WonderCon '17: The Floor

After that tremendous Thursday of Extreme Studios anniversary, Irish pub happy hour and a quick trip to Disneyland's California Adventure Park, it was time to start the WonderCon! With badges being mailed out early, we breezed past a giant line waiting to pick up their badges outside. Inside, I had the immediate sense that the show was bigger than years prior and I think I'm right. For 2017, WonderCon was utilizing all four Halls A-D for registration, Arena queue and the actual exhibit floor. Compared to the first or second year where we shared with a large volleyball tournament which lead to some amusing co-mingling of athletes and cosplayers outside. While there weren't any huge installations or Hollywood showpieces, DC, Boom, Gold & Silver Age Comics, a pink unicorn looking thing, a sizable Artist Alley, Disney and Capcom were are all out in force.

Walking around for several hours, I realized we'd barely covered half the floor! There was a solid mix of comic books, action figures, Funko Pops, art pieces, mystery boxes, prints, movie posters and film soundtracks. For the older goer you had 50's and 60's Disney pieces or a frigging oil paint by numbers set featuring James frigging Garner as Maverick! With a Wild Storm 25th anniversary panel scheduled and Jim Lee being a guest of honor, I was hoping there would be some sweet 90's Image stuff and for the most part I was not disappointed. One booth had WildCats figures for $15-20 a pop while another had a beat up in package Zealot for $4, sold! On the hunt for a McFarlane Toys Shaft or Dutch figure from Youngblood but only saw the likes of Troll or Badrock, hello Amazon! Big Red Comics and another vendor had some sweet $1 bins, bagged, boarded and in alphabetical order.

Capcom had an awesome four sided installation with multiple Street Fighter games to play as it's the 30th anniversary but on one side was a real highlight, a faux bedroom decked out in 90's glory i.e. Michael Jordan and Home Alone posters along with tube TV's to play Ducktales or Chip N' Dale Rescue Rangers! To top it off, you got a snap bracelet on the way out, 90's forever! On the new trinkets front, I grabbed some custom Cyclops and Captain America zipper pulls along with a bottle opener with Ron Lim Cap art. Cosplay wise you had Game of Thrones in groups, much Star Wars, stilted Transformers and Voltron and one Jack Frost.

While there were huge walkways in some of the hall, over in A things got narrow and crowded, cheaper real estate? Hand crafted hats, belts, phone cases and the like were on display along with prop weapons and real knives. Flash Gordon's Sam Jones was the most recognizable actor selling autographs. While there were a dozen food trucks outside, concession stands inside had surprisingly decent sustenance with usual offerings like pizza, deli sammiches, burgers and soft serve ice cream but no bars on the floor. All in, the best WonderCon floor I can think of in recent memory.

(Pre)Con-Man: Extreme Studios 25th Anniversary Signing

This past weekend, Comic-Con International's WonderCon returned to Anaheim after a brief stint in Los Angeles last year. Anaheim is great site for hosting cons due to it's proximity to Disneyland that provides a fantastic infrastructure of highways, roads, hotels and eateries. Even though the show started on Friday, we booked a suite at the Double Tree (gotta love WC pricing!) on Thursday so we could hit Disneyland before all the Spring Breakers showed up. A random Facebook post alerted me of something truly comic book distinct, a 25th anniversary signing of Rob Liefeld's Image Comics imprint Extreme Studios!

Liefeld and Jim Lee's WildStorm studios were the two Image brands I grew up on with multiple runs of Extreme's Youngblood, Brigade and Prophet being part of my collections around the country. I had just purchased the new hardcover edition of Youngblood (forgot to bring it) and was brought back to the 90's in your face showcase of muscles, exposed hair, hot bodies and being superheroes in a media obsessed society. Big Red Comics is located in picturesque old town Orange complete with roundabout and multiple eateries, bars and antique shops. There was already a line down the block but store staff walked the queue explaining how things were going to work. Once inside, you could buy an Extreme Yearbook with bios and artwork from all of the guests along with other titles and rarities like store only Youngblood #1 or Prophet graphic novels collecting the first seven issues. More and more guests showed up and raffles kept the atmosphere light.

The guest list was IMMENSE with Jeff Matsuda, Dan Fraga, Andy Park, Shannon Denton, Chap Yaep, Todd Nauck, Marat Mychaels, Norm Rapmund, Art Thibert, Danny Miki, Matt Hawkins, Dan Panosian, Shelby Robertson, Jon Sibal and Karl Altstaetter. I had already had a brief fanboy moment with Prophet's Dan Panosian at February's Long Beach Con so it was cool when he walked up next to us in line and sighed about Los Angeles traffic making him late. The signing was kind of what you made of it, chit chatting with each guest, I wish I had read the yearbook before meeting everyone! But stories of being 19 when they joined and it mostly being a blur or talking animated X-Men as someone moved into film and TV after comics. Panosian said there would be an anniversary panel at San Diego Comic-Con as there wasn't one at WC while I talked to Matt Hawkins about The Image Revolution being the best documentary of the four he did interviews for. Rob Liefeld was gracious, thanking us for showing up and waiting, ready to sign whatever I wanted. He flipped through the Prophet trade, laughing that he found a box of them so they were vintage!

To cap off a great event, O'Hara's Pub next door had $6 Jameson's...and we still had Disneyland later that evening. Wonder Con 2017 was shaping up nicely and it hadn't even started.