WonderCon 2010 Begins Today In SF

Comic-Con International's WonderCon gets underway today. That's a convention that at the very least has been sort of the odd man out on the discussion of today's convention fan-gathering and direct-direct sales industry. As I understand it, WonderCon is a mostly straight-ahead mainstream comics and related media con held in one of the great cities of the world for alternative culture. As the Comic-Con organization's big spring offering it's also designed to complement that show with much of the sames sorts of offerings as CCI. This has put it into the odd position of obliquely competing with the new Chicago show C2E2, although the two shows won't likely compete directly. If you'll recall CR's interview with Reed's Lance Fensterman, he went so far as to describe his two big shows (Chicago, New York) and Comic-Con as a potential Big Three, which is understandable, only I imagine CCI could potentially have a different opinion on which shows they'd list 1-2-3 with CCI as the big one in the middle.

Another weird thing about WonderCon is that it's often presented as a balm for people roughed up by the surge of interest in San Diego. This tends to be expressed through statements like "WonderCon is like Comic-Con 15 years ago." This is always hard for me to figure out, because when I think of San Diego 15 years ago I'm suddenly afraid my WonderCon is going to involve sleeping in a room with seven dudes and watching guys from the early seasons of The Real World pick up chicks at a miniature golf course while I'm sitting in a circle with a bunch of people I barely know passing around a joint someone brought with them on the plane (you suck, Osama). I don't want to relive experiences from 15 years ago; I could barely tolerate them back then. I'm no longer ready for the Marvelution, if you know what I mean.

That's right: I said "my WonderCon." Unless something has gone horribly awry, I'm in San Francisco this morning. To be very clear: WonderCon is flying me in as a media guest and putting me up. This is good because otherwise I couldn't afford to go, and hopefully good for them because I'll be paying close attention all weekend and will write about a show and a scene that I don't understand. (I'll be writing about it my own way, too; I'm thinking a one-and-done article on Monday and maybe a supplementary piece or two. I'm not the go-to guy for tweets from the DCU panel.) I hope that I've built up enough trust you'll forgive me taking them up on the offer for the opportunity to write about this show and otherwise get some hands-on work done. They paid for my presence, but they didn't pony up the extra $6.95 (per day) necessary to purchase my opinion, so I'm good there. If not, please forgive me and skip those articles and concentrate on some of the others. Jyllands-Posten has yet to fork over a dime.
 
posted 8:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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