Rose City, You Rock! 

 

by MJ Wilke

March 2015

 

When you attend a lot of cons, you know how to wait in line. Con-goers queue-up like the best of them. Line queuers understand safety. We know not to block doors, we tend to wait in a straight line, and we know our place within the line. We also know who is in front of us and behind. Rarely is there a line jumper. We are queuers, hyper-aware of the line. The line is what stands between us and our passions, our thing.

 

There is no doubt that con-goers knew how to queue up at Rose City Comic Con 2014. Lining up for a packed panel, we queuers automatically snaked the line when needed. Borg-like, we instinctively took our place as we waited for the much-anticipated panel Secret Identity Politics with Ben Saunders, which included guests Kelly Sue DeConnick, Greg Rucka, G. Willow Wilson, and Marc Andreyko. Fifteen minutes before the panel, numerous red shirts arrived to assess the situation. These red shirts were not expendables from the United Federation of Planets but Rose City Comic Con volunteers and staff. My immediate thought was that they were going to shuffle or shift us, as line managers tend to do.

 

However, these red shirts did not attempt to move us, instead they counted. At first I thought they were going to cap the line, but I was wrong. THEY WERE COUNTING TO BRING IN MORE CHAIRS! I KNOW I’M SHOUTING BUT ROSE CITY COMIC CON IS AWESOME.

 

In all my years of attending cons, this is the first time I’ve seen con organizers add more chairs to accommodate as many as they could. You guys are awesome.

 

Rose City Comic Con really is in the sweet spot right now. The staff, volunteers, guests, exhibitors—they all want to be here. They are all excited to be here. Rose City Comic Con is all about the fans.