There wasn't much manga news and events to report at WonderCon 2009, so I entertained myself by walkin' the floor, checking out the panels and taking lots of photos. And there was lots to see that weekend. Check out my WonderCon 2009 Photo Gallery for some of the people, the panels, the things to buy and events worth gawking at.
Official attendance numbers for WonderCon are not available, but by most guesstimates, this year's crowd met and likely exceeded the 29,000 who came out for this Northern California comics and pop culture festival in 2008, with Saturday being the busiest day of the 3-day event.
Cosplay action was fairly light -- perhaps dampened by the recent rainy and cold weather in the Bay Area. But WonderCon also had its share of cool robots (thanks to a fan group who specialize in creating their own R2-D2 robots from scratch), buzz-worth movie previews (Watchmen, Terminator Salvation, Star Trek, and Alien Trespass), comics creators (Jill Thompson, Brian Azzarello, Stan Sakai, Wendy Pini) and celebrity appearances (Elijah Wood, Eric McCormack and Zachary Quinto). Comic book purists may scoff at the Hollywood presence at these shows, but come on, would a crowd this huge come out just to look at boxes of old comics? I think not.
Anyhow, did you go to WonderCon? What did you think? Add your comments below, or chime in on the forums.
Image credit: © Deb Aoki
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