WonderCon 2024 - Highlights

WonderCon 2024 kicked off March 29th through the 31st at the Anaheim Convention Center. The inclement weather didn’t stop cosplayers, vendors and guests from showing up to partake in this magical weekend event. I was honored to be able to cover this convention as “Press”, so I tried to take advantage of everything this con had to offer. I got to see some panels, cosplay, shop in the vendor hall and even checked out the gaming area.

Friday was a pretty relaxed day. It was not as busy so I was able to hit the vendor floor and freely walk in and out of booths without worrying about bumping into anybody. Like most conventions, the vendors ranged from comic books and Funko pops to artwork and collectibles. I stopped by a few booths that were selling TTRPG dice and accessories because I am trying to break into the world of Dungeons and Dragons. I asked one of the workers at the +3 Charisma booth what I would need for my first adventure. I already had a set of dice, but was interested in their player journals and dice organizers. A unique thing about their leather bound journals is that once you fill up the pages they can send you new pages to put in the book. I liked that because I tend to hoard notebooks. Being able to use the same book and replace the pages is nice. That said, I did not buy a journal but I did buy a mystery bag which came with a set of dice, a dice organizer and some stickers. You can never have enough dice. Another vendor I looked at was Dice Envy who as you can probably tell by the title sold dice. I could easily go down the rabbit hole of collecting dice but I knew that would be a slippery slope so I did not purchase any. They had a lot of cool looking dice in various sizes, so if that’s your thing is collecting or you run a lot of games and like having a lot of dice options for players, Dice Envy is a good one to check out. A few of these TTRPG vendors also had these stuffed dragons that they were calling “Emotional Support Dragons” because they were super soft. I kind of wished I had bought one. They were so soft and cuddly. If gaming isn’t your thing, there were vendors selling lightsabers, swords, t-shirts and hats from your favorite comic book movies and tv shows, jewelry, and collectibles. I saw a lot of NECA figures that were being sold for double the price you could normally pay for them at a Walmart or Target. I never understood why they do that. Especially the ones that are common to find at those places. There was a lot of cool artwork being sold and one of the places that caught my eye was Glo McCollough’s booth. She hand paints these Muppets portraits that are characters from popular movies and tv shows. So for instance, she had an Eric Draven portrait from The Crow but he was in Muppet form. She had Ahsoka, Beetelgeuse, the Joker, Elvira and a whole bunch more. I didn’t notice this until the artist told us, but if you look in the eyes of the character there’s a scene reflecting in their eyes. I thought that was so cool. It’s very subtle but once you see it in one, it makes you look more closely at the other paintings. Her prices were good too. She made a deal with my friend and ended up giving him 2 since he bought The Crow one. She gave him a discount on a Gizmo painting from Gremlins. Another artist vendor I met was Andrew Herman from AndrewHermanArt.com I had recognized him from horror conventions, most recently H45 in Pasadena and he does a lot of prints of characters from movies like Halloween, Monster Squad, The Lost Boys and pretty much any horror movie you can think of. Prints range from large canvases to small prints and designs on tumblers. I liked one of his Kiefer Sutherland prints he had that was on the smaller side. I always think about bringing cool small artwork to get signed at horror conventions, so in the future I think I’m going to do more of that instead of going to eBay to find posters. I like the idea of having a unique piece of art signed.

