James Frazier the owner and creator of Walker Stalker Con and Heroes and Villains Fan Fest really made convention fans upset this past week. These two major conventions have grown so much over the past five years and as with everything experiencing growing pains.  Originally HVFF was started in San Jose four years ago, and it’s always held a special place in Silicon Valley’s heart. So when Heroes and Villains Fan Fest announced that they would not be returning to San Jose in 2019 fans went crazy. There was a lot of angry Facebook and Twitter messages, but for the most part everyone was just disappointed. Some Fans even said they had a hunch something was up when the combined event came last year with major criticism. Usually by the time HVFF rolls around to San Jose it’s November or December and they’ve already started to announce next year’s convention line up. Right after HVFF San Jose 2018 though, they announced that they would be cancelling it’s Portland stop that January and rescheduling.  It wasn’t until last week that fans found out Portland was being rescheduled for the weekend before Thanksgiving. With the Thanksgiving holiday the following week, it’s might be really hard to get guests and fans to show up to that one.

While TGON did do our review of HVFF and it was mostly positive, there were a lot of fans who were unhappy with the combo event. Stars cancelled last minute, moved days they were attending, or moved to one day altogether. Since the convention couldn’t find that many replacements, they started promoting the actors they did have. They failed to mention though that they hid a lot of the newly added actors in the backroom where no one would find them. We didn’t even know about the back room until the second day of the convention. We even got word that some contest winners through December were never contacted nor got their prizes. I can say personally, that Andy won the cosplay contest at HVFF/WSC San Jose 2018 for his Lifesize Funk Cosplay.  I emailed for weeks, with no response what so ever. It wasn’t until this week when I commented on a now deleted  HVFF Facebook thread where people were complaining about not getting their winnings that they finally gave out James’s email. When I emailed, it lead to an automatic response and waiting 3 more days to finally speak to the woman who actually held the competition. It was in a second email that we found out about the announcement that “the convention would not be making it to San Jose in 2019.”

So why not come back to San Jose? They know the nerds will come out in droves, after all we are the Tech capitol of the world.  The convention brings a great chunk of visitors to downtown San Jose so they city is all for it. Is it money issues? Is that why they’ve stopped running all “sales” on tickets? According to HVFF and WSC owner via Twitter announcement, they were unable to “secure a venue” for this year for San Jose. I’m going to call BS here, but just hear me out. So HVFF/WSC is telling us they had all of 2018 to secure for next year and you couldn’t? They were here in December and they didn’t ask the event planner, “Same time, next year?” like you’ve done for the past four years? I’m sorry but Silicon Valley announced their 2019 date the day after they closed doors for 2018. It caused a massive stink with fans because it was the same weekend as C2E2 in Chicago and Wondercon in Anhiem, so they rescheduled for later in August a few weeks later. SVCC got their stuff together and did it, why did HVFF drop the ball? Honestly, I’m going to go with “growing pains” or “sorting their crap out”.  This years convention line up covers a great deal of locations on the East coast and even London, but only ONE west coast stop for all of 2019. With The Walking Dead losing most of it’s big name actors, it’s going to be hard to keep that convention running on it’s own and probably why HVFF combined with Walker Stalker.  Plus to be honest, if I’m attending a WSC, I want to see the big names: Norman Reedus, Andrew Lincoln, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.  They have gotten them to attend other conventions and cruises, why does the west coast stops always get  leftovers? While there are so many questions fans want answered, it doesn’t look like they will get the answers anytime soon. San Jose will just have to wait until 2020 to get another peak at Heros and Villians fan Fest and Walker Stalker Con.

*If you are truly looking for another convention in San Jose, please check out Silicon Valley Comic Con in August. We will be there and it’s a blast!*