The picture looked like something out of U.S. tornado country. Two doors to nowhere, standing at the edge of what looked like open space but shouldn’t have been. Around the doors, fabric hung, white as the snow it lay on.
The message was clear: There wasn’t going to be a Super Jersey Comic Expo this year.
Again.
But in actuality, the show goes on. And for a change, the show isn’t moving.
In fact, it’s spawning a baby show.
Nuff Sed Events LLC, the parent company of Super Jersey, broke the news to fans Tuesday that its April 2026 show wasn’t going to happen as planned due to the collapse of its venue, the 80,000-square-foot dome at Iron Peak Sports & Events in Hillsborough, in a late-January winter storm.
Instead, organizers are planning to hold a one-day “Super Jersey Summer Spectacular” on Aug. 29 in the smaller gym building at Iron Peak, giving the venue time to rebuild the dome and delaying the next Comic Expo to 2027.
Not only that, but Nuff Sed and Iron Peak have struck a deal to host two-day Comic Expos in April 2027 through April 2029 AND the one-day Summer Spectaculars in August through 2029.
While this followed attempts to find an alternate venue for the April 2026 show, Team Super Jersey — led by Paul Brown, AJ Blair and Stanley Kalucki — made it clear they weren’t interested in pulling up stakes for the third time in the show’s brief history.
“No more moving around. Hillsborough is home,” the show organizers said in big, black letters in a mass missive to their email list Tuesday.
The one-day Summer Spectaculars are intended to harken to the smaller Middletown Comic Show that preceded Super Jersey in the 2010s, something the team had wanted to eventually do all dome collapses aside. While the Comic Expo strives to be New Jersey’s biggest comic convention, with panels, an Artist Alley, VIP experiences, etc.; the Summer Spectacular is for fans who want to spend a day tickling dollar bins, browsing trading cards, looking through bins of old toys and perhaps haggling over wall books.
Tickets for the Summer Spectacular will be $10 online and $15 at the door. Any Super Jersey 2026 ticketholders who want to carry over their tickets to the April 17-18, 2027, Comic Expo will receive a free ticket to the 2026 Summer Spectacular.
All vendors, artists, ticketholders and sponsors will have options for refunds and credits that will be rolled out within the next week, Brown said, asking for patience as they set up the infrastructure to make all that happen.
Some guests who had been booked for the April show will be appearing at the August Summer Spectacular.
One of the big names transferring to the August show is artist John Romita Jr., who will honor the VIP meet-and-greet then that he’d originally been scheduled to do in April. He also may be back for the April 2027 Comic Expo, Brown said on a livestream Tuesday announcing the changes.
Other names committed to the summer show, per Brown and Blair, were G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero writer Larry Hama, IDW editor Heather Antos, artist Keith Williams and inker Mark Morales, along with a few unspecified others.
“What I want everyone to be certain of and sure of when you’re seeing this is that I don’t care whether you are an artist, a vendor, you are a VIP ticket holder, general admission, John Romita Jr. meet-and-greet, we’re gonna make sure that there is something in place for every single one of you, and we understand that this is gonna be a transition,” Brown said.
In a statement after the storm, Iron Peak said no one was injured in the collapse, and it was pausing all dome activity while it works with contractors to repair the facility.
Said dome activity included Super Jersey, which was scheduled for April 18 and 19. Show organizers estimated dome repairs would continue through June.
The scramble to move the show started with Iron Peak’s 40,000-square-foot gym building next to the dome, but on the weekend in question it’s booked for a volleyball tournament.
Brown, Blair, Kalucki and their team then spent two weeks attempting to find another venue available that same weekend.
“We reached out to every single sports bubble/dome in the state, every athletic center, college, hotel conference center” within about an hour of Newark Liberty International Airport, Brown said. “All were either booked, not interested or just egregiously expensive for our show’s budget.”
Venue woes are no stranger to Super Jersey. From 2021 to 2023, the show was held at the Bell Works, a former telecom office building turned indoor mall and event space in Holmdel. (The show originally was scheduled to debut at the Bell Works in April 2020, but it was delayed three times by the COVID-19 pandemic.) A last-minute move in 2023 by the Bell Works that required the show to be free sent organizers looking for a new home, so after taking 2024 off to regroup, Super Jersey debuted last year at The Dome at Adventure Crossing in Jackson. The show originally had planned to return to The Dome in 2026, but the venue was threatened with foreclosure over an unpaid $14.4 million loan, making its future shaky.
Sent scrambling once more, the team announced the move to Iron Peak in December, nearly four months before the show was to be held.
“This is not our first rodeo; this is at least our fourth or fifth rodeo,” Brown joked during the livestream.
Organizers at the time touted Iron Peak’s larger event space, as well as its climbing walls, rope course, arcade, golf simulators, concession stands, elevated bar, and free parking during the show for attendees and exhibitors.
“When we moved to Hillsborough, we thought we had hit the jackpot and the show was trending better than ever,” Brown told ComicsXF in an email Tuesday. “We really did exhaust all options, and there was a few days where it was all just so bleak.
“Then we think about how much we love comic shows, conventions and the community we’ve built with people over the years. Last year was the most well-received event in our history, so instead of tucking our tails and running away, we dug our heels in and now our home is set until the next decade … winter storms notwithstanding.”
For updates and more information on Super Jersey Comic Expo and the Super Jersey Summer Spectacular, visit superjerseyexpo.com.
Dan Grote is the editor and publisher of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Paul Winston Wisdom. Follow him @danielpgrote.bsky.social.
