I expected Wondercon to be quieter on Sunday. I’d worked at the ComicBase booth on Sunday last year, and the last day of the show was uncrowded, though not in a deadly way. There was no such luck at Wondercon. I arrived early, but by 11 am, the attendance was in full effect again.
Inevitably, any comic book show of any presence is going to be compared to the San Diego Comic-Con. Wondercon was considerably smaller. You could actually expect to see the show floor and take in a presentation or two in a day, which is an impossibility at the San Diego Comic-Con. The local and small businesses that have been priced and crowded out of the San Diego Comic-Con, such as specialty book stores and collectors selling their own comics, still had a presence. There was even a section set aside for gaming, which I think disappeared from the San Diego Comic-Con years ago. If you went to Wondercon in the 1990s, this new Wondercon is a whole different, bigger and better show. But it doesn’t compare in any way to the overwhelming size and energy of the San Diego show.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t all that much there that held my interest for long, and the Human Computing booth was too busy for me to simply hang out and gab with the staff. So in the end, I ended up spending the Sunday more as a SoMa tourist. I spent a lot of time at the Zeum Playground and SF MoMA (see my seperate postings.) At the very end of the show, however, I did see John Simpson, the one remaining friend I’d been looking forward to seeing, so on a personal level, Wondercon was a success for me.