This sixth installment in my ‘The Kung Fu of Comic Cons’ had to swap titles. When my press pass for Fan Expo San Francisco was approved, it came with explicit instructions: ‘FAN EXPO SF is not ‘comic con’ or ‘comic expo’ – Please refer to the event as: “FAN EXPO San Francisco, “FAN EXPO SF” or “FAN EXPO”.’ Although this broke my title flow, I respect that request because despite its prevalence in the common vernacular, ‘comic con’ is meaningless regarding production value.

The term ‘comic con’ is not copyrighted. It includes everything from the 100K+ attendee conventions like San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), New York Comic Con, and MegaCon (note that this big three are promoted by entirely different companies), and tiny community fan cons that sell only few hundred tickets. Any fan convention can use the title ‘comic con.’ In fact, when this inaugural Fan Expo San Francisco was held over the three days of Thanksgiving weekend, on that very Sunday, the San Jose Toy-Anime-Comic Con was held about 50 miles south.

Consequently, there’s a wide range of what you might find at a fan con and these two simultaneous events are a good example. That San Jose event was held in a Moose Lodge. Fan Expo SF was held in Moscone Center West, the city’s most expansive convention complex. That San Jose event could fit inside just the lobby of Fan Expo SF, probably several times over.

A Short History of Fan Conventions by the Bay

And after a glorious inaugural event, Fan Expo SF is the fan convention that the Bay Area deserves. Even overlooking the pandemic, the SF Bay Area has not been able to sustain a major fan con. Fan Expo SF’s tag line is ‘Discover, Celebrate, Belong.’ This fits right in with SF’s reputation for diversity, inclusion, and acceptance.

From 2003 to 2011, San Francisco hosted WonderCon, which began in 1987 at the Oakland Convention Center and eventually grew big enough to cross the Bay to Moscone Center. That final SF WonderCon was the first fan con that Kung Fu Tai Chi attended officially as press (we tabled at some small press fan cons prior to that). Senior graphic artist, Patrick Lugo and I went to WonderCon out of our mutual love of fan conventions, but ostensibly we were there to interview a teenage ingénue named Saoirse Ronan (our resulting article HANNA: The Girl Who Kicked Ass. The following year, Moscone Center was being remodeled so WonderCon headed to Anaheim. It was meant to be a temporary move but sadly for SF, the relocation ended up being permanent. WonderCon is under the SDCC umbrella now.

In the following years, the Bay Area hosted many smaller fan cons. There were two major fan cons that stood out: San Francisco Comic Con (SFCC) and Silicon Valley Comic Con (SVCC). In 2018, SFCC was held across the bay, ironically back at the Oakland Convention Center, which is where it folded. However, SFCC was under Imaginarium which did not fold and still actively produces other comic cons including Indiana CC, Tampa Bay CC, ATL CC. SFCC 2017 was the last major fan con held within the city of San Francisco.

SVCC wasn’t in SF either. It is held at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, the same venue where we hold which we reported on back in September.

Doomsayers thought the pandemic might kill fan cons, especially the major ones. In 2020, SDCC produced a YouTube series called Comic-con at home. Then in 2021, they staged a mini-SDCC, Comic-Con Special Edition, coincidentally over Thanksgiving weekend. They were heavily criticized because of the timing. The pandemic was just starting to loosen, and this was the first Thanksgiving that many families felt comfortable to travel again, so many felt to hold it over the vacation weekend was tone deaf. Nevertheless, SDCC returned to its former in-person glory in 2021. I attended SDCC this year and even spoke on a panel for Immortal Studios. It was fantastic, truly a joy to see the fandom reassemble. The major fan cons are back and as massive as ever.

Fan Expo is under the Informa umbrella, the largest producer of fan conventions in North America. It traces its roots to Fan Expo Canada which started in 1995. They produce well over a dozen fan conventions across Canada and the U.S., the biggest being MegaCon in Florida, which garnered the title of being the second largest fan con in 2022. MegaCon began in 1993 but was acquired by Fan Expo in 2015. During the pandemic, Fan Expo also acquired Wizard World, which included Wizard World Chicago, the second oldest con after SDCC. WWC began in 1972.

Fan Expo San Francisco is a completely new event on the circuit, and we were honored to be present at its inaugural happening.

Got Kung Fu?

If you’re wondering why KungFuMagazine.com covers fan cons, it’s because they provide a telling barometer of pop culture and as curators and documenters of the martial arts, what is happening in the mainstream is important to us. At his panel at Fan Expo SF, Dante Basco (Zuko, Avatar the Last Airbender) said it perfectly. He claimed that fan conventioneers are the ‘arbiters of taste.’ A good fan con is the cutting edge of the mainstream. Trends emerge and are foretold.

There’s a constant flux of vendors and artists showcasing their work. During the pandemic, many artists hunkered down and created more art. What’s more, the ever-increasing access to better tech has brought forth whole new lines of fan merch. 3D printers have taken miniature figurines and cosplay to new heights. Advances in printing has generated more foil and metallics poster art. We explored the pricing of foil for our Kung Fu Tai Chi cover, but back then it was prohibitively expensive. Not now. Holographic prints and stickers, heavily embossed prints, all sorts of variations on print are becoming more prevalent as machinery becomes more readily available. There’s an emergent color scheme and thematic trend that dominated many of Fan Expo SF’s artistic offerings, it’s sort of a LoFi neon, with a soft cyberpunk vibe, accentuated by metallics, LEDs, and holograms.

