Dragon Con breaks attendance record with 70,000 earthlings

Rebecca Camp of Cartersville attended her fifth Dragon Con over the holiday weekend. Outfitted as Wonder Woman, she walked along Peachtree Street Friday, presumably not having to go far to convene with other superheroes. JOHN SPINK / JSPINK@AJC.COM

Credit: hpousner

Credit: hpousner

Rebecca Camp of Cartersville attended her fifth Dragon Con over the holiday weekend. Outfitted as Wonder Woman, she walked along Peachtree Street Friday, presumably not having to go far to convene with other superheroes. JOHN SPINK / JSPINK@AJC.COM

The Dragon Con universe is getting to be quite the populous place.

Officials for the sci-fi, fantasy, pop culture and gaming convention that takes over five downtown Atlanta convention hotels every Labor Day weekend announced Tuesday that this year's edition drew a record of more than 70,000 (mostly costumed) attendees.

That burst to smithereens the old high, set just last year, of more than 62,000 fans. In 2013, Dragon Con drew 57,000.

If you were in the thick of the throng over the weekend -- whether in the cheek-to-jowl hotel lobbies, the expanded yet still packed Dragon Con Vendor Halls in AmericasMart's Building Two or even amid the gridlocked sidewalks downtown -- the news of the new record will come as no surprise.

One of the positives from that assemblage of humanity (and other unidentifiable creatures) is that the con raised more than $100,000 for the Lymphoma Research Foundation, this year's designated charity.

Final figures are not in yet for those donations, nor for the Robert A. Heinlein "Pay It Forward" Blood Drive, which collected 3,292 units from 3,893 donors in 2014.

Dragon Con will return from Sept 2 to 5 in 2016.