By Jameson Steed
For the Daily Titan

San Diego Comic-Con ended three months ago but has already sold out of its four-day Preview Night pass after raising the price from $75 to $100 for adults and $50 for juniors and seniors.

They also decided to separate the four-day passes into having or not having Preview Night access without a difference in the prices.

Comic-Con is a four-day convention held at the San Diego Convention Center in late July.

Attendees can buy single-day passes which generally range from $20 to $30 for adults and $10 to $20 for juniors and seniors, depending on what day they attend.

Those who buy passes for all four days are granted access to Preview Night, when they can walk the convention hall the night before the convention.

Over the past couple of years, Preview Night has hosted special viewings of upcoming shows.

This year Warner Brothers brought the pilots of “Vampire Diaries,” “V” and “Human Target” and showed them to a packed ballroom 20 months before any of these pilots aired. Producer J.J. Abrams premiered “Fringe” during Comic-Con 2008’s Preview Night.

Non-preview passes have not sold out and the single-day passes have not gone on sale.

Last year, the four-day passes sold out around March, a little after the single-day passes had gone on sale.

This year fans criticized Preview Night, which is generally light in crowds, as being over-packed.

“We were finding that Preview Night was very crowded, and we only have a finite amount of space,” said David Glanzer, Comic-Con International’s director of marketing and public relations.

Four-day badges giving access to Preview Night sold out in September, Glanzer said.

Regarding the price increase on entry, Glanzer said the problems the convention is facing is flat income. “While our expenses begin to rise, our income does not. We’ve reached out to sponsors,” Glanzer said.

Director of the new Long Beach Comic Con, Martha Donato, believes the price change is an adjustment to the current economic environment.

“We have great respect for the SDCC organization, and knowing how much it costs to run a show the size and scope of Comic-Con, we understand their position,” Donato said. “They’re giving the attendees time to prepare for the price increase, and the 2010 show will doubtless be as much fun as ever.”

San Diego Comic-Con has already come under fire from long-time fans who feel the convention neglects comics and now caters to movies, television shows and holding panels for fandoms such as “Twilight.”

At this year’s convention, thousands of screaming girls and their mothers filled Hall H for the “New Moon” panel held Thursday after waiting in line since Tuesday night. Questions like, “Boxers, briefs or nothing?” were asked of stars Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner by women who a Comic-Con regular dubbed “TwiMoms.”

“It’s become very apparent that comics have become a side note to all the big glamour brought in by Hollywood and general big businesses,” said Matthew Meylikhov, the editor-in-chief of Multiversity Comics, a blog site that covers all things comic-related.

Senior Editor of Collider.com Matt Goldberg sees the price increase as a raising cost of staying at the San Diego Convention Center.

“What this means is that when it comes time for Comic-Con International to renew their contract with the San Diego Convention Center, CCI is probably going to look somewhere else,” Goldberg said.

Goldberg believes that the biggest candidates are Los Angeles, for its proximity to the studios, or Las Vegas because it can handle more people.

Goldberg doesn’t think the price raise will have any effect on the other conventions but said, “Tickets are going to sell out faster and likely cost more” as time goes on.

“This will drive the people who really want to go and hear their favorite comic creators talk and enjoy comic nerdery in all its finest to go to (smaller conventions) instead of San Diego Comic-Con,” Meylikhov said. “That makes me really happy. It’s without a doubt that you’ll see me at places like New York Comic Con but never at San Diego Comic-Con for that exact reason.”

Glanzer addressed the rumors of Comic-Con moving from San Diego to Los Angeles or Las Vegas.
“We have a contract (in San Diego) until 2012,” Glanzer said. We’re hoping the city would move forward with its expansions (of the convention center).”

He further said that some of the ideas for expanding the space in which the convention could be held would be erect tents, which Glanzer said would increase costs.

“We want to make this pleasurable … We want to try to stay in San Diego as long as we can,” Glanzer said.

Features Editor Christine Amarantus contributed to this article.