Lucca Comics & Games

Convention
Name:	Lucca Comics & Games
Dates:	Last days of October - First days of November
Frequency:	Annual
Location:	Lucca
Type:	Pro
Focus:	Tabletop games, video games, comic books, anime and manga, cosplay, music, movies
Organization:	Lucca Crea
Founder:	Rinaldo Traini, Claude Moliterni
Founding Date:	1965
URL:	https://www.luccacomicsandgames.com/it/
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Lucca Comics & Games is the biggest convention of Italy, and the second biggest in the world after Comiket. Born as Salone Internazionale dei Comics (International Comics Saloon), from 1993 to 1995 it was known simply as Lucca Comics, which is still the short name many people use.

It's held inside the historical walls of the city. Entrance is free, but to assist to events/award cerimonies/enter the stands, a ticket is required.

History

Lucca was the host of the second edition of Salone Internazionale dei Comics, an event dedicated entirely to comics. Even if the first edition was held in Bordighera, all following editions remained in Lucca. Because of financial difficulties, it became bi-annual and changed organizers to the autonomous body Max Massimino Garnier: even then, the city of Lucca could not substain the costs, and the Salone Internazionale dei Comics moved to another location, ending the partnership with the comune in 1994.

Lucca, however, chose to create a fair in the city to keep the continuity. The new convention, Lucca Comics, focused more on the market-side of things and was more open to the public, on the contrary to the Salone which was mainly visited by authors and critics. It was originally held in the PalaTagliate, the sports hall of the city. While it was stated to focus only on comics, it developed the focus on games which started on the previous convention, with already an area dedicated to tabletop games: that's why it changed the name not long after. Very soon, though, the sports hall became to little to host all the visitors, and so in 2006, on the 20th year of celebration of the new convention, it was chosen to move the location on the historical center of the city.

When it changed location, it started to attract a lot of new visitors. Cosplayers especially, which already were present in the convention since 1997, were satisfied with the change of location, and used it to do meet-ups and photo shoots. Even if cosplaying in Italy took hold because of Star Trek, many of the cosplay present in the new location were about anime, which always had a strong hold in Italy and was having a renaissance thanks to private TVs, especially MTV, and the diffusion of internet and fan-subs: thanks to their presence, many people went to Lucca just to see the themed cosplay. This brought in more manga and anime related activities, which had a strong hold on the public, and then expanded to include more activities that the fans would recognize.

In the last years, the convention became so big that many big areas about a particular focus had to be put out of the historical center, such as the Japan Place/Japan Town (anime and manga-focused zone), or the Videogame zone. There's also been a shift towards company-organized stand, such as the one made by Netflix, Crunchyroll and Nintendo. A report of the convention is also brodcasted by Rai, the national public broadcasting company.

Activities

As of 2023, Lucca Comics and Games is organized in ten main areas: Comics, Games, Fantasy, Videogames, Junior, Music, Cosplay, Japan, Movie and Digital. Every area has not only a market-place (except for Digital and Junior), but events themed around its focus, with meet-ups with local and international stars, autograph events, first vision of audiovisual medium and similar.

During the various years of the conventions, various awards have been given, such as the Yellow Kid award (focused on the comic book industry, 1970-1999), the Gran Guinigi Award (for the Italian comic book industry, 1969-ongoing) and Game Awards for best tabletop game (1999-2004, 2009-2010)

Fun facts about the convention

Because of the time of year the convention is hold in, it often rains. Visitors have taken for granted that it will rain for at least one day during the convention, and it's seen as out of order if it isn't.

In the late 90's, the field near the sports hall was used by fans to sell rare games, manga and general import from other countries, without permission from the convention. The pratino (little field), or pratino degli abusivi (little field of unauthorized sellers) lost a lot of steam with more severe crackdown, and disappeared with the change of location.

Since it's a very visited convention, the frequency of the trains that go to the city from various routes is doubled during the fair.

One of the first italian tournament of Dungeons and Dragons was played in the convention in 1992.

In the day of the fair, many shops in the city put on decorations that fit with the nerdy theme of the conventions, and are sometimes inspired by the stand/activities near them (for example, an ice-cream shop that externally looks like a Poké Mart near the Pokémon stand, or a bakery renamed to reference One Piece near a Luffy stand).

It's the number one convention in Italy for cosplayers: the first contest was held there in 1997.

From the 90's to the first year of 2010, it was traditional for the staff of the convention to close the event with the "caccia al Macaluso" (Hunt for Macaluso), an event in which a member of the staff, auto-nominated mascotte of the event, would be hunt down in the roads of the city and captured by fellow staff members.

Many songs about the event, comical in nature, were created by visitors.

Controversies

In 2019, workers of the convention protested for the low salaries, with protests renovated in 2022, since some staff members were paid as low as 3,40 € for hour: the organization responed in 2023 with the news that the delegated responsible for security in the convention, Winch, had chosen to pay more than mininal wage, going from 6,00 € for hour to 7,00 €. The local party "Potere al popolo" replied that the pay, of 6,49 € for hour, was still too little, especially for hours of work required, and proposed a minimal wage of 10 € for hour.

Visitors have often lamented that reservations for partecipating in the convention were unsufficient and overpriced, even if the reservetion was made months in advance. Traffic also grow bigger in the zone, in an almost usubstainable manner.

In 2023, the convention recieved a free patronage from the Ambassary of Israel, which brought many comic-book italian authors, such as Zerocalcare, and organizations, such as Amnesty International, to not partecipate in the convention, and for many others to express dissent over the decision. Later, the organization said that the patronage was chosen in June, before the war started, and that it was put there because the creators of the poster of the event were israeli. The patronage was therefore kept: during the convention, a protest was held regarding it.