Hey out there in comicland! It is I, superhero back from the wilds of San Francisco and WonderCon!
The first thing I have to do is apologize. There was a problem over the weekend with me being able to get e-mails on my phone. So to those varied individuals who e-mailed me with booth visit requests I have to say I’m sorry. I didn’t get your e-mails until I returned back home to Los Angeles. For those of you going to C2E2 in Chicago just rest assured that there will be a small gaggle of @$$holes out there and you should be able to hook up with some AICN comic reviewers at that show.
The next thing I want to say to you is…don’t go to WonderCon. No, really, don’t. I don’t want you to go. Stay away. Why, you ask?
The reason is simple. About fifteen years ago I started going to a neat comic book convention called the San Diego Comic Con. It was a great con. You could walk around, talk to creators without getting too crowded out by other fans, pick up interesting stuff from outside the mainstream without too much hassle, and possibly have a small chat with a celebrity or two without security trying to wrestle you to the ground. It was a comic fan’s paradise. It was fun and low key and was about comics. Then, somewhere around five or so years ago the entertainment industry got wind of it and just like anything else the entertainment industry gets its hands on Comic Con got corrupted. Sure, it’s still fun but now its just become too big for its own good. It’s been swallowed by other media and with that it’s attracted every Tom, Dick and Harriet under the sun who’s got a passing interest in anything from Transformers to “30 Rock”. It’s too big, too crowded, and just too, too much.
I can tell you that WonderCon was the perfect antidote to Comic Con. Maybe it’s the city of San Francisco itself but WonderCon just has a much more low key attitude to itself than Comic Con does. It’s large but it’s not too large. Even so, there’s more room to move around because there’s less people and there’s less people because it’s not so much a media show…it’s a comics show. There’s more room to breathe on the floor. Less pushing and shoving, less of a scramble to get everywhere, and more of a general friendliness on the floor. You can actually have a conversation with people at a booth, an artist at a table, or a celebrity signing autographs (depending on their disposition) without feeling like the masses are ready to knock you down to the floor the first chance they get. Hell, the screening of the first new Doctor Who episode wasn’t the awful standing in line torture session that screenings have turned into at Comic Con. WonderCon is a kinder, gentler version of Comic Con and I am so happy that I went this year. I had a lot of fun, picked up some great loot, and talked with some really nice people. I’ll be back again for sure.
As for the rest of you…stay away.
What follows is a gallery of snapshots that I took while on the floor. Please forgive the photo quality as some of these shots were taken with my phone, but I think you’ll get the point. Hope you enjoy the pics as much as I enjoyed taking them.
Discovered as a babe in an abandoned comic book storage box and bitten by a radioactive comic fan when he was a teenager, superhero is actually not-so mild mannered sometime designer & cartoonist, Kristian Horn of Los Angeles, California. He's been an @$$hole for three years. Some of his work can be seen at www.kristianhorn.com and check out his blog at www.parttimefanboy.com.