Rose City Comic Con 2025 - My Experiences

SEPTEMBER 05 - 07, 2025

OREGON CONVENTION CENTER

777 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd 

Portland, OR 97232

2025 marks the 10th year in a row where I have been honored to be able to cover RCCC as a member of the press. I want to thank Leftfield Media for this continued opportunity.

We have arrived and everything is running smoother than last year. We got to the convention center early enough to be able to get a good parking spot and the underground elevators were open and not restricted like they were last year. Thank goodness!

My single complaint about the parking is that the fee has jumped dramatically since last year. When I first started attending Rose City Comic Con, the parking fee was either $6 or $8 for the day. The past 2 years it was $15 and $16. I was a little shell-shocked when I came around the corner of MLK Jr Blvd. and saw the sign declaring a $25 parking fee for this year. Just to be completely transparent, my only compensation for being a member of the press for this event is the badge itself and I don't make any actual money from this blog... even though I have Google Sense setup now. (I haven't received any feedback on this change, but if I receive anything that suggests that the ads on my blog are an eyesore, I will remove them.) I know that the parking fee is not something within the power of Leftfield to be able to negotiate, but it seems quite extreme IMHO.

RCCC Merch Area

I really can't believe that it's actually my 10th year officially covering RCCC for my blog. I am deeply honored.

Since it was still early, and the main exhibit hall had not opened up, I decided I wanted to check out the gaming area. As in years past, Ground Kontrol had a nice setup of classic arcade cabinets, but unfortunately none of them we powered on when we got there.

I spent so many quarters in my youth playing these games and I actually have very fond memories of playing Return of the Jedi at our local 7-11 and I would regularly play Punch Out when my Grandparents would take me to the bowling alley on their league nights. I also remember going to the local Chuck E. Cheese to play Dragon's Lair. I was never good at it, but I shoveled quarters into it anyway because I enjoyed the cinematic gameplay.

In the same gaming area, they also had a room devoted to classic console games. When I first walked in, there was an incredible NES setup in classic 80's style.

90's vibes!

Afterwards, we camped-out near the entrance that I typically like to use... over at the far end of the exhibitor area... and patiently wait for the floor to open to everyone. I'm thankful for the area to be able to sit and write and I hope that there will be similar opportunities in the actual event.

The priorities I made for myself this year were a short list:

• Get the autograph of Wil Wheaton on a Star Trek cover with art by Sydney Walton.
• Get my copies of The Wishsong of Shannara and The Black Unicorn signed by Terry Brooks.
• Try and pickup some inexpensive trades to add to my collection so I can keep writing reviews for my blog.

Since I knew that Wil Wheaton was in a panel from 1:00pm to 2:00pm, I thought it would be a good idea to go over to his area to see if he had scheduled signings. As luck would have it, no schedule but he was going to begin signing after his 2:00pm panel... so I took a good place in line and waited.

It was sometime after 2:00pm (I didn't keep track of the time) when he finally arrived. In the past when I have been in line for autographs, they usually let everyone in the Fast Pass and ADA lines go first, then the people with general admission were able to get theirs. This year, they decided to stagger between Fast Pass, ADA and then general folks. As mentioned previously, I was able to secure a very nice place in line with the other general admission people. (No, the Press pass does not provide any special privileges.) I was 5th in line, and again thankful that they staggered people getting their time with Wil.

He was incredibly pleasant with everyone and the lady who was right before me had a poster of the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast signed by everyone but Wil. She informed him that he was going to be the final signature for the poster, and Wil proceeded to make it an elaborate and memorable moment. I wish I was allowed to photograph or take video of this interaction so that you could take in what I experienced.

When I approached Wil, I greeted him and presented the comic that I was having him autograph. He fawned over the incredible artwork and I let him know that it was donated to Comic Book Covers 4 Cancer by Sydney and that this will be the 2nd cover that I had actually had signed by him. He remembered the first one... that happened several years ago... and took a photo of the cover before signing. I am so thankful for being able to have had this chance to meet Wil once again.

Art by Sydney Walton

After this memorable moment, it was back to wander through the exhibitor's area in search of items to add to my collection, or at least find some items that will become Christmas gifts.

In the past, I have made it a goal to stop by the Oni Press area to take advantage of their half priced Rick and Morty trades. I was really looking forward to it this year as I want to not only continue the story I've been reading, but also pick-up the Oni Press convention covers of the trades since those were the same style covers that I had already begun to collect. Unfortunately, it seems as though they decided not to attend this years even despite being a local publisher. This realization saddened me to the core and I wish I had taken time to notice this fact before attending so I didn't have my hopes up.

