I'd love to go to local conventions, unfortunately Vancouver's comic convention scene is sadly lacking as far as comics go. I hear there's rumors the Cloudscape comic group in partnership with an events company is working on putting together a proper comic convention for Vancouver. There's a sci-fi/fantasy convention (V-con) in October I'm hoping to attend, but it has been more writer/novel centric than comic centered in the past. And of course there is the anime convention that's been cancelled for this year (and I have no idea if it will return). Although I've gone to it as an attendee and sometimes panel presenter for years, I've not found it to be as useful as I'd like. I live out about 2 hours out of vancouver, and I can't get into it to be a part of things (I have that 'day job' problem...) so I've been trying to get a group together in the fraser valley. Haven't had much luck yet. Still working on it.
Maybe if the comic convention actually sees the light of day in 2012, I might have more luck finding the right sort of peeps to hook up with.
I've found sometimes too that comic peeps, usually of the male variety seem kinda... weird around me. I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm thinking that there might be some spookishness over me being female...