On July 24, 1964, the first official comic book convention was held at the Workman’s Circle Building in New York City, attracting slightly over one hundred fans for a single day of limited activities. Other cities soon followed – expanding the scope of a comic con in the process – and it wasn’t long before San Diego Comic-Con eclipsed not only New York but the rest of the country when it came to popular culture conventions.
In 2006, the for-profit company ReedPop decided to reclaim New York City’s stature when it came to cons, resurrecting a New York Comic Con for the first time in decades. By the time 2013 rolled around, New York had overtaken San Diego in overall attendance, emerging as the preeminent comic con on the East Coast in the process.
In addition to the traditional elements of a pop culture convention, New York Comic Con also offers educational programming organized by both the New York Public Library and New York City Public Schools. In 2025, that programming dovetailed with the con itself when three local educators discussed how they were able to transport Comic Con from the Javits Convention Center into their facilities during a panel simply entitled “Comic Con in Your School.”
“We really wanted this experience to be similar to what we have experienced over the last decade coming to Comic Con for our students,” Will Bochbot said of Marine Park Comic Con, which he co-organized with fellow teacher Mike Devito at a junior high school in South Brooklyn. “Freedom of expression, being able to exhibit things in different ways, trying to show they’re learning in different ways. So a lot of the things we tried to design really came from what we see here in Comic Con.”
In addition to Marine Park Comic Con, New York City public schools have also sponsored King Con – co-founded by Teresa Tartaglione and Michael Bordwell at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Educational Campus – and Fan Faire, which has been a regular feature at the High School of Art and Design since 2019. Although the size of each con differed, from a single gymnasium to an entire library to all eight floors of Art and Design, the activities at the three events not only mirrored each other but New York Comic Con as well.
“We knew exactly what we wanted,” Teresa Tartaglione said of King Con. “We wanted teachers, we wanted lanyards, we wanted panelists. We wanted an artist alley. We wanted the New York Public Library to team with us as much as possible. They were instrumental. We have two branches of the New York Public Library right across the street from our school. And my branch librarian, her name is Michelle, she does the Riverside library, and she is phenomenal. She was like, alright, I’m just going to call a bunch of comic book people, and I’m going to reach out to a bunch of people so they can table.”
The list of comic book guests included artists Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez and Julio Anta, while Walter Greason and Tim Fielder – who wrote/illustrated The Graphic History of Hip Hop – held a panel on the musical genre in addition to greeting attendees at their table.
“What was great about King Con, there was not just an area with booths but there was activities,” Melissa Jacobs, Director of Library Services at NYC Public Schools, explained. “You had a Dungeons & Dragons game set up, you had trivia. There was always something going on. And so the library served as this kind of entry place to all things magical, and then you walk into the hallway and there’s even more stuff. And then you walk into a multipurpose room…. The multipurpose room had so many multipurposes. There’s cosplay, and there’s things going on there that students can really build on their interests, and I think that was really exciting for them to see it. Just to be introduced to things.”
While Will Bochbot and Mike Devito, as well as Teresa Tartaglione and Michael Bordwell, created Marine Park Comic Con and King Con from scratch, Max Sugiura – principal of the High School of Art and Design – inherited his school’s comic con.
“Fan Faire, which is the Art and Design comic con event, was created one year before I arrived by our (Parent-Teacher Association),” he explained at New York Comic Con. “It just so happens that Art and Design is now in almost it’s ninetieth year of existence. It used to be an apprentice school for all ranges of visual arts. And the founder of Fan Faire were the PTA presidents and executive board members, Miguel Chavez and Saori Adams. Saori is the daughter (in law) of Neal Adams, of Batman/Superman fame. And our school has a storied legacy of many, many great cartoonists, illustrators, who come to our hallways and contribute to the event.”
The High School of Art and Design does indeed have a deep roster of alumni to pull from for Fan Faire, including Art Spiegelman, creator of Maus, the first graphic novel to ever win a Pulitzer Prize. Spiegelman, like other graduates of Art and Design, has made regular appearances at Fan Faire.
“We have no problem calling in folks from any industry related to our students’ interest and holding panel discussions,” Max Sugiura said. “We have portfolio reviews. We have a cosplay competition. I get to be the judge. We invite the public but we also invite our alumni and most importantly, in addition to our current student population, we invite perspective families and children who have yet to experience both comic con at this level but also what Art and Design High School represents in and of itself. Because it is the largest visual arts focused high school in New York City and frankly – and not to get too punchy about it – but also the best one on the East Coast.”
Because of the school’s focus on the arts, Fan Faire has a slightly different educational agenda than Marine Park Comic Con and King Con. “This event was a great opportunity for us – as it is ongoing – to cultivate a wider set of skills when it comes to artists being independent entrepreneurs, and understanding that there is a way forward, that you can make a living as an artist,” Sugiura explained. “But you need to be out there, and you need to be meeting people. You need to be building relationships. So that’s really the core of what Fan Faire is.”
When it came to education at Marine Park Comic Con, Will Bochbot and Mike Devito borrowed from the New York City Public Schools Civics for All Comics Group – which has been publishing original comic books since 2020 – by having students create their own comic book on a civil rights issue of their choice.
“This was not a very traditional class, traditional teaching style,” Bochbot said. “Very much on their own project-based learning, trying to put their words, their ideas, on the paper and expressing it. I know Mike and our eighth grade also did historical comic books, so there was getting information, sourcing, to kind of create the stories around what they were trying to show us. There was a historical comic book completely on mummification of a pharaoh, so that was cool.”
Copies of each comic book were made available at various booths located throughout Marine Park Comic Con, allowing students to share their work with each other. By the end of the day, all the copies had been snatched up.
“Our whole goal was to make a joyful event,” Teresa Tartaglione said of the primary mission for King Con. “Our schools are overwhelmingly Title 1. Comic Con is not a cheap ticket. We wanted to make sure that our students could get that experience.”
Max Sugiura said that duplicating the experience of a popular culture convention is at the forefront of Fan Faire as well. “The reason why Comic Con is so beautiful is not just because people are seeing the things that they love but because they’re coming together to share that love,” he explained. “And if we don’t have that, what’s the point of an education system in the first place?”
For New York City Public Schools, the question is thankfully irrelevant.
Anthony Letizia