Another vendor that was absent at this years event was CBCS Comics. In they past they have not only participated at RCCC, but I have been fortunate enough to partner with them for several Comic Book Covers 4 Cancer covers. I have been, and remain, a supporter of CBCS Comics as I feel they provide a better overall product and service to the collecting community over their competitors.

Another vendor I was hoping to see again this year was Free League Publishing, as I was hoping to get at least The One Ring core rulebook. Alas, they are also not in attendance this year. I did however find the Goodman Games booth and I think I will come back during day 2 to pickup some TTRPG goodness.

In addition to my previously stated goals for the event, I am always on the lookout to add to my action figure collection, and I also have a short list of figures I'm looking for for a friend in Tennessee. Unfortunately, upon my first trek through the exhibitor area, I didn't find anything that peeked my interest of were on any wishlist.

We were fortunate again today with parking. Not only did we get underground early enough, but my favorite parking spot was open! I consider that and incredible win because instead of having to back out of a parking spot, I can simply drive forward.

The unfortunate part is that we got here a little too early for the press room to be open and the gaming are doesn't actually open until 10:00am (I found that out this morning after we arrived).

We did hit the merch area and I picked up one of the new Cryptid Society lanyards. I figured that I was due a new lanyard since I have been using the same one for RCCC since 2013 (I believe).

We made a walkthrough of Artist Alley and the Maker's Market area. While I will never disparage the talent of anyone, it seemed like the majority of the artwork (outside of the professional artists) we primarily focused on anime or similar styles... which I am not a big fan of. I also don't collect stickers or enamel pins, so there wasn't much around here that really caught my interest. I decided to stop collecting art prints a few years ago, so that is another items that was featured that didn't draw my interest.

As far as the art prints are concerned, the biggest reason I stopped collecting them is that I have 3 11" x 17" portfolios full of them and I only actually look at them when I am rearranging my office space. As much as I would love to frame them all and put them on the wall, I don't have the finances to frame them all, not the wallspace to display them. I will always support independent artists in other ways.

On Friday, there were a couple of exhibitors I wanted to revisit on Saturday. First was Katelyn McCaigue who I first met last year and picked up her 2 Creature Compendium volumes. She had some great looking Magic the Gathering tokens available that I felt deserved a home in my collection.

I actually bought 3 of each token.

As I mentioned in the Day 1, I was hoping to find Free League Publishing to scratch my TTRPG itch. Since they were not there, I was able to satisfy that desire with a stop at the Goodman Games booth to pickup some great 5E and DCC adventures.

Another vendor that I noticed during my time on Friday was Misty Mountain Gaming as they had these token counters for Magic the Gathering displayed. Since my roommates and I play the commander format, and have a few decks that end up generating a decent number of tokens, I wanted to get 1 for each of us. It was then explained that they were doing a buy 3 get 1 free special, so I opted to get a 4th token counter. While they had several color options available, I ended up buying the last 4 they had and only took a photo of a single one. They will all be put to good use, I assure you.

Unfortunately, there weren't very many options for getting inexpensive trades, so that piece of my wishlist became unfulfilled for this year. That left only one last item to check off the list: visiting with Terry Brooks.

The signing was scheduled to run from 12:15pm to 1:15pm and when I checked on the line at noon, it was already packed and wrapping around the backend of the signing location. I got in line and patiently waited my turn. During my wait, I did lament a few times over the fact that I could have acquired his autographs at last years RCCC. I wanted to make sure I got them this year because he announced his retirement earlier this year so who knows when the opportunity will make itself available again. Brooks is not a young man. After about an hour long wait, my mission was successful and my body was telling me how much it hated me for standing in line for so long.

After taking a short rest, we decided to call it a day. My photographer had another event that he and his wife were vending at on Sunday, and they both had to make preparations for. I am already looking forward to next year.

Hope to see you again next year!

A Huge Disappointment - PGX

This is a follow-up from my experiences with PGX from 2016, which can be found here.

Sometime in 2019, CBCS Comics offered a discount on their grading services, and I decided to send a couple comics from my collection to get encapsulated for preservation. As my loyal readers can probably attest to, I don't typically send comics to get graded to sell... or at all. There was a cover that I had created by artist Robert "Floydman" Sumner, and signed by "Weird Al" Yankovic. I felt that having this preserved would be a great idea.

I also felt that I wanted to have both the Stan Lee and Larry Hama signatures authenticated on the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #50 that I had sent to PGX years ago. For whatever reason, even after I have asked to have Hamma's signature authenticated when I sent it to PGX, they failed to do so. This always bothered me... so, away to CBCS.

As you can read in my previous post about my original experiences with PGX, I paid good money to have this issue, that has so much sentimental value to me, signed by Stan Lee and encapsulated. I had this issue signed by Larry Hama at Rose City Comic Con in 2015.



