Comic Con – A comic book convention or comic con is an event with a primary focus on comic books and comic book culture, in which comic book fans gather to meet creators, experts, and each other.
Cosplay – a contraction of the words “costume” and “Roleplay”, is a performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character for example of movies, cartoons, video games or animes.
Hey folks!
Did you know that the first recorded “official” comic book convention already took place in 1964 in New York City? It is known as the Tri-State-Con a.k.a. the New York Comicon and was organized by two teenagers, the 16-year-old Bernie Bubnis and his friend Ron Fradkin. Reports say there were over 100 attendees.
In the 1970s a comic con came to San Diego, CA, and became more and more popular. Starting with about 300 attendees it is now the world’s most famous Comic Convention and attracts over 130.000 people from all over the world! By the way, Comic-Con, with a hyphen, is a registered trademark owned by San Diego Comic-Con International.
In March 2016 Steve Wozniak, the well known Apple Inc. Co-Founder, organized the first Silicon Valley Comic Con in San Jose (SVCC). And since we couldn’t get tickets for this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, it was a great alternative to get into the wonderful world of cosplay.
The great thing about a comic con is not only that you see a lot of crazy people wearing weird costumes 😉 – you also have the chance to meet some really popular movie and TV stars! In our case we met – amongst others – the cast of “Back to the future”…
… the one and only Captain Kirk, William Shatner…
… Jeremy Renner, a.k.a. “Hawkeye”, a member of Marvel’s Superhero group “Avengers”…
… and last but not least the creator of most of the Marvel characters himself: Stan Lee!
What a man! Can you imagine that he is the one who gave us The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, Ironman, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, Captain America, Spiderman and many more? Although I’m not that into Comicbooks (short note: Mr. Lee made an enthusiastic speech on the correct writing of the word “Comicbook”. He insisted that it only makes sense to write it as one word, since a “Comic Book” meant to him a book that is comical or funny) I really love the Marvel characters and I’m a huge fan of all the film adaptations that have recently been at the theaters. Mr. Lee told us, that he was very proud of having cameos in some of the movies – usually as the “guy in the background” who just looks up when Spidey swings around for example 😉 But since these scenes would not at all show his acting talent, he more and more insisted on having at least a few words to say. Here‘s a nice trailer of Stan Lee’s cameos – check it!
Next to these stars you could also visit different panels at SVCC. We only went to one of them: Stars of Cosplay – The women. It was very interesting since I had no idea of what it meant to be a professional cosplayer. The women at the panel told us how each of them got into cosplay, how they create their costumes and what cosplay meant to them.
To conclude this article a few figures to SVCC:
A three-day-pass was about $ 100, there were over 30.000 attendees, 18 celebrities from movies/TV, 22 experts from science and tech, 18 authors (i.e. Andy Weir “The Martian”), 42 artists known for Comicbook drawing and 13 professional cosplayers.
SVCC 2017 – we are coming!
californiagerl 