This last weekend my son and I went to Tacoma's biggest comic book convention, making it something like the 156th biggest in the nation, the Jet City Comic Show. This was my first small comic book convention. I couldn't find an exact number on-line but I'd be surprised if they cracked the 10,000 mark. I went on Sunday afternoon just for a few hours and I'll bet there were probably 1,500 attendees in the building. There were about 200 tables with just a couple celebrity guests, who all fell into that "person who was on a show you've heard of but wasn't the main star of that show". There were plenty of local artists and independent publishers, a couple comic pros that have had work published by the big two and a few authors, local and national, that I hadn't hear of.
It seems like this was a good show to actually pick up comic books. There were about a dozen large vendors and then a few more that had assorted tables of geeky stuff, many of which included at least a couple boxes of comics. I took my son which wasn't ideal for spending an afternoon digging through long boxes but I still walked away with about a dozen old X-Men comics to fill gaps in my collection. We also picked up a TMNT Lego Set that was retired a couple years ago, they were asking retail price so that was a nice find. They had a couple older Star Wars sets that were calling my name but I had already set my son's budget at $20, which was already WAY too high considering it was just his birthday.
Anyway, it was a nice little show. There wasn't a ton of stuff there and it wasn't an experience to itself in the way that ECCC is but it was well worth the $10. Also the Tacoma Convention center is really nice in fact the entire downtown Tacoma corridor is cool. Free parking, free right on the light rail, it didn't smell, what more could you ask for? Next year I might leave the boy at home so I have more time to dig around, maybe I'll try and get there on Saturday to see if there's more hustle and bustle. I'm definitely headed back to Tacoma next summer when they have the Pinball and Arcade Expo. There were a couple guys at Jet City with a couple cabinets hyping the event and it sounds awesome. Hundreds of pinball and old Arcade machines set of free play? Yeah, that sounds like a show I could get into.
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