Meet Pat Henry, Father of Dragons

In just a few days, more than 60,000 people will descend on the hotels of downtown Atlanta for Dragon Con. They will come from all over the country and worldwide; fans of hit streaming shows, comic books, superhero movies, anime, cosplay, fantasy novels, board games and more.

At night, the lobbies of the Westin, Sheraton, Hyatt, Hilton and Marriot Marquis hotels will be filled to the brim with convention goers in costume, ready to drink and dance the night away. The daily catalog of panels, classes and official events stretch from morning until sometime after midnight. The DJ sets, ballroom parties and lobby gatherings swell in numbers until sometime after last call.

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Dragon Con is one of Atlanta’s signature annual events, and it’s hard to explain just how massive an event it is; the sort of thing that has a life of its own. A spectacle you’re far better off experiencing than hearing about. A logistical giant.

Pat, back row, with his grand daughters in the Dragon Con parade. (Credit: Dragon Con)

Credit: Dragon Con, Access Atlanta

Yet, if you can get founder Pat Henry on the line, you’ll find a man that sounds oddly calm, just days before hosting his 36th iteration of the pop culture phenomenon. In fact, Henry sounds downright at ease, maybe even far away thanks to the tinny, crackling telephone connection he enjoys from his farm in Sparta, Georgia.

“I’m lucky, I do less now than I did in the past,” Henry laughs of his sunny disposition in the days before Dragon Con. “Today my biggest concern is wondering when my grandkids will get there.”

I’ve called Henry with the hopes of pulling back the curtain. Where others tend to report on the convention itself – the panels, celebrity guests, parties and the incredible fan-driven cosplay – I wanted to know what it was like to have built an Atlanta institution, a global entertainment event, and a mainstay of pop culture in the south.

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That Henry even has the time to consider such questions in the days before his festival kicks off in earnest this Thursday speaks to the machine precision with which he has built his team and in turn the way that they have learned to manage his event.

It wasn’t always this easy.

The formative years of Dragon Con

“Let’s start with the original seven (founders),” Henry says of the earliest days of Dragon Con. “We got together in 1986 to plan a convention that we would want to go to ourselves. Profit was not the motive, nor was it even anticipated. We had gamers, comic guys, sci-fi guys, science geeks. Of the seven, we certainly represented all methods of fandom.”

Already the owner of Titan Games & Comics, Henry and his friends conceived of the “all genres welcome” convention over pizza in Gwinnett and then set about making their vision come true.

“We booked the creator of Dungeons and Dragons and some other strong guests for the first show in 1987. We are today not what we were then. We were smaller. We dressed funny. And we were all-nighters.”

Pat, left, in an undated photo with comic book illustrator George Perez, who died earlier this year. Perez would go on to become a legend in his field, associated with a number of the best known characters and critical moments in the Modern Age of comics. (Credit: Dragon Con)

Credit: Dragon Con, Access Atlanta

The first convention garnered 1,200 attendees. And in the years ahead, the event grew steadily, bouncing from the Omni Hotel in 1989, to the Hilton from 1990 until 1996. By 1997, it had reached a critical mass – large enough to disrupt host hotel operations, but not yet committed to taking over an entire downtown convention hotel.

“After 1996, our liaison [at the Hilton] told me, ‘Pat you need to rent the whole hotel.’”

And so, he did. From 1997 until the year 2000, the convention moved to the Hyatt, taking over the entire hotel and growing into something larger. Maybe even a little too large for the part-time Dragon Con team of Henry, his wife Sherry and the other cofounders.

“2000 was a pivotal moment. A bad year. Very difficult.”

The convention had grown to a 5,000-attendee event. And it seemed to Henry like an untenable amount of work for such a small team.

And so Pat Henry quit his day job, ceding the day-to-day management of his comic bookstores to his manager, to dedicate himself full time to Dragon Con. He took a modest salary, appointed his wife “the vice president of everything nobody else wants to do,” and went all-in on making Dragon Con a financial success.

The next year, the convention added a second contract with the Marriott Marquis downtown.

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“We got a box of flyers and hit the road every weekend, going to every convention with at least three or four hundred people in attendance, to get people to come to our show and fill out that second hotel. We realized that if we didn’t make our room commitment, we were looking at a $100,000 hit, so we were motivated. But we made our number that year.”

Pat, right, in 2017 with actor and director Jonathan Frakes, best known for his portrayal of Commander William Riker in TV’s Star Trek: The Next Generation and related films. (Credit: Dragon Con)

Credit: Dragon Con, Access Atlanta

The week after the 2001 show, the events of Sept. 11, 2001, threw large-scale events into flux.

“The hotels were struggling badly and were looking for long-term agreements. Because of this, we were able to reduce the price of our downtown convention to under $150/night, which opened a whole new subset of potential attendees -- including many more locals - and our hotel attendance went crazy.”

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By 2003, the convention had expanded to more than 25,000 annual attendees. Fast forward to 2019, and that number reached more than 80,000.

“Today, when the hotel rooms go on sale at the Marriott, they call it ‘The Hunger Games,’ with the hotel selling out in minutes.”

For Henry, that steady growth was something to look back on and laugh about.

“Here’s a kid that used to sit in the back of class because I didn’t want to be recognized. And then I suddenly realized I could control the growth of Dragon Con.”

The future of Dragon Con

If it weren’t for COVID-19, Pat Henry might already have retired. For the last several years, Henry had been working behind the scenes to hand off the leadership of Dragon Con to his two daughters, Mandy (treasurer, controller) and Rachel (co-chairman).

“By 2019, Sherry and I were trying to work ourselves out of the job to hand off to the next generation. We thought this could be it, and I was good with looking at retirement. And then we had the pandemic, and suddenly I didn’t feel I could get away. I felt like there were very difficult decisions that would have to be made.”

The event went entirely virtual during the height of the pandemic in the fall of 2020, requiring a technology adoption Dragon Con continues to utilize to stream panels today. In 2021, the convention returned in person, slashing its normal 80,000 guest capacity in half. And this year, it will inch halfway back towards its high-water mark, welcoming 60,000 attendees.

Pat, right, with Jennifer Liang, founder and president of JordanCon, in 2017. (Credit: Dragon Con)

Credit: Dragon Con, Access Atlanta

Four of the original seven founders remain active today, three of them on the board of directors. Together with the next generation of leaders, the convention moves forward, carefully past the hurdles of those pandemic years.

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“We know our strengths, we know our weaknesses and we trust one another,” says Henry.

As Dragon Con 2022 draws near, it’s through that trust, and on the bond between longstanding leadership and a dedicated team spanning generations that Atlanta’s premiere convention takes shape.

What does the future of Dragon Con hold, for Pat Henry?

“I would say I want it to continue to be what it is and do what it does. Fun for the fans, and good for Atlanta. We’d like it to be a fun event that’s there for our kids and our grandkids.”

Dragon Con 2022 runs from Thursday, Sept. 1 to Monday, Sept. 5. Tickets are available at dragoncon.com.