ECCC Laughs at Itself in the Webcomic ‘Tales from the Con’

This weekend, comic book fans and pros are flocking to Seattle for Emerald City Comicon. It's a magical time, when the aisles are lined with quarter bins and fans can tell their favorite writers exactly where their comics went wrong. Conventions aren't everyone's cup of Seattle coffee, but ECCC knows that some of us wouldn't trade the long lines, over-caffeinated cosplayers and weird fan-pro interactions for anything. That's why they've been running Brad Guigar and Chris Giarrusso's webcomic Tales from the Con on the ECCC website, lampooning the highs and lows of convention weekend with lots of love.Guigar (Greystone Inn, Evil Inc.) and Giarrusso (G-Man, Marvel Minis) have been posting Tales from the Con each week, gently mocking the peculiarities of convention weekend, from the cosplayer who spends hundreds of dollars on the perfect costume, only to pretend she doesn't want her picture taken, to the fans who crack the same corny joke about having their comics signed to "eBay."

As far as I know, ECCC is the first convention to run a regular webcomic, and it's a handy way to keep people coming back to the site. If you're checking in for the latest Tales from the Con, you might also check in on the latest ECCC news -- and maybe, just maybe, you'll be tempted to book that last-minute trip to Seattle.

Tales from the Con is done mostly as a simple, newspaper-style strip, but it occurs to me that it could use some more real-life tales from actual conventions. Scott Kurtz, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins' new webcomic The Trenches, about video game testers, includes a real, eye-rolling story from a software tester with each installment. Of course, ECCC may think the best way to market conventions to the fan masses isn't with stories about the artist who threw up on your shoes.

This week, though, the comic does break a little bit from its usual format, offering the Goofus and Gallant dos and don'ts of Emerald City Comicon: