WonderCon 2012

Now that I'm mostly recovered from WonderCon, I might as well talk a little about my experience covering the convention for Comic Booked.

Although WonderCon is a comic convention in a similar vein as Comikaze Expo, the two couldn't have been more different. For one thing, Comikaze was a very new convention experiencing its first year and all the growing pains that go along with trying to establish an identity. WonderCon, while experiencing its first (and perhaps only) year in Anaheim last weekend, is a 26 year old convention that has firmly established a reputation in the Bay Area. It's a miniature version of the San Diego Comic-Con, which is to say that it's still a large and popular convention, just not as massive as SDCC has become in recent years.

Comikaze was small enough in size that it was pretty easy for one person (namely me) to cover all two days with little difficulty. Heck, I even played handler for one of the web series celebrities at the con and still managed to meet a number of people and pick up some interesting info to put up on the site by the time it was over. WonderCon, however, is large enough that it takes more than one person to cover the glut of information that the companies bring with them to the panels, especially with so many awesome panels overlapping. And while I know I wasn't the only one on Team Comic Booked at the convention, it sure felt like it from the cries of "MORE COVERAGE!" coming from some of the team members who weren't there.

Admittedly, it must be a bit dismaying to see another site posting news from WonderCon when you know there's at least two people there from the site attending these panels. However, coming down on the people in the trenches for not doing a better job while they're frantically trying to cover as many panels as they can and make as many contacts in the attending companies as possible for future news items can make an already stressful convention experience even more so.

It used to be that comic conventions were nothing but fun for me. Now it's a job, with all the accompanying stress. So when I mention the tiredness of the weekend in my official write-up of the convention, only part of that is the typical con fatigue after three days of a comic convention. The other, much larger, part of that is the anxiety of others breathing down your neck while you're working, with none of the pay to show for a job well done. And while I did enjoy the convention, I can't help but wonder: Am I really building my future as a writer by taking on these assignments, or should I scale back on my involvement with Comic Booked to further my own projects, like my long overdue trilogy?

Either way, you can read all about my convention experience in WonderCon 2012: Post-Convention Musings over at Comic Booked!