The wonders of Wondercon

Caped crusaders, vile villains, robots from the future, and cartoons from across the Pacific…These are all things you might have seen if you spent any time in downtown San Francisco last weekend.  KALW’s Brian Pelletier did, and he brings us the wonders of Wondercon.

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BRIAN PELLETIER: Wondercon, the Bay Area’s premier comic book convention, started back in 1987, at the Oakland Convention Center.  It moved to San Francisco seven years ago, and now every year, tens of thousands of people descend on the Moscone Center to celebrate comic books and movies, anime, and the characters they love. As an investigative journalist, my job is to figure out why.  So I asked tough questions like, who’s your favorite comic book character?

PERSON 1: Comic book character? Hmm, that’s a tough one. 

PERSON 2: I don’t know, I don’t know how to explain. 

PERSON 3: That is a very difficult question to answer.

PERSON 4: Ah no, not really.

PERSON 5: It’s hard to pick one. They’re all just their own character; they’re all unique and pretty much it all depends on my mood, really. 

I didn’t anticipate convention-goers would be such tough nuts to crack! Then again, you never know who’s protecting a secret identity.

Luckily, avoiding the press isn’t one of Roger Yan’s superpowers.  The co-owner of the Comic Outpost in the city’s Ingleside District says there’s a reason fans find it so hard to choose a favorite.

ROGER YAN: There’s just a whole plethora of characters out there who are exciting and amazing and I mean, it just wouldn’t do them justice to say one person in particular.

Back on the convention floor, some of them are there in person…or character. There’s Wonder Woman, The Joker, a variety of anime, Darth Vader and…

EDDIE LERMA: We’re Mandalorian Bounty-Hunters from Star Wars.

Eddie Lerma of Vallejo and Adam Porea of Fairfield aren’t real Mandalorian bounty-hunters -- they just take their costumes very seriously.

LERMA: These are our two new armors that we just did over the course of the year using PVC sheets and any other miscellaneous materials that we could find, and a lot of hard work and sweat poured into it.

Sweat is a Wondercon theme, with all the costumes and fans packed into Moscone. People walk shoulder to shoulder, gawking at huge television screens where the latest fantasy-themed video games are being played, or waiting in line to take pictures with heroes like Christopher Chance from Fox’s “Human Target.”

But it’s not just blood and gore, fun and games.For Kyle Winters, Wondercon is business. He’s the owner of a small publishing Company in Eastern California and took part in a panel discussion:

KYLE WINTERS: This is going to sound funny, the Comic Book Law panel, which was all about intellectual property rights and trademark and copy write and how to protect yourself if you get into comic books.

Conventions like Wondercon are big business for area economies.  In fact, its no secret that Anaheim is trying to lure the grand-daddy of all comic conventions, Comic-Con, away from its home in San Diego.  In San Francisco, Roger Yan says Comic-Con’s sidekick, Wondercon, isn’t quite as big a deal, but the convention is always a boon for his business.

YAN: We do see people from these conventions come on over to our store, which is a good thing.

And he expects some upcoming comic movies to greatly improve cash flow. On April 16th, there’s a little something called “Kick-ass”…“Losers” comes out later this month…Then there’s “Iron Man 2” in May, and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” in August.

YAN: So there are quite a few comic book movies that hopefully people will go see and then go ahead and come back to the comic book shop to learn more about these particular titles.

Of course, Yan will always have his regulars.The Mandalorian Bounty-Hunters need a place to hang out when the convention’s over.

From Wondercon, I’m Brian Pelletier for Crosscurrents.