I have had the pleasure of working with CBCS Comics before, and have never been disappointed. The entire experience was excellent, and I feel that their customer service was excellent and their service was on time.



When I got the books back, I was both happy and upset. Here's why I was happy:

This is the reason I was upset:

Here are the notes from CBCS on this book:

Signees:

Verified Sig: LARRY HAMA.

"Stan Lee" signature unverifiable by BAS.

Notes:

spine stress breaks color

light edge & corner wear

many crinkle bends to front & back cover

When I reached-out to Beckett Authentication Services for further comment, this is unfortunately all they would comment:

John,

Because we deemed the autograph inconclusive, we can no longer give information regarding the signature.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Thank you,

Yoni

I was devestated when I got this book back. I don't have issue with CBCS, of course. My outrage is directed at PGX for apparently grading this too high in the first place, and possibly sell me an unauthentic Stan Lee signature.



I have sent PGX an email to comment on this issue, and have given them 5 business days to respond. If they don't respond by next weekend, I will provide an update here.

8 years now, and making some changes

Has it actually been 8 years now? I remember having so many trades to read and review. Stacks of each. These days, the stack of trades to read is not nearly as tall and same with the stack of trades needing to be reviewed. My resources for purchasing new trades has been very limited the past few years, and I haven't been buying as much.



My biggest thrill is when I go to events like Rose City Comic Con and get to find vendors that have trades marked down to an incredible level. Buying trades for even less than what I would pay for them in a used book store is such a great feeling. Unfortunately, I have been looking at these opportunities as a collector and not just a reviewer. I've been cherry-picking for volume 1's of titles I've not read yet where most of the available stock are later volumes because they didn't fair as well as the first. I see this now as I write this article, and I am disappointed in myself.



Because of this shortage, I have been trying to find ways to branch-out to keep my blog interesting for you.



You'll notice that for several years I've been covering events around the Northwest as a member of the press. I've been blessed to be included in the past several Rose City Comic Con's, and this year I was fortunately to be able to cover the first Northwest Comic Con (now Oregon Coast Comic Con). As I'm writing this, I'm waiting to hear back from Eugene Comic Con (EUCON) to see if I'll be covering it as a member of the press.



I hope that the reviews that I've been posting for these events have been helpful to both the event coordinators and attendees. I would like to take some measure of credit for Rose City expanding to 3 days.

Looking forward to 2018, I'm planning on making a large push for Comic Book Covers 4 Cancer (#CBC4C). I'll be attending Oregon Coast Comic Con in March, and I'm going to try my hardest to get a table or booth at Rose City Comic Con. This will not only take a lot of my time to prepare, but it will also take additional resources (funding) to make sure I have enough to warrant having a table at both of these events. For Oregon Coast Comic Con, I have recently made an agreement with artist Neil Jorge to do a con exclusive print for CBC4C. I'm very excited to see what he comes up with. I'm hoping to do something similar for Rose City.



Going forward, I think I may also branch-out to start doing some interviews with people in the comics world. I'm inspired to try this because earlier this year, Warrior Innkeeper Creative publisher Benjamin Kreger interviewed me as part of a "Worthy Wednesday" piece for his Black Suit of Death #2 Kickstarter.



I'm still going to be writing my reviews, but they will only be published occasionally instead of on a regular basis like they used to be. This should be a huge issue to my loyal readers as this has been going on for the past year now... at least. I apologize for that, and I hope I've been able to make it worth the while with other posts.



Thank you all for your continued support. Please keep track of me here and on Facebook. Here's hoping for a great year 9!



-John "Zanziber" Rogers

Rose City Comic Con 2017 - My Experiences

Rose City Comic Con has come and gone for this year, and again it was a wonderful event! I have been to every RCCC since the beginning, and 2017 was by far my favorite year so far!



Before I go any further, let me apologize for the delay in the publication of this review. Days after Rose City, my laptop crashed and I was unable to retrieve any of the photos that I took and didn't have a fully functional computer until now. I am thankful that I shared at least some of the photo's on my Facebook page. When/if I can retrieve the photo's from my hard drive, I will add them as an addendum.



The great part about 2017 was that they expanded it to a 3-day event. This was a common thought among the people I spoke with last year. from what I experienced, I think that it was a wise choice to make.



Another change that was made was that RCCC moved the badge pick-up are upstairs and used the area where they used to have the pick-up open for the celeb area and where they displayed 3 different transformer vehicles.















This was a nice use of space, IMHO.

My personal priority for day 1 was to get in line for "Weird Al" Yankovic, as I have been a fan since I was a kid. My first LP (vinyl record) was "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D; and I still have it and my copy of Dare to Be Stupid over at my parents house.



