MetroCon: August 3-6, 2017

MetroCon is a four-day convention. The dealer hall opened later in the afternoon on Thursday, then in the mornings for the rest of the weekend. I was on my own for this convention, which was a little sad because it meant I couldn’t look around much. I only managed to get a brief look at the artist alley, and never made it to the vendors. Still, my table neighbors were pretty cool.

Thursday was probably the slowest day of all. A light scattering of people browsed the alley, most of them looking to see what they may buy later in the weekend. I did have one nice surprise encounter: someone I met at AFO happened to show up. He bought Monsters from me, then pulled out the copy of Willow’s Tale that he’d purchased at AFO. He still had it with him.

The rest of the weekend picked up the pace, but not by much. There were a lot of people browsing without much interest in buying, and it wasn’t just me saying that. Conversations with a few other artists revealed the same general mood all round: “Ehhh”. A few mentioned two other major conventions, scheduled the weekend right before MetroCon. The timing might’ve hurt the convention sales this time. It’s unfortunate, but some things can’t be helped.

Poor sales aside, the convention was pretty nice. When there was a bit of downtime, I was able to walk a little and the people I spoke to were all very friendly. One person, a con-hopping comic creator, shared a lot of advice for displays and selling. Also, even if they didn’t buy, people that spoke with me were very supportive of my work.

If next year’s convention is spaced a bit further away from the others, I wouldn’t mind going back to try again. And with that, I leave you with this lovely dog cosplaying as Castiel from Supernatural.