WonderCon 2012 Recap

I am sorry it's taken me so long to get to this recap but life's just been crazy lately. If you may recall, a couple of weeks ago I was able to attend WonderCon down in Anaheim. I've been to Comic Con many times but I haven't been to WonderCon in years. It moved down to Anaheim this year while their normal venue in San Francisco was under renovation and I jumped at the chance to go. 

We took the day off on Friday and headed down. It was funny but a volleyball and cheerleading tournament were also going on at the convention center that weekend. I think everyone thought that the other party was in costume. It was fun seeing the mix of high school athletes with various sci fi/comic costumes mingling.

Highlights from the Con

One of the first panels we saw was the Monsters Anonymous panel that included Mike Mignola (Hellboy), Amber Benson (How to Be Death) and Christopher Farnsworth (The President's Vampire). They had a really cool discussion on whether or not the human population in their novels knew about the paranormal and the implications of each. In most cases I think that the panelists wanted to keep their monsters a secret because normal people wouldn't be able to handle knowing that these scary creatures of legend were real. Afterwards Amber signed some of her books at the Mysterious Galaxy booth. (Sorry for the bad pic, Amber. Apparently I am the queen of catching people with awkward facial expressions).

On Saturday we hit up the 20th Century Fox panel for Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter & Prometheus. I was kind of on the fence about Abe Lincoln but I've totally changed my mind after seeing the footage. It looked awesome! And Ridley Scott was there to talk about his new sci-fi movie, Prometheus. I have to say that the footage for that looked fantastic as well. I am a fan of Ridley Scott so I am excited about this. And Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron were hilarious together. 

Next we moved on to the Ernest Cline spotlight panel. Ernest is the author of Ready Player One, a book I've been dying to read. Ernest was great and talked about Fanboys and why he wanted to write Ready Player One. He also talked a bit about how he got Wil Wheaton to read the audiobook, which I also have. Ernest signed books at Mysterious Galaxy afterwards where I got this awesome autograph.

On Sunday I went to the Max Brooks panel. Max Brooks is the author or World War Z and the Zombie Survival Handbook. I've never heard Max speak before but he was hilarious and really smart about his zombies. He said that it annoyed him that the Survival Guide was put in the humor section because he wrote is seriously and not to be funny. He also talked about how he's a history nerd and updated the audience on what he knew about the World War Z movie. I was able to get my copy of World War Z signed by Max, too. :) 

Last but not least was the Shivers, Shakes, and Swoon panel moderated by Andrea Cremer and featuring Ann Aguirre, Kami Garcia , Gretchen McNeil, Lissa Price, Ransom Riggs, and Veronica Rossi. This was a really big panel and I thought all of the authors had some really interesting things to say about writing and about books becoming films. We also watched the trailers to Price's book Starters and Rossi's book Under the Never Sky.

sorry this is a bad picture

All in all it was fun a time. Nowhere near the scale of Comic Con and I actually think it had less attendance because of the venue change. But I had fun and it just makes me excited for Comic Con in July. Below are just a few more random pics from the weekend. If you made it this far, thanks for sticking with me. :)

Felicia Day was our unofficial stalker since we ran into her about 4 times.

There were some awesome costumes and I loved this Doctor Who love fest.

Look - we found the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle van! In front of a pizza place, no less.  :)

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