It was fun! The end.
Ok, I'll elaborate. This last weekend I drove down to Portland to attend Rose City Comic Con for my second time. It was a lot of fun. The convention is about half the size of Emerald City Comicon (yes, the two conventions spell the words comic con differently) but half the size is still 40,000 attendees over 3 days. It's a big convention that attracts a good amount of celebrities and comic book professionals. Since it's about a 3 hour drive I spent the night in Portland on Saturday. The original plan was to go down with my wife but something else popped up so I was flying solo.
Did I mention already that I left my pass (ie ticket) at home? Yep, I arrived to the Oregon State Convention Center about 20 minutes after the doors opened Saturday morning to realize that I had left my freaking pass back in Seattle. I'm very lucky that the convention staffers were awesome and my wife was smart texting me a couple pictures of my pass at home and I was able to get a replacement. Man, I don't know what I would have done. Drive back home? Buy tickets at the door and blow my budget? All the options were pretty crappy.
The convention itself was pretty standard RCCC fare. I bought some comics, visited some writers and artists, watched a few panels. More or less the same stuff you can do at Emerald City except there's more space to walk around because the Oregon Convention Center has a great layout. Getting to panels is a bit weird because for some reason RCCC insists on labeling the panel rooms something different than what the convention center does so none of the signage matches. However, once you've found a room they're easy to find again. I didn't catch any of the big celebrity guests this year. Weird Al was there but his panel was on the day before I drove down, William Shatner's was too late on Sunday considering I had to drive back home that night. The rest of the big celebs that actually interested me a bit had conflicts with some smaller panels on comics that I really wanted to see.
I spent about half of what I spend at ECCC, which is good because I'm still broke from plumbing issues last month. The comic book selection was great. Lots and lots of dollar bins. You can always find high priced key issues at a convention but finding really good stuff in the dollar bins is tough. I also bought some prints from a few of my favorite artists and got a couple sketch books. The best part of the whole thing is I got really inspired to produce more art. I've even committed myself to getting a booth at an artist alley in the near future. Not at RCCC or ECCC, those tables costs a ton, but at one of the smaller conventions that have popped up around the region over the last few years. Don't get me wrong most of the artists at RCCC draw circles around me, but there were a couple booths where I was like "eh, I do better work that this". And at a smaller convention the overhead is pretty low... anyway this isn't what I was writing this review.
I'm looking forward to going back to RCCC next year. I'd love to spend the full 3 days but man, getting a hotel was pricey. Also I don't think I want to go by myself next year. If my wife can't come I'm definitely taking my son. Walking around all day looking at cool stuff but not really sharing it with anyone is kinda boring. It's cool for a couple hours but then you find yourself eating dinner alone at the bar and it's like... ugh. Making friends with strangers is a game for 20 year olds, not 40 year olds.
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