This past weekend was Emerald City Comic Con over in Seattle. This convention is the one vacation I take each year and it is something I look forward to for months beforehand. Everyone does Comic Con differently and we did it by loading our car up with 5+ short boxes filled with books and single issues to get signed. We left the house just after 8 pm, after quadruple checking to make sure we didn't forget anything. For us, the trip to Seattle is roughly a four hour journey, with us scheduled to arrive in Seattle around midnight. Three hours into said journey, a terrible thought occurred to me. Did we remember to bring the tickets?
We had not.
When something like this happens, the only thing you can do is laugh. You laugh because you know if you don't laugh, you'll start to cry. It was a laugh underlined with a quiet desperation as we realized we had to turn around, go home, and then make the trip again. Luckily, my boyfriend is a much faster driver than I. Still, we didn't get checked into our hotel until 5:20 am.
"Well, that's not the end of the world," you may be thinking. If the convention opens at 10 am, that's still a few hours of sleep you can get before things get started. Not so. With every large convention comes the con line. This is really a giant gymnasium sized room packed to the brim with people in various states of cleanliness all waiting to get in. The savvy con goer knows that the sooner you get in, the better your chances are of getting the elusive convention exclusive or the commissioned sketch.
Friday was a great day for getting exclusives, however us taking a three hour nap in the middle of things made the convention day significantly shorter. After the convention closed for the day, us and a few friends from the shop headed down to the Rock Bottom Brewery for the Dark Horse party. This was a great cause, as the $10 cover was benefiting the Hero's Initiative and the Sakai family in particular. For those of you unfamiliar with the Hero's Initiative, it is a cause that helps comic creators when things are rough such as medical expenses. The night as a whole was so much fun and resulted in me drinking more than I ever have in a public setting (bars are just too expensive and I'm a lightweight anyway so I don't usually bother). I got to catch up with my cousin and eat the best steak and white cheddar mashed potatoes which I dream about every year until I get to have them again. I snapped a few goofy pictures with my cousin and a friend at the photo booth but as I don't know how they feel about me posting them, I will not. After the party, we went back to our hotel and stayed up until well after 3 pm hanging out with friends.
Even though I'd had very little sleep, I was much better off on Saturday. Which is good, because of us conventions are a lot of hard work. Those five short boxes don't just carry themselves, you know. We actually have developed a rather elegant system where we will pull books for creators in close proximity to each other, then load them into messenger bags, walk to the convention, get them signed, walk back to the hotel. Then rinse and repeat. I got a great physical workout this weekend, however I think the alcohol more than balanced that out.
My favorite creators that I met or got to meet again were:
Matt Kindt - He's the creator of 3 Story, Mind MGMT, Red Handed, Revolver, etc. He's also been working on some stuff for the Big 2 with him writing the Marvel Knights Spider-Man mini series and some stuff for DC. I met him last year and had such fun talking to him. This year, he even set my book on fire which was pretty cool. It caught a little faster than I think he was expecting it to and had to slam the book shut to put it out.
Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky - This is the charmingly twisted team behind the genius that is Sex Criminals. Matt Fraction has also done a crap-ton of other work in comics. Chip Zdarsky is also a columnist for a Canadian paper and a big lover of his local Applebee's on Facebook. Here are a few winning shots I got from these gents.
The mysterious white stain inside our Sex Criminals hardcover is actually white out, but it makes me giggle nonetheless. They both recreated the fourth printing cover of Sex Criminals #1 using the Applebee's menu we brought for Chip to sign.
Richard Starkings - This man is famous for being the wizard behind Comicraft lettering company that lettered...everything ever. Not quite, but still this man's name is on so many books over the years. He's also the writer of one of my very favorite comics, Elephantmen. He's also such a charming fellow to talk to. We talked a little about his books but we really just ended up chatting about Doctor Who for ten minutes.
Patrick Rothfuss - He is the writer of the Kingkiller Chronicles (The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man's Fear, the Stone Door) and the Adventures of Princess and Mr. Whiffle, which is a not-for-children picture book series. We went to his panel first thing Sunday morning. Even though he was super sick, he put on a hell of a show. This man is a natural performer. We got to hear an excerpt from a long short story he had written and got news that a short story about Auri, one of his characters from the Kingkiller Chronicles, will be coming out later this year which is super exciting.
For me, the best moment of this panel was when a young boy (9-12 years old) dressed as Capt. Malcom Reynolds from Firefly came up to ask a question. He asked if he could give Pat a gift. The gift was three bracelets, one for Pat, one for his son Oot, and one for Oot's mom. The boy explained that he was giving these bracelets to raise awareness for autism, because he was autistic.
Pat agreed to take the bracelets but only if he could give the boy a gift in return. He dug through his tinker's bag and pulled out a gold ring and gave it to the boy. I started crying. For those who haven't read the series, here's a brief explanation. In one of the town's Kvothe travels to, the citizens give a ring to announce when they are going to call on someone. A gold ring signifies that the person is higher rank, a silver is for someone of equal rank, and iron is for someone lower than you. This is just a very basic explanation but it is enough to hopefully help you understand how incredibly touching this moment was.
Three days, hundreds of dollars, and very few hours of sleep later and we were ready to go home. Amazingly, we made it without incident. Despite the rocky start, this shaped up to be an amazing weekend. If you've never been, I highly recommend going to Emerald City in particular as that convention focuses much more on the comics themselves and less on the media hype that is at other conventions.
This blog is having trouble with me adding more photos so I'll make a separate album for those.
