photo by Jacy Wojcik

Photo booth art by Jef Aerosol

The 2012 International Photobooth Convention was held this past weekend at the Electric Lodge in Venice. Yes, a gathering for hard-core enthusiasts of booths where you sit and get your photo taken.

But let's clear things up. These are not the digital photo booths of today. They are not the kind your cousin Denise had at her wedding, which seemed like a good idea until everyone was taking hilarious photos of themselves instead of paying attention to the cake-cutting ceremony and she cried.

These are the photochemical booths of yesteryear. The kind that haven't been made since the '70s/early '80s, can be expensive to maintain, require chemicals, and are a pretty rare commodity. Rare in the sense that, as convention co-founder Brian Meacham explained, these photo booths may have gotten new shells in the '90s but the moving parts are hodge-podged around from different machines. Even rarer in the sense that, we learned, all the old photochemical photo booths in Europe have been trashed, save a few Swiss booths now in Berlin; all the rest are digital. There is a growing community for photochemical booth fanatics and artists and this was their Comic-Con.

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Liz Ohanesian

Sheika Lugtu of OMG Cow at Long Beach Comic Expo

See our coverage of Long Beach Comic Expo 2011: "Long Beach Comic Expo: Five Things We Love About Small Conventions."

Sheika Lugtu is 24 and a student at Long Beach City College. A couple of years ago, she returned to school and decided to document her life in comic form, one panel a day. "At the end of the year, I'd have something to show for it," she says.

Lugtu published her comic, called OMG Cow, online. She acquired a following, but the audience made it clear that they wanted something tangible. So she printed copies off her computer and stapled them together. "I started charging for it because it costs a lot of money to print out 365 pages," the Long Beach-based artist explains.

Like a lot of writers and artists, Lugtu chose to eschew the the world of book deals in favor of self-publishing. At Long Beach Comic Expo, a small, one-day event that focuses almost exclusively on comics, self-published books are the norm. Works range from raw to slick, from mini-comics to art books, and are sold largely by the creators themselves.

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Shannon Cottrell (from San Diego Comic-Con 2011)

Are you ready to hit the convention hall?

It's that time of year where it seems like there's at least one big fan convention going on every weekend somewhere in the country. Whether you're planning to head to New Jersey for the Steampunk World's Fair later this month or counting down for San Diego Comic-Con in July, there are a few essentials you'll need to bring with you.

On Tuesday, I asked my fellow con-goers on Twitter and Facebook what's the one thing they have to bring to a convention. The responses were varied. Some people pointed to a few good checklists available online, like this one that goes back to 2000 as well as one from Fanboy Comics. Parenting Geekly has a great list for those intending on bring kids to the con. Also, if you're going to SDCC, I suggest picking up a copy of Doug Kline's book, The Unauthorized San Diego Comic-Con Survival Guide, which covers everything from parking to the line at Hall H.

Our respondents' answers ranged from personal hygiene necessities to personal technology musts. Check out the list below and add your own must-have items in the comment section.

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For more coverage visit our post on last year's event, "Comikaze Expo 2011: First-Time Convention Brings Big Names, Big Crowd" and check out photos from Comikaze Expo 2011.

It's official. Comikaze Expo, the new pop culture fan convention that took the Los Angeles Convention Center by storm last fall, is now Stan Lee's Comikaze, Presented by POW!.

In its first year, Comikaze Expo brought in 40,000 attendees, a number that's massive even in comparison with long-running events. This year, the convention is doing something unprecedented by partnering with the biggest name in the comic book industry.

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Sunset Junction

Last weekend, the third L.A. Web Series Festival (aka L.A. Web Fest) took over the LAX Radisson Hotel, bringing a wide variety of Internet-based programming to screening rooms. I stopped by the event on Saturday afternoon and got to check out episodes from more than 20 series.

The annual convention certainly shows the diversity within the still-new medium. Shows ranged from slick productions with actors recognizable from television and film to DIY efforts. There were comedies, dramas, talk shows and documentaries. Comedies, however, seemed to dominate the day.

Below are five web series I caught at the festival that are worth your time.

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Liz Ohanesian (via Instagram)

WonderCon swag.