The only issue is that they decided to queue people right in front of the celeb area, and did not open the lines for these guests until all the people who were queued to enter were allowed to enter. Not sure that was a great decision to make, but I'm not going to complain too much. I was still able to get a good place in line for the signing.



Let's now go back to last year when "Weird Al" came to McMenamins Edgefield, I had decided to commission artist Robert "Floydman" Sumner for a Star Wars comic book cover with "Weird Al" on it. When "Weird Al" was announced as a guest for RCCC, I knew that I wanted to have him sign said cover.



When I finally made it to the man himself and presented the Star Wars Annual cover to sign, he marveled at it for quite a while, believing that it was commercial work and that he had seen it before. I made sure he knew that it was a custom piece, and he was taken aback by the artwork and asked if he could take a photo of it. I couldn't tell him no. I was also able to get proof positive that I actually and finally was able to meet my all-time music idol.

Once I was able to get that off my to do list, I started to get a better look around. I was able to check-in with artists Gene Guilmette, Ben Hansen and Ron Randall; who have all contributed to my non-profit, Comic Book Covers 4 Cancer. With the expanded show floor, there was so much to take in.



As opposed to years past, I didn't overload myself with items to have signed. I know that in prior years I have felt that I spent so much time trying to get items signed that I missed getting to panels or get to meet new people at the event. Point of fact, when I took some time to grab a seat and rest my feet, I actually took in a panel about solving a Rubix Cube.

It's unfortunate that I don't have more of my day 1 photos. I was actually happy with myself for taking so many this year.



Day 2 started early enough that so many artists and vendors weren't even at their tables. It was the only time I found the Hero Initiative booth, and nobody was available for me to buy some of their books. But I was able to hit the I Like Comics booth and take advantage of their $4 trades.



Early on, I also got to drop by Mike Zeck's booth. His wife was bringing people in while Mike worked on some art. She informed me of the special/limited G.I. Joe cover that was available. When I saw it, I knew I needed it for my collection.

She also mentioned that there was a deal if I bought the G.I. Joe comic, then the prints would be half of the posted cost. There was a set of Spider-Man covers from the "Kraven's Last Hunt" storyline that were grouped together for a special price. I asked if there was a special deal if I bought the comic and the Spider-Man prints. She began to tell me that there wasn't, but then Mike "corrected" her. I told them that they had a deal. It was at that point that Zeck realized his error, but was a man of his word and sold the prints and comic to me for the agreed upon price. So now, I also have these wonderful additions to my print collection.















Special thanks go to artists Andy and Veronica Fish, Katie Cook, Jim Mahfood and Jason Metcalf for allowing me to pick-up their donated covers from them with our CBCS Comics witness.



















Due to timing issues, Chip Zdarsky and Valentine De Landro dropped their covers off at the CBCS booth. Looking forward to seeing how they all turn out once graded.












As for the Batgirl issues that were going to be signed, Since Brenden Fletcher was a no-show, our CBCS witness informed me that artist Cameron Stewart was attending as well, so we got his and Babs Tarr's signatures on them. They are also in the hands of CBCS for grading.

Unfortunately I was unable to touch base with every contributing artist who was attending, and I am sorry to those I didn't get a chance to stop by and say "Thank you" to.

The goal for next year is to receive a table for the event so we can continue to promote the cause. That means that there will be calls for fundraising to help get us there, so keep your eyes peeled in 2018 for those announcements.

As mentioned previously, the next series of auctions will be determined once the covers donated at RCCC return from CBCS. I'm thinking around the beginning of December. You can always keep updated on our Facebook page.



As for the additions to my signature collection, I stopped to visit Skottie Young:

Erik Larsen:

 

Jim Mahfood:

Ron Randall:

Chris Roberson, Mike and Laura Allred:

Chris Roberson and Georges Jeanty:

Serenity: Firefly Class 03-K64 - No Power in the 'Verse

Serenity: Firefly Class 03-K64 - Leaves on the Wind

When I went to the last ever Stumptown Comic Fest, I picked-up the volume 1 & 2 of Witch Doctor from Brandon Seifert. That was back in 2013. Since then, I have tried to keep my eyes opened for when Lukas Ketner was going to be making an appearance in a local con. 2017 was my year to finally get his autograph on my trades.

And even though I am a huge Funko Pop collector, I only picked-up a single new addition to my collection from Matt's Cavalcade of Comics.

Dates for next years event have already been announced: September 7-8, 2018. I'm planning on being there, one way or another. If I am unable to get a table for #CBC4C, then I hope that I will again be allowed to officially cover the event as a member of the media.