User blog:Ericmoro/Wikia LIVE Rocks New York Comic-Con 2013

The Wikia [LIVE ] convention season has officially wrapped, and what better place to go out with a "bang" than New York Comic-Con 2013. With over 120,000 attendees and panels/exhibitors galore, the four-day event was a veritable potpourri of pop culture goodness. And Wikia's communities were there in a big way!

In fact, our Animanga community made a big splash by hosting not one, but TWO hour-long panel discussions with anime/manga legends Kazuo Koike, Masao Maruyama, Sin-ichi Hiromoto, and Takashi Okazaki. The first, "Learn From The Masters," celebrated the careers of these industry legends as well as the impact they've made in shaping modern-day pop culture. As the largest American publisher of Japanese manga, Dark Horse Comics partnered with Wikia for the panel, while Mike Richardson (President and Publisher of Dark Horse Comics) joined as a panelist. Over the course of the discussion, copies of Koike's Lone Wolf & Cub Omnibus Volume 1 were given away to attendees that truly demonstrated a desire to learn from our astute panelists.

(NOTE: If you're a cosplayer who couldn't make it to either of the above contests, don’t fret! Wikia is hosting an online cosplay contest; deadline to enter is November 3. You can find more details here.)

Lastly, it’s always great to see real life Wikia community members enjoying the fandom they represent. To that end, it was great catching up with Jamie, Hatebunny, Kyletheobald, Midoki24, and MrBlonde267 (representatives of the Marvel Database and DC Database); and Pikapwn (from the Animanga community). Hope to see you and your fellow community members again next year. Good-bye 2013 convention season!