Santa Rosa Comic Con is part trade show, part costume party

Cosplay enthusiasts Cristina Herrera and Dave Horton were determined to attend Sunday’s Santa Rosa Comic Con at the Hyatt Regency on Railroad Street.

But they had places to be on Monday, and didn’t want to spring for a hotel room. That’s how it came to pass that a tailgating table had been set up in the Hyatt parking lot beside a sedan on whose roof, early Sunday afternoon, rested a large brassiere. With Horton’s help, Herrera was changing into a fabulous foam and taffeta gown similar to one rocked by Queen Myrrah in the video game Gears of War.

No, Herrera answered, when asked if she was actually 6-foot-6. Hiking her gown, she revealed the 8-inch platform shoes Horton had engineered for her.

Even as she towered over them, Queen Myrrah was very much at home in the ballroom with Gandalf the Grey, Freddy Krueger, a purple-robed Joker, a teenaged Beetlejuice and at least half a dozen ?Spider-Men (and Spider tots), to name just a few of the hundreds of attendees who dressed up for the inaugural Santa Rosa Comic Con. The event, which drew around 1,000 people, featured actors, graphic artists and comic book vendors, all interacting with attendees, many of whom could not, it seemed, wait for Halloween.

“Halloween 365!” proclaimed Barbara Buck of Sebastopol, decked out in an elaborate Victorian get-up, as was her friend Christie Crapetecio, better known in this crowd as the creative force behind the graphic T-shirts produced by @emoweasel.

“It’s fun,” said Anna Heinrich, hard to miss in her green hair and stridently striped Beetlejuice ensemble. “It’s like another Halloween.”

She was accompanied by her black-clad father, dressed as the Nameless Ghoul from the Swedish band Ghost. Asked to identify himself, he lifted his silver mask and replied, “Chris Heinrich,” which, while courteous, seemed to undercut the identity of his character.

Santa Rosa Comic Con is owned and organized by Steve Wyatt, who has been putting on shows for 40 years and whose ponytail gave him more than a passing resemblance to a slimmed-down version of Comic Book Guy from “The Simpsons.”

Wyatt, who lives in Bakersfield, grew up wanting to be a comic book artist.

“But life took a left,” he said, “and kept going left.”

He now runs Comic Con-type shows in Sacramento, San Mateo and Pasadena, to name several. “I just got good at it,” he said. “And I enjoy the people.”

An article of faith among some of those people seemed to be that, as children, they enjoyed Marvel comics. When they got older, however, they put away childish things, and gravitated to DC, whose stories “just have more depth,” declared Kurtis Langhals, a Santa Rosa Junior College student who arrived in full Joker regalia, down to paisley vest, yellow boutonnière and dress shoes with white spats.

DC lets its superheroes fail “in huge ways,” he said. When their Marvel counterparts fail, “they just go back in time, and fix it. That’s cheap.”

Unlike Marvel, he continued, DC doesn’t “kill off its superheroes - except in an alternate universe.”

Among the highly regarded artists at the show was Windsor resident Brent Anderson, whose artwork for the graphic novel “X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills,” was one of primary inspirations for the second X-Men movie, released in 2003.

He’s also known for drawing scores of the comic book series “Astro City.” Sitting behind several stacks of Astro City anthologies, looking out from under what he wryly described as his Indiana Jones fedora, Anderson said crowdfunding has given graphic artists a level of independence from traditional publishers they hadn’t previously enjoyed.

At the table to his right sat illustrator Tim Bradstreet, a titan in the business who has created more than 70 covers for the Hellblazer and Punisher comic books, and has drawn for scores of other high-profile projects.

Asked if the prominence of DC and Marvel-based movies has juiced sales of comic books, Bradstreet said, “I’m not sure how many new readers (the movies) actually bring in.

“I think there’s more take there than give.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Ausmurph88.