Fancon has been drawing them in at CN Centre this weekend. Photos 250News

Prince George, B.C. – Northern Fancon, the entertainment exposition for everything to do with pop culture, completes its first foray into Prince George today and by all indications it will be back next year.

Fancon is similar to Comic Con, which was a series of conventions attened by comic book fans.  Out of that grew Cosplay, in which people dress up as the characters in popular movies, comics, video games and sci-fi shows.  It has grown to phenomenal proportions, with shows in several major American cities and Canadian locations such as Calgary.

Some of the costumes are quite spectacular, intriguing

There are vendors of all sorts of items from comic and videos to the costumes these “Cosplayers” like to dress up in.  Some of them are pretty wild, and this reporter did question for a moment whether this might be the 2015 version of “Freakin’ at the Freaker’s Ball” by Dr. Hook as he strolled through CN Centre Saturday.

Out on the concourse in CN Centre were banks of video arcade machines right alongside tables and tables of board games.  And inside the arena were the proprietors of the various stalls, one of them a display on the history of Barkerville which, although out of another century, did not really seem out of place at all in this environment.  And way over at the western end of the rink were the tables where the public had a chance to meet with celebrities who were brought in for the event.

Here a character is being interviewed

One of the vending stalls was operated by Ron and Lynne from Kelowna.  They said their son introduced them to this celebration of all things to do with pop culture, and now they’re hooked.  They stress it is a family sort of show and take their grandkids to these events quite often.  Ron said they are massive in cities such as Seattle, where they have recorded over 102,000 people attending.  He says the Calgary shows are extremely popular as well.

Ron admits he was too sure about attending the Prince George show this weekend because it’s the first event here and its popularity was untested.  But he hurriedly says he’ll be back next year and will be renting a double booth instead of a single.  He says the stock he brought with him sold extremely well and he had to call Lynne up from Kelowna with more merchandise to get him through the weekend.  Says there’s no doubt he’ll be back.

Ron and Lynne from Kelowna say they’ll return for next year’s show

Northern Fancon runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today at CN Centre and the Kin arenas.   Outside the BCNE midway wraps up its run today as well.