Thousands gather for Emerald City ComiCon

Thousands of people — many dressed in elaborate costumes from the pages of Marvel and DC Comics — buzzed around the Emerald City ComiCon on Saturday, blissfully geeking out.

"This is a place where no one needs to be apologetic," said Kyle Stevens, part of the Seattle duo Kirby Krackle, which claims to be the first comic-book rock band.

The crowd here gets the references in songs like "One of the Guys," which recounts the struggles of the character Thing to fit in with the rest of the Fantastic Four. Stevens' band is scheduled to perform at 12:30 p.m. today, the comic-book convention's second and final day.

Fans and would-be artists queued up in the Washington State Convention & Trade Center for a handshake and an autograph from favorite comic creators and sci-fi stars.

Joe Correa, 33, of Portland, carried a portfolio of his own Hellboy drawings under one arm as he waited in line to meet Mike Mignola, the creator of the comic that has since become a feature-film franchise.

"For me, this is something really big," Correa said. "This is the first time I've ever come to a convention and meeting him is something very important for me, because he inspired me."

Dozens of vendors were buying and selling. You could easily lose the whole weekend thumbing through countless boxes of floppies, as comics are called by some (to distinguish them from the hard-bound graphic novels), in search of that one issue of the "Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers" to complete your collection. Or just ogle the vintage, mint-condition "Giant-Size X-Men," listed at a cool $10,000.

Although comic-book readership has plummeted from around 9 million in the late 1940s to perhaps 500,000 today, said Jose Alaniz, a professor who teaches comics culture at the University of Washington, the pop-culture niche still has a passionate following and an outsize impact.

Major movie studios and comics publishers have groomed their characters and brands to cross over from the printed page to the big screen and to video games. Wolverine, the X-Men character played in the movies by Hugh Jackman, is a good example.

"They actually will change the costume, look and physical features [in the comic] to more closely resemble the Hugh Jackman version," Alaniz said. "All that to create an easily recognizable icon that will translate into different media."

Seattle, perhaps not surprisingly, is a comics haven.

Alaniz noted several important comics creators and publishers in the area, including writer Ed Brubaker and Fantagraphics Books, which publishes one of the only journals of comics criticism.

Scott Tomlin, president of Comics Dungeon in Seattle, said members of the city's big role-playing community tend to be comics readers. Likewise, the software geek is not far removed from the comic-book geek, he said.

Nonfiction comics are attracting new readers to the genre, he said. A Vancouver, Wash., publisher, Bluewater Productions, is out with a series of comics profiling women in politics, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and first lady Michelle Obama.

"It's bringing awareness of comics to people who thought they were for geeks that never see the sun," Tomlin said.

Benjamin J. Romano: 206-464-2149 or bromano@seattletimes.com