Hi!
I’ll be appearing at Rose City Comic-Con, in Portland, Oregon, this weekend. I’m sharing a table with Becky Hawkins, my collaborator on SuperButch. We’ll be selling copies of First Glance, and of course I’ll have copies of Hereville on hand.
If you’ll be there, please come and say hi!
Hope you had a great weekend! How are the smaller cons? I’ve only ever been to ComicCon, and it was not fun for me. Too many people, too many lines.
I read a week or two ago that the Oregon Convention Center has more floor space (double? triple?) than the San Diego Convention Center. I didn’t make it to RCCC this year (went the last 2 years), so how was your con?
Rose City was nice! But attending a comic con to table is very different from attending it for fun; I really didn’t see much of the show, other than my own table. So I can’t really say it was like, as far as that goes.
I suspect the Oregon Convention Center does have more total floor space than the SDCC, but only a small portion of the building was used for Rose City. (They have movable walls, I think.) Still, it was a pretty large con – not nearly as large as SDCC or Emerald City, but certainly not small. There was a healthy crowd, but the space was large enough so that everyone had room to breathe and move, unlike SDCC which can sometimes feel like the world’s biggest subway car at rush hour.
I think it would be a nice place to nerd out for a day or two. It was more general-interest nerdery – there were comics, but also games, Steven Universe, cosplay (of course), an all sorts of stuff. If you’re mainly interested in comics, then I think the Toronto Comics Arts Fest is probably the best convention you can find.
Maybe Toronto is, but I can’t get there! I live here, so Rose City is my best bet. When I last went (2014) it was just as you describe: interesting panels but not many of them, and a nice floor that was not crowded most of the time. I met a couple of my favorite comic book writers and admired the cosplay.
But it turns out I don’t like very many comic books, even though I’ve tried about two dozen different ones over the last couple of years. I really liked Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye; that was what brought me into comics. And not much out there is like that.
Have you tried Fraction’s Sex Criminals?
For finding interesting comics at a con in Portland, Lineworks NW is a way better bet than Rose City. It’s a much smaller con, but with many more interesting comics I hadn’t seen before. The comics there are mostly on the artsy side, but then, Hawkeye is very artsy for a superhero comic.
If you can tell me what you like about Hawkeye (which I also like a lot), I might be able to recommend something…
Sex Criminals doesn’t appeal to me-I don’t like graphic (pun intentional) porn. I do read his Ody-C. Hawkeye-I liked the voice, I liked the stories of an offduty superhero (who doesn’t really have any powers), I liked Lucky (who doesn’t?). I’ve liked a couple of smaller books: Beasts of Burden, It Came!, Alex and Ada, the Young Avengers run by Kieron Gillen, Loki Agent of Asguard, and I like the new Ms. Marvel. Oh yeah, and Lumberjanes, and Invader Zim (I’ve been a Zim fan since the original run of the tv series). I guess my pull list is not really that short! But I’m always glad to find new comics, so I look forward to your suggestions.
I started reading Hawkeye because the pizza dog issue was all over Tumblr, and there’s not much else like it in comic books. I’ve tried Black Widow, S.H.I.E.L.D, The Bunker, The Woods, Secret Avengers…usually I’m drawn to a book by the art style but it’s story that keeps me reading.