Lucca Comics & Games, the biggest pop-culture festival in Europe, is back! It will run from 28th October to 1st November and will once again be held in the medieval walled city of Lucca.
Lucca Comics & Games 2022 is the largest convention of its kind in Europe (and the second largest in the world after Comiket in Tokyo) and brings together thousands of fans of comic, gaming, video games, fantasy fiction, manga, anime, animated films, TV series and cosplay from all over the world.
This year the festival will be hosting the 20th-anniversary celebrations of iconic game company CD PROJEKT RED, as well as TOEI Animation Europe and the Anime Factory celebration of ‘One Piece’. There will also be exhibitions dedicated to masters like Alex Randolph and international guests such as Chris Ware, John Romita JR., Tracy Hickman, Chris Riddell OBE and John Blanche.
Each year, the festival has a theme and this year’s theme is Hope – which has been depicted in the 2022 festival’s poster (above) created by Canadian artist Ted Nasmith, who is known for his illustrations of J.R.R Tolkien’s works of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the cover for the first edition of The Silmarillion, a posthumous work edited by Christopher Tolkien. In Nasmith’s artistic vision for the festival, ‘Hope’ is the Lady of the Dawn. The Goddess HOPE is inspired by Yavanna, who represents the ‘healer of nature’ in J.R.R. Tolkien’s universe.
“Fantasy is on the side of those who dream, of those who want to build alternatives, parallel worlds, better scenarios, new roads,” said festival director Emanuele Vietina. “For us, HOPE is a certainty, not a doubt. HOPE is the future of a generation, as Greta Thunberg would say, something that comes from actions, not words. Above all, HOPE, is the only thing that remains in Pandora’s box when it is opened.”
Lucca Comics & Games will be taking place from 28th October to 1st November. More information can be found here.