But back to the martial arts, every school owner knows that when a good martial arts movie comes out, it gives our industry a bump. Just the week prior, anyone on any martial social media saw the outpouring of grief over the suicide of Jason David Frank, one of the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. So many martial artists posted tributes about how he had inspired them into practice when they were young. Pop culture expressions of the martial arts like that TV show are gateways into the martial world. Today’s mainstream media will determine the next generation of martial practitioners.

The Most Martial Impact

What was Fan Expo SF’s strongest martial representation? COBRA KAI. Strike First. Strike Hard.

COBRA KAI has developed a strong fandom, as evidenced by the abundance of cosplay and product offerings at Fan Expo SF. It helped was that William Zabka (Johnny Lawrence) and Martin Kove (Sensei Kreese) were there doing photos and autographs. They also appeared together in a panel aptly titled "No Mercy.” I’ve written extensively about Cobra Kai for Den of Geek so no more need be said there. COBRA KAI never dies.

In notable contrast, I saw no presence of KUNG FU reboot on CW, even though my daily newsfeed for the search term ‘Kung Fu’ is inundated with episode reviews and cast interviews every day. Perhaps I just missed it. It isn’t as easy to cosplay because it doesn’t have any distinctive looks. COBRA KAI has a whole line of dojo merch available through Netflix and many etsy-like makers. But even in the artist booths, there were plenty of COBRA KAI offerings from prints to Funko Pop figures (you know you’ve arrived in the mainstream when there’s a Funko Pop figurine). I’ve yet to see any of that for KUNG FU.

The ‘Martial’ Artist

Amongst the Fan Expo SF artists, Justin Orr focuses on unique ‘vintage’ posters based on a lot of martial arts movies. We met at SVCC 2017 where his wonderful artwork first caught my eye. He’s keenly aware of what the general fandom knows when it comes to martial arts from the responses he gets to his work.

“It’s a very specific thing” states Justin. “When you go to any show, everybody knows Bruce Lee. It’s a sliding scale from there. It goes Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, then I have some Shaw Brothers stuff. That’s like third. I have Five Deadly Venoms. I have the 36 Chambers of Shaolin… If you know it, you know it. But if you’re new to it, you don’t know at all.” For more of Justin’s work, visit his site at JUSSCOPE. He offers several stylized artworks based on action cinema, martial arts, and Kaiju movies. 

The Fans

Just like at SiliCon, there was one booth that was solely devoted to folding fans, reaffirming my observation that fans are trending. Folding fans started appearing in the LGBTQ community and quickly spread to the Rave and EDM music world. Now fans continue to drift into the mainstream. GOD GLAM IT offered a wide selection of folding fans that catered to both of its forebearer communities (some were quite risqué) and to Fan Expo attendees as well.

Some enterprising fan teacher needs to take advantage of this and provide lessons at fan cons. I can’t wait to see one of those holographic neon rave fans show up in the tournament rings.

Swords

I mention fan lessons because Fan Expo SF offered introductory sword lessons. And I don’t just mean lightsabers, but there were lightsaber workshops and vendors too. Believe it or not, Lightsaber is the fastest growing martial art on the planet right now. Not only do many martial arts schools use it as an introductory enticement, as well as an ongoing fun way to keep kids (and the young at heart) engaged, there are several international organizations that hold lightsaber combat competitions. It’s so prevalent that the French Fencing Federation officially endorsed lightsaber dueling back in 2019 alongside its traditional and Olympic weapons of foil, saber, and epee.

The sword lessons were all in good fun, with a special class designed specifically for kids. There’s really only so much sword you can teach at a con, but hopefully some students might get their interests piqued enough to pursue it more seriously later.

More Swords

Even more impressive was the staggering number of booths selling swords. Beyond that lightsaber booth, there were five other booths selling swords as their main product, and a few booths offer even more swords in bins as an additional offering alongside other fandom treasure. It was the most swords for sale that I’ve ever seen in one place. These were almost entirely fantasy swords, weapons from sci-fi like Klingon bat'leth, to swords from franchises like KILL BILL, LORD OF THE RINGS, and GAME OF THRONES.

Most of these fantasy swords are from anime. There are so many swords in anime. Many of the anime swords are made of plastic or light metal. Their designs are fanciful and colorful, most are far from practical. But anime doesn’t have to bend to the laws of gravity at all, so why not go for the most extravagant designs? You might find more people carrying swords at a Fan Expo than at a fencing tournament.

Even More Swords

For more genuine martial artists, there are real swords too. Rob Echat from Dragon Song Forge in Largo, Florida is a familiar face at Bay Area fan cons, Renaissance Fairs, even the occasional martial arts tournament. He carries movie replicas as well. He brought a KILL BILL replica that was autographed by Sonny Chiba, who played the swordmaker Hattori Hanzo in that film.

Echat also carries the real deal – sharp swords with tempered steel. If you ever cross paths with him, give him your business card and he’s happy to demonstrate the sharpness of his swords by slicing your card in half – the hard way. He shaves them in two, and by the end of the day, his both is littered with business card shavings. 

Long Live Fan Expo SF

The inaugural Fan Expo SF was FAN-tastic, a welcome breath of fresh fandom that the Bay Area needs. The Fan Expo group brought a level of professionalism and attention that we’d expect from North America’s largest purveyors of fan conventions. Fan Expo SF has committed to five years of events at the Moscone Center, so that’s one down, four to come. Next year, Fan Expo SF plans to keep the same post-Thanksgiving dates – November 24-26, 2023. Hope to see you there.

For more information, see Fan Expo SF.