[Mis]adventures at Emerald City ComicCon

Being based in Australia, it is rare I visit the US and especially rare that these trips coincide with a major comic convention. Last year I'd been lucky enough to have San Jose's Big WOW show align with business trip and this year, as luck would have it, I was going to be on business in Seattle the same weekend as Emerald City Comic Con.

If you've read my previous journal entry you'll already know obtaining tickets turned into an adventure in itself, but in the end I managed to grab a 3 day pass from StubHub (paying well over the odds) and it arrived just days before my trip.

Arguably this was to be my first proper Comic Convention given the scale and popularity of the event, so with that in mind when the doors opened I headed straight to the CGC stand to get the low down in preparation for the next few days of signature & sketch hunting especially as I had limited time on the first day as I had to attend a couple of business meetings later in the afternoon. Throughout the morning the Mike and team were as efficient and helpful as I remember from Big WOW show accompanying me on my quest for signatures throughout the morning. Additionally I was very pleased to make the acquaintance of board/journal regulars Tnerb and Ronnylama.

I made the most of the morning with the first catch of the day being up with Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch, co-creators of Rat Queens who signed my first issue of said title.

Shortly afterwards we headed over to the other side of the Convention Center to catch up with Nate Bellegarde, the artist on one of my favourite titles, Image Comics (much delayed and infrequent, yet still amazing) Nowhere Men. He kindly signed 5 copies (as well as adding a quick sketch of the newly transformed Kurt on one) before he kindly agreed to sketch the infamous crystal gorilla from the series as well (the final sketch pictured below - which I picked up the next day) for me.

This was quickly followed by Art Adams, who signed my classic 1985 Longshot six issue mini series collection (I'd also planned to get Ann Nocenti sigs as well, but I didn't see her at her table that day) as well as the fantastic FF#1 Art Adams variant (http://www.comicvine.com/articles/marvel-reveals-arthur-adams-ff-1-variant-cover/1100-145462/). With this in hand, I was again accompanied to the other side of the convention center and added Mike and Laura Allred's signatures to that cover. Whilst there, I also secured a signature from G. Willow Wilson on the new Ms. Marvel #1.

Finally, before leaving that day, I was able to get Eric Stephenson, Image Comics head honcho and writer of the aforementioned Nowhere Men to sign my newly Nate signed issues as well.

It was a great morning, but as I left that afternoon little did I know what lay in store for me over the next couple of days...

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