WonderCon 2013 Day 1 Blog and Gallery

The three day convention that is WonderCon 2013 began yesterday, so check out my thoughts after the break, along with a gallery of some cool booths, costumes, and panels.

WonderCon is a comic book and pop culture convention held every Spring by Comic-Con International, the same organization that runs San Diego Comic-Con. WonderCon is much smaller, so it tends to focus more on comic books and smaller projects. Still, some movie studios and TV networks have a presence, so we cover it each it year.

Fridays at WonderCon are usually not the busiest day of the convention despite being the first day. Many people wait until the weekend to come down, so I look forward to Saturday. However, since it is Spring Break for many people and the Anaheim Convention Center (where the Con is being held for the foreseeable future) is right next to Disneyland, you can imagine the area is still pretty crazy, and traffic is insane.

I started off the day by checking out the Exhibit Floor. If you’ve ever been to Comic-Con, than you may be surprised to find out how little of a presence Hollywood has at WonderCon. This year especially, I only saw a few independent production/distribution companies with modest booths. DC’s massive section is focused mainly on comics and its upcoming video game Injustice: Gods Among Us. However, there were a few statues of Man of Steel characters, which you’ll see in the gallery below.

What surprised me the most was the fact that Marvel did not have a booth at all. Before yesterday, I had been to two WonderCons and three Comic-Cons and have always seen Marvel with a section that (usually) rivaled DC. I should have seen the writing on the wall with last year’s wimpy presence, which was simply a banner for The Avengers where you could stand in front of to take pictures with the Captain America shield. Still, it was really odd to not have Marvel there since Iron Man 3 opens in just over a month. Hopefully they’ll come in full force for Comic-Con or Disney’s D23 Expo.

I attended the Warner Bros. Television program, which screened the first episode of Teen Titans Go! and new episodes of Arrow, Revolution, and The Following. Unfortunately, I only had time to stay for Teen Titans Go! and the first half of Arrow. TTG has the same cast and voice actors from Teen Titans, but the animation is much more simplistic. It reminded me of The Powerpuff Girls. It still has the comedic tone of the previous show, but feels even more childish. I’m not a fan of this style for cartoons, but I can see how it will appeal to little kids. I just know I’m going to miss Young Justice. Arrow is my favorite new show of the season, so I hated missing the last 15 minutes or so of this solid episode.

The reason I left early was for roundtable interviews with cast and crew of Netflix’s upcoming horror series Hemlock Grove. All thirteen episodes of the first season will be available for streaming on April 19th, but press got to see the first three episodes to prep for the interviews. I’ll put up the audio from those interviews later this weekend or Monday at the latest.

Finally, I rushed back into the Arena to see the premiere of Superman: Unbound, the latest animated feature from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. I’ll have a full review of that movie on Monday, but I can tell you right now, as a Superman fan, I definitely enjoyed it.

Tomorrow will be a busy day of Hollywood panels, so stay tuned for more about that. I’ll leave you with my very amateur photos from the Con below.

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