Early Friday morning, portions of South Salisbury Street were closed off as crowds of fans — many dressed as their favorite characters — lined up outside of the Raleigh Convention Center for an event neither rain, the heat nor a wardrobe malfunction could stop: Raleigh Supercon.
Raleigh Supercon is an annual, weekend-long event held downtown in the Raleigh Convention Center. With venues featuring art galleries, movies, video game tournaments and even special anime panels hosted by the staff of the Animazement convention from late May, Supercon ensures that it has something for every kind of fan.
The convention’s main attraction was the Exhibition Hall in the convention center’s floor, where businesses, artists and celebrities alike all gathered to show off their products, whether they were signed copies of comics and artwork, handbags or “dakimakuras,” also known as body pillows.
One attendee, Kris Ruff-Sharpe, was helping run a kiosk for Trilogy Comics, a comic book store local to Virginia. While not an official employee, she helps run the store’s event kiosks whenever they end up in North Carolina.
“We’ve gone to a lot of cons in the state, but this is my first time [at Supercon],” Ruff-Sharpe said. “There’s a lot of traffic here with all the celebrity appearances, so we get a lot of chances to advertise to people coming from out of state. I’m hoping to sneak away at some point to see them.”
John Bradford ran another kiosk that represented the online store Wizyakuza.com at the convention.
“The con is perfect for our shop,” Bradford said. “[Ceasar Muyuela]’s art consists of everything Supercon represents, so we have something for everyone here.”
The Wizyakuza kiosk sold prints of fan art from a variety of series, from Spiderman and Deadpool to Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter X Hunter.
Celebrity personalities, such as Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman in “Batman: The Animated Series”; Steve Blum, who has played Spike Spiegel from “Cowboy Bebop” and done voice work as Wolverine; and Dave Bautista were available for meet and greets, selfies and autographs.
For those deterred by the pricing of meet and greets, more popular guests, like Blum and Tom King — the author of the current serialization of Batman — ran Q&A panels throughout the weekend.
Actors and wrestlers weren’t the only ones taking the spotlight; there were also booths featuring more well-known cosplayers and streamers, such as AlwaysLoveLorn, Stella Chuu and Mikki Marvel. Attendees in costume received plenty of attention as well — it wasn’t uncommon for spontaneous photo ops to occur in the convention center’s halls.
Ginger Knight, an attendee who was cosplaying as Honoka Kousaka, a character from the show “Love Live! School Idol Project,” is a frequent convention-goer who also attended Animazement in May.
“This is much more lively than Animazement was this year,” Knight said. “[Animazement] only had 30,000 people and I think [Supercon] had 37,000 so I can already tell Saturday is going to be really fun.”
For attendees looking to avoid spending too much money at the convention, there were a variety of panels for the guests’ entertainment, such as runways for cosplayers at the venue and sketch-offs between artists. Video game tournaments were held throughout the convention, including games such as Overwatch, Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U and WWE 2K18 featuring wrestlers Jason Cade and Matthew Palmer.
There were also informational panels for con attendees interested in entering the entertainment industry, like the Voice Over 101 roundtable — which included acclaimed voice talents like Dana Snyder (Master Shake in Aqua Teen Hunger Force), J. Michael Tatum (Tenya Iida in My Hero Academia) — and the How to Write in Multimedia panel.
Those who wanted to go to Supercon but were intimidated by traveling alone were covered; the venue hosted a social events called Speed Friending each day that let participants get to know each other with a few ice breakers. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if socializing didn’t interest attendees or they needed somewhere to wind down while waiting for the next panel, a manga library was set up within the building with plenty of titles available to read inside with no purchase necessary.
This year’s Supercon brought out a crowd of individuals with diverse interests and backgrounds, with each event and panel embracing this variety. Though this year’s event has concluded, tickets for 2019’s Supercon will be available soon.
