Let's be honest — many webcomic creators are fans of anime, video games, etc. Thus, when they look at their schedule and notice a convention rolling into town, it's entirely possible that said artist will want to visit it. There are no shortages of reasons for this:
- It's a great way to connect with fans and other similar-minded people
- They can make money selling merchandise related to their comic
- The comic gets more exposure, resulting in more readers telling their friends about it and/or buying their merchandise, etc.
- An artist can make friends with other artists, providing link exchanges, networking, et al.
- It's their freaking convention (okay, so this one just applies to PAX and Digital Overload, but still).
Naturally, like most people who attend a convention, they'll want to tell everyone about it, including their readers. This gave rise to the Con Recap issue.
Webcomics that are Life Embellished, Journal Comic or Joke A Day format will stick these in anywhere, while some fantasy-based comics will take a break from the story to recap the convention (which could mean no updating for the duration of the convention). If it does update during a convention, you can expect a filler strip or two.
Comics that recap conventions:
- Parodied in And Shine Heaven Now, with one character spending a whole storyline
recapping a convention...of fellow religious fanatics, including Bible cosplayers and great deals on holy water.
- Applegeeks
- Comedity
- Ctrl+Alt+Del
- Dominic Deegan
- El Goonish Shive
- Enjuhneer has done several of these, usually for Genericon but also recently for PAX East.
- Humon Comics - Humon has drawn a series of cartoons describing her experiences at conventions as a creator. Diva Humon describes the way convention organisers (at the better cons) have fallen over backward to look after her needs.
- Insecticomics
- Megatokyo
- Mac Hall
- The Sunday comics of Narbonic were always for extra material or separate stories, so Shaenon's Con Recaps went in there. Ultimately, this included special recaps of the annual Narbonicons.
- Overcompensating
- Penny Arcade, with filler strips
- VG Cats
- Weregeek
- Least I Could Do has this in more recent times in the form of "Con Tales (Woo-ooo!)"
