Comic conventions, especially large regional shows like Seattle’s Emerald City Comic Con, which takes place this week, play an important role in the business and culture of comics. They provide important income for creators and dealers, networking for business professionals, some facetime with the public for publishers, and good marketing for media brands looking to drum up fan excitement ahead of a new season or featured project. Especially with so many other headwinds facing the business, healthy events would make things a little easier.
So how is the business looking? If you were at SDCC over the summer or NYCC last fall, crowds, the density of programming, the buzz of business conversations and anecdotal evidence of solid sales suggest the events business is picking up where it left off after COVID hit the big pause.
But SDCC and NYCC are in a class of their own. What about the next tier down: big regional shows like C2E2, MegaCon, FanExpo (take your pick) or Emerald City Comic Con, kicking off this week in Seattle? Are they back in growth mode? Are there still good opportunities for the rest of the business?
I had a chance to talk to ReedPOP’s head of fan conventions Kristina Rogers ahead of this year’s edition of ECCC about changes she’s seeing in the business, the challenges of keeping cons fresh for new and old fans, and why it’s important to maintain a local focus even in larger shows like the one in Seattle.
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Rob Salkowitz: Emerald City Comic Con kicks off Thursday. How does the scale of this year’s show compare to last year?
Katrina Rogers: It’s a little bit bigger. We’ve added more square feet this year in anticipation of bigger media guests.
How are ticket sales tracking?
We’re a little above last year. I think we’ll get 5-10,000 more people over the four days, probably over 90,000, which is really great.
Are any of the days sold out?
We’re sold out of four-day badges, and we’re close to selling out Saturday. Those should be gone by the time the show starts.
What have you learned in the last year that’s informing how you’re running the show in 2025?
ECCC always teaches our team to value authenticity and respect the tastes of the local community. Seattle fans love art, so ECCC features the best artist alley – better than New York, in my opinion.
Coming back from the pandemic, our focus was on identifying the partners that were still in the space and replace the ones who didn’t make it through. We’ve found the best solution is to rely on local partners. For shows like this, everything is local. The only thing we bring in from out of town are the guests.
After the pandemic, a lot of big publishers and exhibitors took a “wait and see” approach to coming back to live events. Has there been any movement in terms of getting them to recommit?
Certainly the big publishers have come back to New York, but it’s been a long road getting them to take another look at how the spend works out for them, even just in terms of staffing. For a show like Seattle, it’s been slower because it’s still seen as regional. So we’re leaning into partners like MoPOP [Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, which is opening a big manga exhibit this weekend] and [radio station] The End 107.7, which is hosting the evening party and helping us bring bands in.
What about Funko, a big national brand that’s also local to the Seattle area?
They’re doing some things with us but won’t have a big booth on the show floor.
It seems like all the industries involved in fan content are facing headwinds right now: comics, with the distribution issues; videogames, streaming. Does that make it harder to bring in the kind of people seen as essential for this kind of show?
Yes, it’s a challenge for us, and maybe an ego check about our real importance. But I think those kinds of challenges are good for the business, because we have to push really hard to make a show that big brands want to be a part of. Look at DC Comics right now. I’m really excited with what they’re doing, and I think a lot of fans are. Do fans want to see a DC booth here? Sure, and we do too. But if we can’t get them as a publisher, at least we’re bringing the talent, the artists and writers.
How about the other shows in your fandom portfolio?
Well, there’s New York, C2E2, Florida SuperCon, the PAX shows. We’re running Magic: The Gathering shows, including one in Vegas sometime over the summer. I’m hosting Star Wars Celebration in Tokyo in 45 days, and we still have our shows overseas in the UK.
Does it feel like we’re back in growth mode or have things just stabilized at a new normal?
I definitely feel like we’re in growth. The real question for shows of every size is what are fan cons going to become. For ReedPOP, we’re taking a festival approach. We’re competing with Coachella, with spring break and summer vacations and other big events. So how do you bring that kind of excitement inside? We see it as all pop culture, so we’re taking more of a Worlds Fair approach as a company. We’re going big on comedy in Chicago, which I’m really excited about. It’s a challenge to expand but you can’t do the same show every year. At some point that’s going to get boring. So Seattle will be the first test of that.
How do you balance that desire to expand the market with serving existing fans?
Every year, we remove the bottom 15% of programs, because we count seats and measure a lot of stuff to see what’s popular. That makes room for new material. We don’t want to screw with the essence of the show. Comics are incredible. We’re not looking to reduce that, we just want to add. We want our programs to reflect how all these things (music, entertainment, comics) are coming together, so we can keep growing to fill all these beautiful buildings. Because if fans come in to see a music act, or something from the entertainment world, they’re going to fall in love with Artist Alley and go spend $200 getting some cool art. And then they’ll be back next year with more money to spend.
In New York, ReedPOP did a lot of professional programming, especially on Thursday. Anything like that in Seattle?
ECCC is probably 90% a fan-facing show. We’ve got networking events, portfolio reviews, some pro programming, and we’re looking to expand our partners for education, for teachers. I know pros are taking the opportunity to do some meetings over the weekend. We’re not looking to compete with other pro events that are already existing. We just want to give people the opportunity to make those connections while we’re all in the same building.
Emerald City Comic Con runs March 6-9 at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. For anyone attending, I’ll be doing panels on creator-owned books on Thursday, cross-media storytelling on Friday, and a panel on the fifth anniversary of James Tynion IV’s “The Department of Truth” on Saturday. Say hi if you see me around!
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Rob Salkowitz (@robsalk) is the author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture and a two-time Eisner Award nominee.
Source: ICV2
