games junior

comics

Introduction

Lucca is known throughout the world as a city of Art, History and Culture. Since 1966, however, Lucca has also been the undisputed City of Comics, and year after year has hosted an event dedicated to strip cartoons that is acknowledged to be the most important and exciting of its kind in Italy.

A long and impressive story that has made Lucca one of the world's capitals of comics, thanks to the enthusiasm and skill of international experts, publishers, authors, critics and fans - a position it has achieved because of its ability to identify the best, most exciting signs of things to come, first with the addition of Illustration to Comics and Animation, then, in 1993, a new important section, Lucca Games, dedicated to role-playing and simulation. Soon after, this was joined by Lucca Junior for children and, in 2000, by a multimedia section, Lucca Multimedia, which has gone from strength to strength.

Almost four hundred exhibitors from all over the world, spread out over 16,000 square metres of covered area, large exhibitions mounted in important buildings in the historic centre of Lucca, meetings and discussions, innumerable new publications, meeting with the many authors who take part in the exhibition, more than 300 accredited journalists and more than 65,000 visitors - these are the current statistics for LUCCA COMICS & GAMES, statistics that have made Lucca a must for cartoonists, game writers, publishers, scholars, opinion leaders and fans.

Together with the new Italian Museum of Comics, set up in 2001, Lucca Comics & Games is now a great cultural event representing arrival in a journey that began forty years ago. And above all, the beginning of a new adventure that makes Lucca the fantastic City of Comics and Games - in the heart of Tuscany, in the heart of Italy, in the heart of fans all over the world.

Info about '06 edition

Every year, Lucca announces a number of new ideas, all aimed at improving promotion of image communication and intelligent games. But in the eagerly-awaited year 2006, there is a special anniversary which definitely deserves a special Lucca Comics and Games Show. The 40 years of happy, indissoluble partnership – total identification, in fact – between Comics and the City.

This is a very important event for our sector and we have decided to celebrate it in a revolutionary way by leaving the old site of the convention center in Via delle Tagliate and returning to the heart of the city, where it all began forty years ago.

For the 2006 Convention, Lucca will once again welcome the world of Comics and Games, with the lovely spacious piazzas in its wonderful old town centre and the atmospheric grassy area outside the Walls being used as sites for the tents for our exhibition-market. This year, thanks to the runaway success of the most recent Shows, these will occupy a total surface area of more than 15,000 m².

The streets of Lucca will be perfect “corridors” for this large, well-organised Fair, a peaceful, enchanting area with dozens of cafes, restaurants, pizzerias, cash machines, shops, banks, public toilets, relaxation areas, and areas for music and Cosplay, as well as plenty of properly equipped places for meetings, exhibitions, events and round tables, such as halls, cinemas, theatres, exhibition spaces and the Italian Museum of Comics and Images.

This Show involves a lot of work but it is also a great, exciting project which will allow us all to experience the most complete and important fair of its kind, in the atmosphere and with the features of a grand international festival in which the general public will be able to move easily and unhurriedly between market stalls and exhibitions of original work, from meetings with authors, artists and publishers to animation screenings or playing in game competitions. At the same time, Lucca will become, as never before, a meeting place where people working in the event and cultural operators can carry out their professional activities in the best possible way, in an atmosphere which is lively, friendly and on a human scale.

All of this in the setting of the inimitable city of art and culture that is Lucca, with an organic, continuous layout of tents and pavilions (the project has arranged for them to be almost side-by-side), since our principal objective has been to maintain the logistical concentration and overall unity of the event so as not to affect the special features that make up the acknowledged winning formula of Lucca Comics & Games which attracted 64,500 visitors in 2005.

We decided to make this announcement only after we had explored all the possibilities thoroughly and taken into account any serious problems that we might have encountered in such a complex plan, and also after we had examined all the implications relating to logistics, parking and the new organisational problems involved in this “revolution”. This is why, on the strength of the result of detailed planning of the project and urged on by the town’s unconditional support, we now invite you to share our enthusiasm for a Lucca Comics & Games that will be entirely enjoyable and, above all, memorable.

Naturally, the dates of the event are still the same as those announced previously, i.e., from the 1st to the 5th of November, for reasons of visibility and convenience which will surely not escape any exhibitors.

We enclose application forms together with brief further details drawn up by the Coordinators of the section of the event in which you are particularly interested, to show you this year’s guidelines for each sector.

As ever, we are here to create a successful and totally satisfying Convention with you all and we send you our warmest good.