Five quick takeaways from WonderCon

  
I’m still in SoCal enjoying a few days of sunny skies and fresh produce, and I’ll have a full report on WonderCon for Publishers Weekly later this week. But a few quick observations:

• The LA Convention Center is not very well planned as a convention center, but it has a full array of services, including food and beverages. The venue never got crowded and is very well suited to a large consumer show. Downtown LA has undergone an immense amount of development and all the jokes about tent cities no longer apply.

• I think the LA location would be more suitable to growing WonderCon  as a viable, earlier in the year warm-up for the San Diego Comic-Con than Anaheim, which has a larger facility but more retracted environs. THat said. WonderCon is going back to Anaheim for the near future. 

• The spring crunch of shows is incredibly wearing for publishers, with C2e2/Sillin Valley – WOnderCon/Dink – MOCCA – and ECCC on four successive weekends. That’s a little ridiculous even though all the shows have different goals and demographics. 

• Although DC’s Rebirth event dominated comics talk, IDW had a very successful screening of the pilot for Wynonna Earp, which debuts this Friday on SyFy. It was a big event with a red carpet, an after party and good buzz coming out of it. 

• These kind of “mega multi media events”  – which began with Image Expo –  are increasingly what is needed to break through the news logjam, and I expect we’ll see more comics companies using them, because ERVEYONEEVERYONE has to up their game just to stand still. 

More later.