JET CITY COMIC SHOW 2015 WAS A WASH

The Jet City Comic Show in Tacoma, WA was a washout. One: It poured down rain on Saturday, Two: People weren't buying.

I will never do another show on a Halloween again. JCCS was held October 31-November 1. Not enough people showed up with cash in hand, and those that did represented the wrong demographic. I have done this show before. Prior to this year it was a one-day affair. This year the promoters expanded it to two days. Doubling the hours did not double the gate receipts. Previous one-day Jet City shows had been well attended. This year, those who came just trickled in across two days instead of one. The show cannot be blamed for extremely bad weather on Saturday. That alone probably suppressed turn out. The killer was booking the Tacoma Convention Center on Halloween. With 20/20 hindsight I realize that this was like scheduling a convention on Christmas Day. Who would come?

In the past this show would get foot traffic from the nearby college campi such as Pacific Lutheran and the UW Tacoma. The college age crowd had better ways to party on a Halloween than dress up as superheroes and mix with the mundanes. Mostly non-fans showed up on Saturday. Moms and Dads brought small children to the show because each booth was handing out trick-or-treat candy. They must have viewed it as an alternative to taking the little tikes in costume to the mall or local community centers to do indoor trick-or-treating on a rainy day. They grabbed the merchants by their gumballs but they didn't spend anything! I hadn't seen so many muggles at a con since last year's Fantasy Con in Salt Lake City. It is also further proof that the so-called "economic recovery" is just a load of Administration bullsh*t!

My daughter and I invested a lot of time and money in sprucing up our display stand for JCCS. Depending on how you cut it, we spent something like $750 on this show and grossed a paltry $90! Only two actual fans made purchases from us who understood what was meant by "original art". Quite a number of attendees thought that we were selling refrigerator magnets even though we had signage to the contrary all over the display. Mundanes all seem to be illiterate dumb-f*cks! The corker to this lost weekend was the Bible-beating A-hole who harangued the departing merchants with a megaphone from the street behind the loading dock. To him we were selling the Devil's own forked tongue in comic book form. The less-than-happy merchants made their displeasure clear to him. Elmer Gantry was last seen high-tailing it down the street.

This was my last show for 2015. So far I have booked Rustycon, Radcon and Norwescon for next year.