While the majority of my con weekend consisted of roaming the vendor hall, I did get to catch a few panels. On Friday, they had The Spiderwick Chronicles panel which is a show based on The Spiderwick Chronicles books starring Christian Slater as one of the baddies. They had pretty much the entire cast there: Christian Slater, Lyon Daniels, Noah Cottrell, Mychala Faith Lee, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Jack Dyland Grazer and the original authors Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. I thought I would just be attending the panel, but they ended up showing us the entire first episode of the series which doesn’t come out until April 19th. That was a pleasant surprise and a nice break from being on my feet all day. As the lights went down, I saw a bunch of the kids from the show come sit behind us to watch the first episode with us. It was adorable hearing their giggles and reactions to scenes they were in. Without giving away any spoilers, I was very impressed with the overall quality of the show. The special fx and makeup fx were really well done and the acting was great in it. It left me wanting to learn more about this family. It’s more dark and creepy than I thought it would be. I almost hid my face a few times. I would classify this show as a fantasy/horror show. When it comes out on Roku, I want to see what else the Spiderwick Chronicles has in store. Once the episode ended, everyone took the panel stage and one by one people answered questions about what it was like getting their part and what it was like to work on a show like this. There were even some debates about what magical creatures they’d want to be if they could choose to be one. Toward the end of the panel, Tony revealed that he had a drawing he did of Christian Slater from like 30 years ago when he was in art school and he presented it to Christian. That was pretty funny. It was cool being a part of that moment. 

After the panel, I went outside by the fountain to grab some cosplay footage. I had been filming cosplayers throughout the day, but since Friday was the only nice day weather wise, I thought I’d take advantage of some of these fun outdoor shoots happening. I made an entire video on the cosplay that stood out to me, so I will just say that every single one of these people made my day. Thank you so much for letting me shoot you. Over time, I feel like I’ve gotten a little bit better at directing cosplayers for the shots I envision. However, I’m also aware that these people have been posing all day for people and might not want to do something super elaborate. Cosplayers don’t owe you anything. Period. On a similar note, I want to give a shout out to the female cosplayer I saw who was being photographed by a photographer. The man told her to smile and afterward, she went over, gently put her hand on his arm and went, “In the future, don’t ever tell someone to smile. Ask.” As a woman, I felt so proud in that moment. The majority of cosplay shooters were male, so it was important to me to capture a diverse range of cosplayers, not just the female ones. I did notice however that female cosplayers lit up more when I’d ask to shoot them like they were refreshed to see someone interested in their cosplay because of their cosplay and not because of their physical appearance. With any line of work, there’s always good people and sketchy people. The message to take away from all this would be to just be respectful. Be respectful to cosplayers but also if you’re a shooter be respectful to other shooters.

Saturday was a busy day. I was up super early so I could get decent parking and wanted to try my luck at the autograph lottery for the film Boy Kills World. At 9am they had people line up to push a button that would randomly either light up red or green indicating whether or not you were one of the lucky few to be chosen for the autograph signing. I failed my first 2 attempts at it but by the 3rd time it finally gave me the green light and I had been chosen to participate in the signing. I was so excited. Saturday morning and early afternoon I was getting some pick up shots of the vendor floor and of the cosplayers who had been moved indoors due to the rainstorm happening outside. At around 12:30pm my friend met up with me and we went to my car to grab all of my camera gear for our interview with the Empire Queen cast at 1:30pm. Luckily, there was a break in the rain so none of my gear got wet on the trek from the parking structure to the convention hall. We got set up in the green room and I had my list of questions. Normally, I am the one operating the camera and my friend is the one with the on-camera interview/hosting experience but for this I really wanted to challenge my fears and be the one to conduct the interview.  The lovely people I interviewed were there to promote their film Empire Queen: The Golden Age of Magic which is available now to stream on Amazon Prime. I spoke to co-directors and writers Chris Dane Owens and Jason Schulz as well as actress Ciel Post and composer Nicolas Repetto. It was really nice that they allowed us to speak to them for as long as we did. In total, the interview was 15 minutes. I had a great time listening to them and while I was a little rough at the beginning with my interviewing skills, I feel like by the end of it I felt more comfortable because they were so easy to talk to. I will link the full interview below. I highly recommend checking it out. Thank you again to the cast/crew and also to the PR team who helped organize this and made this interview happen.

