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San Diego cashes in on annual convention

CCTV.com

07-22-2016 13:11 BJT

This year's San Diego Comic Convention, or more commonly, Comic-Con has begun on Thursday. The four-day event has become Hollywood's center stage to generate interest in upcoming movies. A number of panels and activities are hosted by studios and television networks for over 100,000 audience.

They line up for hours - some from the night before - waiting for the opportunity to meet their heroes and dress like them too.

Comic-con has become more than just comics. It's really a celebration of pop culture that brings in a near 200 million dollar windfall to the city of San Diego. 

And this year more than ever. Superheroines are battling for equal attention, particularly as Warner Bros. promotes the 75th anniversary of Wonder Woman and the release of next year's feature film starring Gal Gadot.

And what better symbol for the emergence of the female superheroine than this Lego Wonder Woman. It takes time to craft - 317 hours - and requires just the right pieces, all 22,000 of them.

Right alongside the billion-dollar toy and game companies - and powerful Hollywood studios - are thousands of up-and-coming artists working to create change in their own way.

Asian-American writer Sarah Kuhn is signing autographs for the first time at Comic-con, having just released her novel - Heroine Complex, which stars not one, but two Asian female superheroines.

She says when she pitched her "Devil Wears Prada meets superheroes" idea, some of the industry didn't share her enthusiasm for one glaring reason.

"I thought that was a very commercial, accessible fun story. And then, when I said the main character is Asian American, people would be like it's so niche, it's such a hard sell, it's such a limited audience, all these words that I feel are code for these characters are not white. And I think instead of making me think, 'Oh, this doesn't have an audience,' that made me more stubborn about it, because I'm an audience, my friends are an audience," Author of "Heroline Complex" Sarah Kuhn said.

But Kuhn says her book has nearly sold out at every stop on her tour, and she's been further encouraged by the interest from both sexes.

In fact, a recent study shows Comic-con is equally attended by both male and female fans.

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