Rose City Comic Con 2019 brought together some of the best in Portland’s booming comics scene, including hometown publishers and tons of indie creators. In case you missed any of our RCCC’19 coverage, you’ll find links at the end of this piece — but first, here’s a quick recap of the show, including the good, the bad, and the downright weird.

GOOD

  • The exhibitor hall led directly into the maker’s market and artist alley, which meant people could just keep browsing, instead of having to travel to different parts of the convention center to see creators’ work.
  • The sense of unity among the creators in artist alley and maker’s market. It’s not very often that while visiting one creator you get a recommendation to go visit another. There was a lot of positivity and praise for each other’s respective art forms and no one seemed shy about boosting sales for their friends.
  • Lots of diverse artists. Not just in terms of the artists as people, but in terms of the content created. There were many more uniquely crafted products and pieces of art rather than the standard “Here is my take on existing properties”.
  • So many great cosplayers strutted their stuff, including Jedi Disney Princesses, a 10th Doctor rolling around a true-to-size, build-from-wood and mobile-via-wheels TARDIS, an operational Dalek, plenty of X-Men, all of the Ghostbusters, the ghosts from Beetlejuice, horror icons, and more.

BAD

  • The Oregon Convention Center is labyrinthian already, but RCCC panels were held in rooms numbered 1-7, which made everything even more confusing. It would have been better if they had just used the convention center’s actual room numbers. It didn’t help much that the rooms were sequestered off in different sections of the convention center either.
  • There was no press room for reporters to go and work on stories or interview creators, which meant floor interviews — these are OK, but not ideal, because the show floor is loud, distracting, and very overwhelming at times!
  • A lack of name cards for panelists. Perhaps this isn’t a big deal for attendees, but when writing up a panel it can get rough trying to spell names right. 

WEIRD

  • Security was inconsistent throughout the con. On Friday and Sunday, press didn’t have to go through any kind of security to enter or re-enter, but on Saturday, each time press entered or re-entered, bags were checked and metal detectors were waved. The latter made more sense, given the size of the show — but that level of security should have been practiced all three days, instead of just one.
  • The convention center staff, while very polite, didn’t seem to know where things were either. While trying to navigate the maze that is the Oregon Convention Center, I had to ask where rooms were on an embarrassing number of occasions. Unfortunately for me, I was often steered in the completely wrong direction when asking staff for help with directions.

ICYMI

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