Sci-fi celebrities and cosplay enthusiasts attend Long Beach Comic Con 2025

Fans in cosplays ranging from Batman to anime characters gathered to meet the creator of “Animaniacs” and the voice actor of Carl from “Jimmy Neutron” over the Labor Day weekend for this year’s Long Beach Comic Con.

The event featured Q&As and autograph sessions with voice actors and artists; vendors offering collectibles and sci-fi merchandise; and meet up with like-minded fans of comic books, cartoons and anime at the convention center.

“This is much smaller than the other two (conventions), which is both good and bad. It means less vendors with less walking,” Long Beach City College student Annie Uy said.

The event was not held in the main exhibition halls, but in smaller rooms on the first and second floor of the promenade area.

Uy and fellow LBCC student Brian Chavez went to the convention together as Sallie May from the webshow “Helluva Boss” and Karl Heisenberg from the video game Resident Evil Village.

Uy decided to cosplay as Sallie May after finding out that the character’s voice actress, Morgana Ignis, had a booth at the convention.

^{Long Beach City College student Annie Uy poses in cosplay of Sallie May from the web show “Helluva Boss” for Long Beach Comic Con on Aug. 30. Long Beach Comic Con was at the Long Beach Convention Center held on Aug. 30 and Aug. 31. (Isaiah Ryan)}

“I got to meet her, so the guests here were the first reason why I wanted to come, and also because I went to the one in LA and had a good time there, so I wanted to see if it was a good time here,” Uy said.

Chavez improvised his cosplay by using clothes he already had, but went out of his way to customize Uy’s cosplay. 

Uy’s outfit included a thrifted belt that Chavez engraved and cut the sleeves off of his own shirt for her cosplay. 

^{Brian Chavez holds a prop sledgehammer dressed in an improvised Karl Heisenberg cosplay from Resident Evil Village for Long Beach Comic Con on Aug. 30. Long Beach Comic Con was at the Long Beach Convention Center held on Aug. 30 and Aug. 31. (Isaiah Ryan)}

“The trench coat is just my coat I wear when hiking, for the hat it’s just my leather hat that I wear. The only prop that was proper for this was this random sledgehammer I found at Spirit Halloween,” Chavez said.

Another LBCC student, Nathan Warren, 3D printed an armor set with personalized markings of battle damage from the video games series Halo.

Warren credited his father, who attended the event with him, as the inspiration behind the cosplay for his second ever convention.

“I’ve always liked Halo, since I was around five or six, my dad got me into it. Just decided one day I wanted to be a Spartan, so I got a 3D printer, started chipping away at that and eventually branched out. I just started wanting to make the helmet, then decided I’d go for the rest of the costume too,” Warren said.

The first day of the event concluded with a costume contest, film screenings and multiple crowd interactive speaker panels.