After the interview, I was going to take a lunch break but I quickly realized the Boy Kills World panel was about to happen and I didn’t want to miss that, so we ran from the car to the opposite end of the convention center to catch the panel. We got there just in time. The Directors on Directing panel was ending so it was cool to see Radio Silence there. I can’t escape the Scream franchise at these conventions. I saw them sign a few Scream posters for fans after the panel ended, but they were being ushered away. We were able to snag some front row seats. They weren’t as good as our other seats but they didn't clear the rooms for the panels each time, so a lot of people who had the center stage front row seats had been camped out since the last panel. It was fine though because Sam Raimi sat on the far end closest to us. The Boy Kills World panel started with an extended trailer of the film starring Bills Skarsgard. Bill could not make it, sadly, but his other co-stars Isaiah Mustafa, Brett Gelman, Jessica Rothe, Famke Janssen, and Sharlto Copley did. The director Moritz Mohr and producer Sam Raimi were also there. It was fun not only learning about the film but hearing people’s stories about how they knew they got cast and what it was like having Sam Raimi attached to the project as a producer. I was lowkey fangirling over Brett Gelman being there because I really like his character “Murray” in Stranger Things. He quickly won a lot of people over in that show and he’s become known now as the guy who plays kooky or unusual characters. Boy Kills World is no different. After the panel ended and people left the stage, Sam Raimi stopped to sign a few things for fans before making his way out. I’ve seen Sam at quite a few conventions and it always impresses me when he’s super busy or he’s in the middle of traveling to and from photo ops, no matter how much of an inconvenience it is, he always stops and takes time with fans. I see it happen and I’m like, you have an autograph table where you can charge people. Instead he tries to sign for as many people as he can when he’s away from his table. He doesn’t care about the money. I think he genuinely likes making people happy and appreciates his fans. It’s nice to see. Not long after the panel, I had to make my way to where the Boy Kills World autograph signing was happening. I got there, stood in line for a good 45 minutes only to be told Sam Raimi, Isaiah and Famke would not be participating in it. Which is fine, but maybe lead with that first as opposed to us seeing the room people are in and realizing there’s a bunch of people missing. This event was free, so I really don’t have any complaints. I was super happy that I got to meet some of the cast. They gave everyone a giant poster to have everyone sign, some Boy Kills World swag like a hat and sunglasses and copious amounts of hand sanitizer. I met Brett and I said to him, “I really loved you in Stranger Things….and Flea Bag…I like aallll your things.” He was super nice. He told me today was his first time meeting Sam Raimi and I was like, “Oh really? That’s crazy.” I guess he wasn’t on set a whole lot. They shot a lot of this in South Africa so that tracks. Brett was starstruck a little bit at the panel with him being there. When I met Jessica Rothe, I told her I really liked what she said about how she channeled her inner feminine rage to get into character. I was like, “I felt that in my soul” and Jessica was like, “Yeah!” and gave me a high five. I missed out on meeting her at Creep I.E. Con so I’m glad I got the chance to meet her at WonderCon. She’s someone I could see myself being friends with in real life. I like her vibe. If you see her at another horror con, definitely meet her. Saturday was pretty much a wrap after this. I grabbed some more cosplay shots and in the process realized I had missed the entirety of the Chucky tv series panel that I wanted to go to. One thing I’ve learned with conventions is that you can’t be everywhere all at once. Sometimes you need a break. We also got food because we were starving which I have to say, the vendor hall concession food was pretty good. I had a Costco sized hot dog and for once it wasn’t cold and rubbery. 10/10

Sunday was very laid back. Some of the vendors I had told “I’ll be right back” I went back and finally bought some stuff from them. I thought about painting mini figures in the gaming area but I was so tired, I didn’t have the attention span for that level of concentration. I did grab some shots of people gaming and their cool tabletop setups. Shoutout to the group of D&D players who let me film them. I wanted to get a dramatic dice roll shot in slow motion so I had them roll a few times. In my head I was hoping for some 20’s but I would’ve been there all day to capture that D20 roll moment so I had to make due with a 9 or a 10. All in all, I had a fun time at WonderCon. I know some people were disappointed in terms of the crowd size but it was Easter weekend on top of there being a rainstorm, so not everyone wanted to make it out all 3 days. I personally liked having the space to walk around. Hopefully next year will be back to normal crowd wise. I learned a lot covering this convention as “press” and if I’m lucky enough to cover WonderCon next year, I’d love to capture even more.