This weekend was Emerald City Comic Con (ECCC) 2015 in Seattle. This is now our 6th year tabling at the show, 10th year attending and my, oh my, how it’s grown. There was an estimated 85,000 attendees at this year’s show. That’s a big contrast from the first year I attended where you could walk the entire showroom, talk to each vendor, and do it all in about 2 hours on a Saturday morning.
This year was great as always. One of the most exciting things was seeing how great the release of Blood & Glory Issue #1 went. The cover definitely drew attention, there were a lot of sales of the first issue (thanks to all those new readers!), and the inner art (thanks to Kasey Cleek!) drew unanimous compliments. If you didn’t get a chance to pick up Blood & Glory at the show, it’s now available for purchase at: http://crankleft.com/store/comics/blood–glory-1
The show got so packed on Saturday, it became hard to move through the aisles. That might seem obvious but actually, past years of ECCC have done a great job with crowd control. So it makes sense that ECCC has made the decision to convert this show into a 4-day instead of 3-day convention. The show consistently sells out months in advance so making it a 4-day show will allow for probably 20,000+ more attendees to experience the show next year.
But I’d be lying if I didn’t have some trepidation about seeing ECCC become a 4-day event. As a long-time vendor, one of the most basic issues is endurance. By day 3 of the show in year’s past, you are dragging. By the end of Sunday, you’ve got nothing left. So how do you make it for an additional day? Lot’s of caffeine and sugar?
The other concern is sales. Will an additional day translate into 25% more sales? I’m not convinced it will based on past year sales numbers. By Sunday, you are not getting a lot of new people coming by. But that’s more of a guess. We’ll just have to wait and find out in 2016. We already have our table reserved for next year and will be back as always. It’s become a tradition and it’s just too much fun not to go every year.
Here’s a few other cosplay highlights from the show this year that I particularly liked:
Not even sure what her costume is but I thought especially the makeup was pretty neat.
Loved this group of DC characters!
Princess Bride.
Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Ducktales and Darkwing!
Thought these two kids (who made their own costumes) had a pretty fun idea.
Beauty and the Beast in a style I’d never seen before.