WonderCon 2011 Recap and Gallery

While WonderCon celebrated its 25th Anniversary this weekend, MovieViral celebrated its first year covering it live from the event. After the break see some of photos and video I took, as well as my overall thoughts on the comic book convention.

WonderCon is run by Comic-Con International, the same group who puts on San Diego Comic-Con. WonderCon has been held in San Francisco since its inception, though it has never taken over the city quite like Comic-Con has in San Diego. In fact, WonderCon in general is significantly smaller than Comic-Con, lasting only three days instead of 4.5 and focusing more on comic books and the like, similar to how Comic-Con used to be before Hollywood fell in love with geek culture.

You could definitely feel the size difference, and it was actually quite refreshing. The two biggest panels of the event were for Green Lantern and Cowboys & Aliens, so you know the heavyweights didn’t come out to fight. Even for these two main events, the lines failed in comparison to Comic-Con. If you want to even get in to the Hall H panels at Comic-Con (where all the big movies are), you needed to camp out over night. To get into the Ballroom at WonderCon, just get there a few hours before the first panel and you’ll be fine.

The exhibition hall was also less crowded than Comic-Con, though it still got pretty packed at times. There’s a much smaller space used, and a lot of that can be attributed to the fact that there were no movie studio booths outside of Marvel and DC’s respective multiplatform areas. With it being less mainstream, we definitely saw more diehard nerds come out than in Comic-Con, where everyone becomes a nerd for a week. There were some great costumes, and I finally learned that Green Lantern actually has a solid following.

I also felt that that more low-key, smaller atmosphere allowed more access to talent. I saw Max Brooks, writer of World War Z, sitting in the audience for the Green Lantern: Emerald Knights screening. I saw The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman outside the exhibitor’s hall just chatting on his cell phone alone. In general, all the talent I talked to, including film stars, seemed gracious and happy to be at WonderCon and understood its significance.

The experience overall was great, and we hope to cover even more next year. Below is some raw footage I took of the convention (mostly from the exhibition hall), as well as some photos that mostly feature some of the costumes I saw. To read all of our coverage of the event, click here.