Woo Woo Woo ECCC 2017

Welp, another year, another Emerald City Comicon in the books. Lots of fun was had and plenty of money was spent. I'm not 100% sure I'm ready to claim it as the best ECCC I've ever been too but I know I had as much fun at this one as I have at any of the other ones I've been to.

I'm one of those weird people that actually go to conventions for comics and and while the nerds on facebook did plenty of handwringing over the celebrity guests this year, you could not argue with the selection of comic book creators they had. This year they moved all the celebrity signings out of the convention center and to a nearby hotel. It opened up a lot of space in the convention center and made it way easier to move around. I heard some grumbling from the people who actually wanted to see the celebs but almost everyone agreed the effect it had on artist alley was super positive. I kinda screwed up a bit and didn't manage my time very well and I missed quite a few artists and didn't pick up as many sketchbooks and prints as I wanted. I still walked away with plenty of stuff and it's hard to complain about not blowing my budget entirely.

One of the things I did do this year is check out more panels. Outlander, Stranger Things, The Image Founders, Sean Gunn and Michael Rooker, Timothy Zahn, 10 minutes of boring ass Jeremy Renner, I saw them all. I can't remember going to an ECCC where I checked out this many panels. It was definitely a nice change of pace from just walking the show floor looking at pikachu shaped pillows or laser printed metal portraits of Jean Luc Picard.

The big highlight of this year was that I won this lottery thing where I got to go to a special signing with the founders of Image Comics (minus one Jim Lee). Yes, I understand that if you're not into comics that doesn't really sound as cool as it was but whatever, it was really cool. All the founders were super nice, I got to talk with each of them for just a couple seconds and I got this pretty awesome poster out of the deal. For a frame of reference the line to get just Todd McFarlane's autograph (he was only signing one day) was about 3-4 hours long. I got his and like 5 other super cool guys.

The whole thing got a little Troy Meets Levar Burton when I got to meet Rob Liefeld. Man when I was 14 I was such a huge Rob Liefeld fan, his art is the thing that made me want to start drawing comics way back when. I got a book signed, the poster thing and a picture with him. Plus a fistbump and a handshake, it was crazy. I'm just glad I wasn't a complete blubbering mess.

Anyhoo, that's about all of it. I'll try and get to a cosplay roundup next week. I took a few pictures but not enough for like a real gallery or anything, I'll probably just post a bunch of links to some good galleries. Next stop Rose City Comicon in September.