

This record-breaking edition has the highest number of artists' signings for fans and a special focus on cinema. [...]

For the younger comic books lovers, there is the 'Comic Kids' area, with a variety of activities, like a runway with kids' cosplay, a concert by Educapop and an escape room.

The festival is also honoring the late comic writer, Francisco Ibáñez, the author of Mort & Phil, born in Barcelona. In fact, this is not the only time the Catalan capital has honored Ibáñez, as it also installed some traffic lights based on Mort & Phil.

Let's hope this convention is as family friendly as the above suggests. But, there's also another panel held here that might make some wonder what it's angle will be like:

For people interested in how the comic book world works behind the scenes there are talks by professionals on topics such as grants, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and comic book translations, as well as panels with artists.

On the subject of AI, let's hope they don't take a lenient position on that, because it's only leading to farcical approaches at the expense of talented artists, some of whom might not even get many jobs in the USA industry anymore based on wokeness. If AI is allowed to replace real life human illustrators, it'll only raise questions what all the hard effort of past generations was for, if it was only going to come to this later down the line.

Update: on the subject of AI, see also this Breitbart report about Clarkesworld science-fiction magazine temporarily closing its submissions division due to a tsunami of AI-generated stories pouring in. Just think, if AI could damage science-fiction writing, what more of the same could it do to comicdom?

Labels: conventions, Europe and Asia, exhibitions, history, technology