This was the fifth year Wollongong’s Gabriella Franklin, 18, has transformed herself for the event – this year morphing into Ruby Rose from the animated series RBWY.

“It’s very freeing,” Miss Franklin said of dressing up in public. 

“I do drama and acting so it’s very much like you’re playing a character in real life. And it gives you a lot more experience for playing characters and developing personalities for characters.

“You play dress-up when you’re growing up and you can do that again when you’re older and take it to such an extreme – and it makes you feel really good when you put so much effort into your own costume.”

Read More: Marvel and timing attributed to success of pop culture conventions

Wollongong’s “signature” pop culture festival may attract thousands of people each year, but organisers say it will remain a free and community focused event – unlike its commercial counterparts Supernova and Oz Comic Con.

Estimated attendance numbers are still to be released, but the city’s arts precinct was swarming on Saturday with superheroes, medieval warriors, time lords, anime characters, rock’n’roll wrestlers and spectators.

Manager of Library and Community Services Jenny Thompson said each year they review the event to discuss what can be done better or what can be changed.

Read More: Cold case of missing Wollongong newsreader lures an actor home

“Sometimes we talk about moving it to a different venue, or moving it out of the city to somewhere which could offer us more space,” she said.

“But partly because it’s run internally – we have a team of librarians who do it in among their other work – it’s about trying to keep that balance of what’s doable for us and also for the community, keeping it as a free event so that anyone can come along.”

At its core, Comic Gong is about changing the perception of libraries as a dull place. Ms Thompson said the event helps promote that readers can travel to other worlds and dimensions through the characters in comics, graphic novels and books.

People engage with literature in different ways and libraries are recognising the links between reading books, comics, watching movies and play video games, she said.

“The first couple of years we were chasing people to exhibit or have a market stall, now people are coming to us,” Ms Thompson said. “It’s a real testament to just how the festival’s evolved, it still has this really place in people’s hearts.”