River Cinemas Grand Forks Comic Con 2025

After moving back to Grand Forks, North Dakota a few months ago I’ve noticed many changes. The Greater Grand Forks area now has a population of around 100k people. There are a lot more local activities for adults and families than there were when I lived here up until the early 2000s. When I saw that Grand Forks was holding a Comic Con this August 9th and 10th - I had to buy tickets.

The last comic book event I’ve been to was almost 10 years ago. I created a successful indie sci-fi comic book series that had 2 funded Kickstarters, several Comic Cons and book signing events at stores between 2012 and 2016. I sold about 5,000 copies digitally and in print. That being said, I was really excited to attend this Comic Con in my hometown. If you’re curious, tickets were only $10 and it was held at the Alerus Center (Home of The University of North Dakota Football Team).

Overall, I will cover and rate some key areas like Cosplay, comic book creator attendance, toys and stuff for kids, gaming, food, and other noteworthy mentions. However, I will say that my #1 goal for attending this event was to speak with other comic book creators, writers, and artists - possibly local talent.

As expected, this was definitely a smaller local sized Comic Con. They only used about half of the available space on the Alerus Center football field. There’s definitely room for expansion in the future.

Cosplay Costumes

One of the biggest areas that gives a Comic Con event more of a “fun factor” are all of the cosplay costumes. At this local event, this was definitely the area that got the most participation. There were soo many people with well designed costumes.

The two that I would say were the best (unfortunately, I didn’t get their pictures) were a blue jedi and a storm trooper from Star Wars, and a large space marine costume from the game War Hammer.

If you enjoy seeing cosplay costumes or dressing up yourselves, this aspect of the Comic Con made it really fun to attend. People were very friendly and available for pictures.

Comic Book Publishers and Creators

So, overall this part of the Comic Con was a disappointment for me. There were a few regional comic book publishers and collectables vendors that had booths. However, I didn’t see any local talent (Creators, Writers, or Artists) at this Comic Con.

Also, the genre’s of the few publishers and collectables vendors weren’t selling anything I was interested in. They were more horror genre. I’m mostly interested in Sci-Fi, Action, and Adventure.

In any future comic cons, I would highly recommend doing outreach to bring several creators, writers, and artists from the region. I’m not sure what pricing is for a booth at this event, but for these smaller venues its usually less than $500 max.

With having the University of North Dakota (14k Students) here in Grand Forks - adding some regionally talent in attendance would definitely be a boon for the local comic book and entertainment ecosystem, as well as the creative career fields.

Toys and Kids Stuff

There were a lot of families, kids, and teenagers in attendance. They definitely all seemed to be having a fun time. There were many vendors focused on clothing, toys, and merch geared towards kids and teenagers. Prices seemed reasonable. It was the collectable items that were fairly expensive.

However, with a cost of only $10 per person to attend Grand Forks Comic Con, this was an easy win for parents to have a fun-filled afternoon with their kids.

Gaming Section

There was a large PC and Console gaming section on the back wall (seem in the below image). I thought this was a fun area for people that are gamers. I personally think that Grand Forks could use a PC gaming internet cafe, so I found this section interesting and a great area for people to chill for an hour if they planned on attending the entire day or an afternoon.

Food Vendors

With all of the kids, teenagers, parents, and adults in attendance - the aspect of food was a big strikeout at this event. You can barely see it in the far back left side of this image. There is one small stand with large pretzels and soda. Yet, they had dozens of large circular tables for people to chat, eat, and relax across from it. This commons area stretch all the way back several aisles.

They could have made so much money having a local food vendor like the Red Pepper here, cotton candy stands, a sandwich stand, gourmet food vendors, or any other local food shops. As a marketer, I thought this was a big revenue miss. It was also a lost opportunity for local small business food vendors to make some sales and build more local brand awareness.

Other Fun Stuff

There were a few random booths that took advantage of this opportunity to be in front of the thousands of people that attended. Two such booths were the Grand Forks Young Professionals Community, and The University of North Dakota was promoting their Aerospace and Space Studies programs.

Here is a closeup of the space suit that University of North Dakota researchers have made as part of a large grant working for NASA. This design has been discussed by NASA as a concept for future Moon and Mars missions.

Although the Alerus Center has several large speaker rooms available, there weren’t really any panels with creators, writers, artists, actors, or publishers that you might see in a large city like NY, Chicago, Atlanta, or San Diego Comic Con.

However, with more industry outreach and planning for a bigger and better event next year - I think that they could utilize large speaker rooms to have several panel events and opportunities to interact with fans for a premium event pass.

Also, I recommend having this event in 2026 during the college season (September) when students are in the city. This would add more than 14,000+ students that will be in Grand Forks to attend (most of them leave during the summer season). Overall, I enjoyed this Comic Con event and I’m looking forward to attending it next year.