Emerald City's big, small, national, local pop culture balancing act: Today So Far

Emerald City Comic Con has its reasons to move forward without the Homegrown section, featuring local creators. But perhaps, for local fans, it's about something more.

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for March 3, 2023.

Has the Homegrown section outgrown Emerald City Comic Con?

Our region's premier pop culture event kicked off yesterday and runs through the weekend. Expect to see massive crowds in downtown Seattle, featuring everybody from Darth Vader to that anime character that you think you've seen before, yet you're not sure, but you're pretty sure it's anime ... maybe a video game character, but probably anime. Personally, I predict a lot of Wednesday Addams showing up.

It feels like every year ECCC rolls around, there are criticisms about how the show is run, the guests that were or were not there, and so forth. This year is no exception. There is much ado about the Homegrown section, which has provided a place to feature the region's local artists, creators, and vendors who never neatly fit in other sections. Where else are you going to find "Firefly" bath bombs, handmade glass chibi figures, or axolotl key chains? It was a veritable buy local corner within one of the nation's largest pop culture events. So when organizers opted to nix the local section this year, it was much to the chagrin of locals.

This story is interesting for a couple reasons. One, because I don't get to write "chagrin" too often. But also, events like Emerald City Comic Con help our area maintain its DIY, weirdo, Northwest vibe. This event is among the largest flag poles around, letting our geek flags fly. ECCC would not exist without the local mass of geeks, gamers, cosplayers, nerds, larpers, bookworms, cinephiles, and more. So many that tens of thousands of people attend this convention annually, having so much fun that it draws in more from beyond the Northwest.

Ever since ReedPop purchased and took over ECCC around 2015, there has been a lingering concern that the company would favor large corporate vendors, and the local community spirit would be diminished. This concern has perhaps been heightened by the evolution Seattle has experienced in recent years.

When word got out that ECCC's Homegrown section would not be included in this year's event, I reached out to an ECCC spokesperson, who told me:

"For 20 years, Emerald City Comic Con has been a celebration of the incredible Pacific Northwest comics and pop culture community and we are confident that will be evident throughout this year’s show. At our upcoming 2023 event, nearly 50% of our exhibitors and Artist Alley creators are local to the Pacific Northwest and we are so excited to welcome and support so many small businesses and creators from our local community. However, this means we are at the point where we have outgrown the number of exhibitors we can accommodate in a Homegrown section and so we made the decision to sunset the dedicated section. Fans will now find these local businesses throughout our Show Floor and Artist Alley."

Emerald City Comic Con is in a tough spot. ReedPop is a massive company that produces fan events on a ginormous scale — and fans are passionate. To accomplish this, any company would need the support of high-paying vendors and sponsors. It's a delicate line to walk — bringing in enough to pay the bills, while maintaining that small, distinctive, local community feel. It can be an uncomfortable dynamic. After all, when you come into downtown Seattle, would you rather go to the Pink Door or the Cheesecake Factory? Would you rather hang out at Raygun Lounge or GameWorks? I know what I'd say, yet every year around ECCC, there's a waitlist at the Cheesecake Factory, and for reasons beyond my understanding, people still buy prepaid cards to play arcade games.

ECCC is also still recovering from pandemic blows, which included layoffs and scaling back or retiring some of its events. It still maintained its Seattle presence, however, by shuffling ECCC through an off-season schedule. In fact, 2023 is the first time since 2019 that the convention has taken place during its usual March/April timeslot.

On the other side of this delicate line are readers and ECCC fans like Serena, who wrote me after I initially covered this story on KUOW.org.

"It feels like a microcosm of one of the things that a lot of people decry about the way Seattle has changed since Big Tech moved in. We're lucky to see artists from all over North America come to ECCC, but in so many ways, this convention could be happening anywhere. ReedPop is headquartered out of Connecticut — this convention is beginning to feel like it could happen anywhere .... and unless you're an artist who can afford to travel there already, chances are you've been priced out of Emerald City. Losing Homegrown feels like going downtown and watching them pull down the Pink Elephant, or driving through Fremont and watching a 121-year-old building be demolished and replaced with cookie-cutter apartments. Seattle streets begin to feel like they could be any city. ECCC could be any ReedPop con."

Perhaps the Homegrown section's presence represented something more than a corner at the con to local fans. The unsolicited advice from just one newsletter writer is that, moving forward, Emerald City could establish special local pricing for regional vendors, provide a "local" sign/sticker for such tables throughout the show floor, or find another way to keep a homegrown spotlight shining.

Despite the absence of the Homegrown section at ECCC, fans should know that they still have this local "section" available to them. As stated above, this convention exists because of a thriving community. These same local vendors are spread across the region's eclectic range of pop culture and Northwest celebrations. It's at Oddmall, Renton City Retro, Washington State Summer Con, and GeekGirlCon, just to name a few. And that's just in Western Washington. Don't even get me started on RadCon in Pasco or Lilac City Comic Con in Spokane. Each relies on local artists and creators to set up tables. You can really get around while shopping local.

The Friday Five: News you may have missed this week, and other cool stuff on KUOW.org

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• A multiverse of 'Everything Everywhere' props are auctioned, raising $555K for charity
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AS SEEN ON KUOW

Failelei Papatu standing on the pier at Edmonds Marina beach in early July 2021. RadioActive's Terina Papatu writes about her dad's life, work, and dedication in "How my dad finds motivation, from Samoa to the States." (Terina Papatu)

DID YOU KNOW?

As stated above, there are a lot of pop culture events, large and small, in our region. There's CybFest for "Transformers" fans, Sakura-Con for anime fans, Crypticon for horror fans, or PAX West for gamers.

One of the oldest such conventions in our area is Norwescon, which was first held in 1978. Norwescon is a sci-fi/fantasy convention with an emphasis on literature. It takes place in SeaTac each year. Over the decades, it has hosted a range of guests, such as authors like Samuel Delany, Neil Gaiman (long before all his novels and comics got turned into hit TV shows), and George R. R. Martin (the "Game of Thrones" guy). With such a long history of conventions, it has often been called the oldest such convention in the Northwest, but I have not been able to independently verify this.

This year will be the 45th Norwescon. It's slated for April 6-9 at the Double Tree in SeaTac. It will feature P. Djèlí Clark (writer), Grace Fong (artist), and Greg Dubos (scientist) as guests of honor.

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