By Tom Spurgeon
* here's how things have changed. I'm not the greatest fan of going to comics shows, but I realized something the other day. If I were independently wealthy, I could easily do a dozen comics shows in 2013: Comic-Con, HeroesCon, Emerald City, CAKE, SPX, BCGF, Angouleme, Comica/Thought Bubble, Fumetto, Wonder Con, TCAF and let's throw in MoCCA for the New York setting. That's absurd. Hell, I'm sure I could probably rattle off six more that'd be kind of cool to visit, too. Who doesn't like visiting Baltimore, Seattle again or a place like Lucca? That's super-absurd.
* the collective memory for BCGF ended up being a pretty good one. I'd still love to hear from anyone who has a link that's not there. It's not that same as it was back in 2007 or so with the blog posts and the desire to communicate that way, but these shows still touch people and I'll figure out a way to communicate how people saw specific shows if it kills me.
* I liked Heidi MacDonald's Brooklyn report. She put the show on a continuum that included the recent SPX; I thought it was slightly different in nature than that one. I had two people e-mail me asking about the cartoonists she saw surreptitiously holding hands. It's adorable anyone would ask me, because I'm terrible at that kind of thing: noticing it, processing it, reporting on it. I also liked this report from Julia Pohl-Miranda.
* MacDonald also wrote about a smaller con in North Carolina.
* Genghis Con this weekend. That could be a surprisingly strong one. Comica is ongoing, of course.
* I like the profiles that Stumptown does of their guests.
* finally, they're beginning to sell out on con-rate rooms at the Emerald City hotels. Those are good rates for downtown Seattle for the most part. I don't know those hotels enough to recommend any one over the other, at least none of the ones still in play.