The incredible shrinking Comic Con. Here’s why Lexington’s 2019 show will be smaller.

Like the astonishing Ant-Man, the Lexington Comic & Toy Convention is shrinking.

Next March, the annual comic book show — which drew an estimated 33,000 people this year — will be held in the middle of a busy construction zone. The downtown Lexington Convention Center has begun a $241 million renovation. Demolition should be underway by the time superhero fanboys and fangirls arrive in five months.

The cavernous 66,000-square-foot exhibition hall that forms the heart of the convention, where scores of retailers sell their goods and assorted celebrities sign autographs for fans? It will be reduced by March to a 30,000-square-foot space.

And that means only half the usual crowd will fit.

So show organizer Jarrod Greer is rearranging everything for 2019. (And most likely for 2020. The expanded convention center isn’t scheduled for completion until November 2021, but the space used by the comics show should be finished well ahead of that year’s event, according to Joe Fields, the Lexington Center’s director of convention management.)

“Our mantra for next year is, ‘We’re gonna get through this,’” Greer said in a phone interview this week. “But I’ve also resigned myself to the fact that this construction plan is ever-evolving.”

For starters, the usual three-day show will expand to become a four-day show, running from Thursday, March 21, through Sunday, March 24. To funnel as many people as possible away from the peak hours on Saturday — when a limit of 12,000 attendees will be imposed, roughly half the usual Saturday multitude — Greer will offer several new options.

One is an “All About Comics” day on Thursday from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., for comic book fans who just want to meet the comics artists and writers in attendance and paw through long boxes for a good deal on old four-color funny-books.

Greer said he’ll start revealing comics pro guests next week at the convention’s website (www.lexingtoncomiccon.com). He already has announced some celebrity guests, including actors Val Kilmer and Ron Perlman (of “Batman Forever” and “Hellboy” fame, respectively) and voice actor Tom Kenny (of “SpongeBob Square Pants,” among other projects).

Another new enticement will be “Kids Day” on Sunday, with special activities for children. People who don’t want to miss Saturday but who prefer to avoid the mob scene can buy a new Saturday evening ticket that will admit them from 4 p.m. until closing time at 7 p.m., by which point the throng tends to have thinned out.

For the first time in the show’s seven-year history, children age 5 and older will need their own tickets to attend Saturday. But children age 10 and younger will continue to be free with a paid adult on the other three days. Greer said he hated to impose that rule, but again, Saturday attendance must be capped at 12,000, and children entering for free usually add a few thousand to the crowd.

Tickets for 2019 went on sale this week. Since there only will be half as many tickets available, Greer recommends that people don’t delay, especially if they want to attend Saturday or buy a four-day pass, which could sell out by Thanksgiving, he said. Folks who show up that Saturday expecting to buy tickets are almost certainly going to get nothing but a view of others walking past them.

Fortunately, in 2021, the comics show — which is the biggest public event held at the convention center — will have a new exhibition hall with more than 100,000 square feet, among many other amenities, said Fields of the Lexington Center staff.

“I’m extremely content to suffer through having this construction going on around us if it means I get a nice new convention center at the other end of it,” Greer said.

If you go

Lexington Comic & Toy Convention

When: March 21-24, 2019, Lexington Convention Center

Tickets: On sale at www.lexingtoncomiccon.com Thursday (All About Comics Day) - $20; Friday - $30; Saturday - $45; Saturday evening (after 4 p.m.) - $20; Sunday (Kids Day) - $25. Four-day pass: $90

This story was originally published October 18, 2018 at 10:28 AM.