{"id":53554,"date":"2025-01-19T18:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-01-19T23:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=53554"},"modified":"2025-01-20T19:52:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T00:52:49","slug":"central-florida-comic-con-wraps-up-historic-3-day-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2025\/01\/19\/central-florida-comic-con-wraps-up-historic-3-day-event\/","title":{"rendered":"Central Florida Comic Con wraps up historic 3-day event"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Photos by\u00a0Tom Hagerty Photography<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cosplay was on full display as fans gathered to meet with stars from the Power Rangers, The Walking Dead, The WWE, and even Rufio from \u201cHook.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Attendees said they\u2019re excited to see an event like this continuing to grow in Lakeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor me, this is kind of a big moment, because this is like wow, I\u2019m finally doing it,\u201d visitor Andrew Wesselles said. \u201cI\u2019m a teacher as well so I told all my students, I kind of flashed up to them and told them guys look who\u2019s here, look at all the great voice actors, so they were kind of nerding out with me. I teach 5th grade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That type of enthusiasm is what founder Ben Penrod says drove him to start this Comic Con here at the RP Funding Center in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three-day convention is the largest in its history, drawing in nearly 7,000 fans overall, according to Penrod.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know Lakeland and Polk County are growing and thriving areas, but we\u2019re not too far from Tampa. We\u2019re not too far from Orlando and it\u2019s not too hard for me to convince people to come down here if we\u2019re giving them something really fun to do,\u201d Penrod said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just a place to let your inner geek play, but it is a real treasure trove of talent, too. For artist Tim Voncloedt there\u2019s a deeper meaning to this convention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m producing whimsy in a way, and so I want people to be able to look at that and go oh, that\u2019s my childhood,\u201d Voncloedt said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A childhood with the common ground of a love for all things comics, cosplay, and cartoons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Snowballing off the success already, plans for Central Florida Comic Con<\/a> 2026 are already in the works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photos by\u00a0Tom Hagerty Photography The cosplay was on full display as fans gathered to meet with stars from the Power Rangers, The Walking Dead, The WWE, and even Rufio from… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDFcLzU0MjcyMzUzOTY4XzYwMjU1OWFiZjRfYy53ZWJwP2ZpdD02NDAlMkM4MDAmc3NsPTEiLCJ0eHQiOiJDZW50cmFsIEZsb3JpZGEgQ29taWMgQ29uIHdyYXBzIHVwIGhpc3RvcmljIDMtZGF5IGV2ZW50IiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.Txfur4DLmhWYRSKIxeIiF6YkC5SeSMtr-K2oA6y8Hl0MQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":53497,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/54272353968_602559abf4_c.webp","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[10805],"class_list":["post-53554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-central-florida-comic-con-wraps-up-historic-3-day-event"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53554"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53574,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53554\/revisions\/53574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}