Wondercon 2008 impressions

It was rainy but I made it to Wondercon 2008 @ Moscone Center SF. Even met up with some art collecting friends which was great to catch up with them. And of course, I saw lots of superheroes including a few that let me take photos with them. Long story there and I'll save those pictures for another time. :) I would have tried to squeeze into my bright red spandex Flash costume for a quick jog around the show but...

There were a couple original art booths there including the few art dealers that annually make it to this show including Allan from Heroes Comics, Moy, Donneley's, etc etc. Also made it to Artist Alley to see who was signing/sketching including Ryan Sook, Art Adams, Ron Lim, Ernie Chua, Tony DeZuniga, JS Campbell, etc etc. Saw Jim Lee at the CBLD sketching event along with JJ Kirby, and couple other artists. They had a couple nice Lee sketches go for upwards of 800 (Sue Richards, Colossus, Ironman). Also was able to flip through the portfolios at Michael Turner's Aspen area (little more than I want to spend for those nice pencils), and saw Ale Garza and others doing a 90 minute Hellboy sketching battle.

It seemed fairly crowded inside for a Wondercon, but then again, weather wasn't great and Saturday tends to have some cool talks and presenters including the CBLD sketching and live auction, movie previews (Wall-E from Pixar Animation Studios), and other special guests, which tend to bring people off the main exhibit floor. The line out front buying tickets was long --I had to wait at least 30 minutes queued up out front and this was at around 1pm. It looks like the comic book industry is strong, and has a lot of influence out there. More and more movie/tv studios send stars and directors down to preview and talk up their projects.

And where else can u see Wolverine walking around, and then you shout, "Hey Wolverine, how about a photo?!?" and he goes into an iconic pose right then and there. Awesome. :) Of course there were the snickers and comments like "Looks like Wolverine doesn't have his healing power to lose more weight" and other zingers. But no matter. This is a comic book convention. It's normal to dress up as your favorite character and walk around the show with 100,000 of your other friends. :)