Last weekend was WonderCon, the large, three-day pop culture convention organized by the same people who bring us San Diego Comic-Con every year. Normally, WonderCon takes place in San Francisco. Due to remodeling at its hometown convention center, however, this year's event moved to Anaheim.

It was the first time in its 25-year history that WonderCon took place in Southern California. It was also the first time I was able to attend the convention. More importantly, though, WonderCon 2012 was the place where I sat in on my first Big Hollywood Movie panel.

That must sound odd. I've covered San Diego Comic-Con for three years, but I've never been inside Hall H at the San Diego Convention Center, home to SDCC's Big Hollywood Movie programming. Though I've been to press conferences, I've never seen studios make the big blockbuster push directly to fans via convention panels.

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Shannon Cottrell

Paul J. Salamoff and his TARDIS Console

For more photos see our slideshow, Doctor Who Convention @ The Marriott Los Angeles Airport

Paul J. Salamoff is a former special-effects artist from Burbank who now works as a writer and producer. He's also the owner of the TARDIS console from the 1996 Doctor Who television movie starring Paul McGann. This weekend, he unveiled the refurbished prop at Los Angeles' annual gathering of Whovians, Gallifrey One.

It makes sense that Salamoff, who gave the prop new life with the help of two other fans, would choose Gallifrey One for the big reveal. A Doctor Who aficionado since childhood, Salamoff has been attending the convention for at least 15 years. While this convention still flies a little under the media radar, Gallifrey One is becoming better known as more and more people in the U.S. are obsessing over the long-running British sci-fi franchise, which airs on BBC America.

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Shannon Cottrell

See more photos in Shannon Cottrell's slideshow, "Anime Los Angeles 2012."

I've been to Animé Los Angeles five times now. For my first three years, I visited ALA as a regular attendee (unlike many other conventions, they don't offer press passes). But, for the past two years, I've attended as a panelist. For ALA 8, which took place last weekend at the LAX Marriott, I organized the panel, "Shibuya-Kei and Japanese Indie Music," featuring Tune in Tokyo DJs Greg Hignight and Del Martin, as well as musician Tommy Pedrini (Cats on Mars).

There's a reason why I keep going back to ALA and why I seem to get more involved with it each year. ALA manages to stay under the radar of many in the convention world, perhaps because of the lack of press passes, but it is growing steadily. The convention program notes that the first ALA, back in 2005, had 616 members. These days, ALA draws more than 3,000 members.

But, ALA isn't just growing in size. It's members are maturing too.

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Liz Ohanesian

Michael Anissimov and Rachel Haywire of Extreme Futurist Festival

Dr. Kim Solez is on a mission. The renal pathologist and University of Alberta professor is currently working to make the lectures from his course "Technology and the Future of Medicine" available to the general public via online videos. He's "mainstreaming the technological singularity" and transhumanism, or, rather, helping those of us outside of research labs understand artificial intelligence and its current development.

This past weekend, at the Extreme Futurist Festival in Marina del Rey, Solez spoke about his recent work. During his talk, he expanded upon an idea previously put forth by researcher Ben Goertzel. Could a holiday -- a "Future Day" -- help bring the ideas bouncing around the scientific world to the masses?

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Shannon Cottrell

Hatsune Miku in concert at Anime Expo

Read more in "Best of the Cons Part 1: 8 Standout TV Shows, Cosplays, Games and More from 2011."

Is Southern California the land of the superfan? Maybe. At the very least, it's the land of the fan conventions. Trying to hit up ever con in the region is difficult. I couldn't do it. (Sorry, San Diego, maybe I can make it to Gaslight Gathering and Anime Conji next year.)

I did, however, go to a lot of conventions this year, enough to compile the third annual Best of the Cons round-up. The list is only for Southern California, mostly Los Angeles-area, events. This means that Dragon*Con is excluded even though I did go this year. (For the record, everyone who told me that Dragon*Con is the best of the conventions is right. If you can make the trip to Atlanta on Labor Day Weekend, do it.) Everything here is based on events that I covered for LA Weekly. If there's a convention that you think should be covered next year, speak your mind in the comment section.

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