Assemble! Action heroes, cartoon characters and superstars alike rallied onto Howard and 4th Street over the weekend after Thanksgiving as attendees gathered at Moscone West Convention Center for the third annual San Francisco Fan Expo.

Cosplayers, people dressed as their favorite characters, many with hand-crafted costumes and props, walked around the convention center to meet some of their favorite celebrities and creators. According to its website, Fan Expo is“the largest comic con producer in the world” and brought thousands of people to San Francisco’s only multi-fandom convention. 

Guests included movie and television actors as well as voice actors from popular video games,  cartoons and anime. The top billing belonged to actor Hayden Christensen, who played Anakin Skywalker in the “Star Wars” series. 

Andrew Moyes is the Vice President of Fan Expo HQ, the company that puts on Fan Expos across the country. 

“We really pride ourselves on creating verticals for all of those fandoms to kind of mesh together in one great melting pot that is Fan Expo,” Moyes said.

Panels throughout the weekend gave every type of fan an opportunity to ask questions to celebrities of all sizes. Some panels were celebrations of an actor’s career, such as Danny Trejo and Bruce Campbell, while others quickly opened the floor to audience questions so fans could speak directly to their favorite actors.

Main stage panels featured TV show and movie cast members together, drawing audiences of over 100 people. Tyler Hoechlin and Bitsie Tulloch shared memories with the audience at their panel celebrating the show “Superman and Lois” before the series finale airs in December. 

On Saturday, a room on the third floor was packed with people wearing robes and carrying lightsabers as they waited over an hour to meet headliner Hayden Christensen.

“Last year with an actor like Mark Hamill, it’s a very rare appearance that people will travel to,” said Moyes, as a line started to form for the main stage panel. “Even someone like Hayden this year. It’s not every day you get to meet someone like Hayden Christensen.”

Robby Cvejanovich, an attendee, was second in line Friday morning. He arrived about four hours before the doors opened to pick up his badge. He is originally from Connecticut but moved to Alameda in May after stopping at another convention in Oregon. 

Cvejanovich traveled to the venue on BART holding a sign with his YouTube account name on it and a print he brought to get signed by Megan Shipman from the anime, “Spy x Family”.

“People definitely travel because San Francisco is such a great destination,” Moyes said. “And we have really, really affordable hotels like official hotels with the event too. So people do come and make a weekend of it.”

That is by design as Fan Expo partnered with San Francisco Travel and hotels in the area to boost attendance to the event and tourism to the city during the holiday weekend.

Affordability had a major impact on attendance as well. Admission to all three days was only $120, with the “ultimate” package and VIP tickets being just a small price bump above that. Child tickets were especially popular at only $12, which was apparent by the number of families that walked around Moscone dressed up in group costumes. 

During panels, elementary-aged children walked up to the microphone, tilted it down all the way and asked actors from “The Flash” and “Naruto” questions that brought smiles and chuckles to everyone on stage. 

Elizabeth Lau came with her daughter in costume as Ghost-Spider and her husband as Spider-Man  from “Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse.” The family met the film’s lead actor Shameik Moore, and attended his panel and took pictures as a family of spider-people on the red carpet on Sunday.

“Ghost-Spider is her favorite,” Lau said about her daughter, who was wearing an identical costume. “She was so excited to wear this cosplay, she even wore her mask in the car on the way to the con.”

This was the Lau family’s second year attending as a whole. Lau said she will be there as long as San Francisco continues to host the event.

“We’re super excited to have sort of a consistent date period around the Thanksgiving time,” Moyes said. “I think we’re becoming a tradition against another tradition of Thanksgiving.”

Wilson Bethel, who will be reprising his role as Bullseye in the upcoming “Daredevil: Born Again” show, was already in the East Bay for Thanksgiving with his mother, he said. Born and raised in Marin County, Bethel got a loud cheer when he walked on stage with his co-star Charlie Cox. 

There was no shortage of creators from the Bay Area at the convention either. 

Peter Secosh, a San Francisco native, greeted attendees at a booth with graphic novels that he illustrated. One of those books, Ghost Band, was set in San Francisco, giving Secosh an opportunity to ink and draw many of the landmarks he grew up visiting. 

Secosh opened up the book to a page with the Transamerica Pyramid breaking into three pieces. 

“There was an impulse where I really wanted to represent things accurately,” Secosh said. “I went and redrew parts of them to make them look like the Hilton. I know the Hilton intuitively is next to the Transamerica Pyramid.”

As he flipped through more pages and pointed out real locations he added in the backgrounds, Secosh said, “If you’re a San Franciscan and you read that, things are gonna jump out to you.”

On the bottom floor of Moscone, there was a “Community Zone” that connected participants with local organizations like the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum and Byways LARP, a live-action role-play group located in SoMa. Moyes said collaboration with local organizations comes naturally with holding Fan Expo in the city. 

“It’s the community, it’s the passion of the fans, it’s the complexity and challenges that these shows present that keep me engaged,” Moyes said.

This story was originally published on GoldenGateXpress on December 5, 2024.