You may wonder if the steampunk genre has died out already but the truth is, you’re just not looking in the right place. In fact, there are many festivals and conventions being held almost every year, throughout the US.

There is even one being held every month in the US. But let’s not stop at the United States considering that there are many conventions in the city of Lincoln, United Kingdom.

All of those events are being attended by many people who go there in all kinds of costumes, which is urged most of the time as it is the point of those festivals. The event in Lincoln, called Asylum, has become so popular and attracted so many people that the city became well-known for that.

ComicCon & Steampunk

If you have already attended many events on ComicCon then you should know that steampunk is one of the important and one of the popular events there. It is actually so popular because there are so many young people who absolutely love cosplaying in Steampunk costumes.

Many people have also combined Steampunk and current pop culture, like Marvel and DC characters or superheroes.

Steampunk definitely isn’t dead because, if it were, there wouldn’t be so many festivals and events held each year.

It may not be as popular as it used to be before, but nothing is like it used to be before. Things change, and so do different genres and styles. Just because you may see less of it nowadays, it is just because you may not be as interested in it because there are still many people who are obsessed with it.

However, it’s still one of the more popular punk genres than cyberpunk and dieselpunk.

Steampunk & Current Pop Culture

Festivals and events are not the only way Steampunk is being kept alive. In fact, there are still video and computer games, comic books, photographs and movies that are keeping that steampunk flame strong.

Computer games that are more sci-fi are actually rather popular around young people. Some of the games that are mostly steampunk-inspired include BioShock Infinite (which is currently the most popular sci-fi game at this point), Dishonored, Final Fantasy VI, etc.

Game developers know that sci-fi genre is super popular nowadays, therefore, there will be many more games like this to come out which will result in keeping that steampunk genre alive. It also helps that games are more popular than ever these past few years and both men and women are playing.

Many don’t know this but Steampunk has inspired many products of pop culture and people are not even aware of it. Popular media still has a lot of themes and characters that have some of the elements of steampunk or are heavily influenced by it.

An example of a case like this is a popular superhero movie, and a comic book, “Iron Man”. Some people may say that it is more sci-fi than it is steampunk but there is no doubt that there are some undertones and elements of the steampunk genre as well.

There is no denying that people love seeing futuristic gadgets and devices in their favorite movies or comics. However, a more obvious example where the steampunk genre has greatly influenced a movie is Sherlock Holmes movies. In those movies, characters are set in a certain period where mechanics and inventions get combined together and more often than not, some strange contraption comes out of it.

Yet another example is “Hellboy” movie series, which thanks to it, “steampunk” as a word made its way into the dictionary. One of the characters in “Hellboy” is a Victorian-era villain, Grigori Rasputin, who was born in 1869, got resurrected in the movie in 1944 and is there from the moment Hellboy is born.

Not only that but there is some of the Steampunk fighting in “Hellboy” too.  Johan Krauss suffered an accident in 2002, according to the books, but in the second part of the movie, his suit looks like it’s from the 20^th century.

He doesn’t have a body, the suit has his ectoplasm which is another popular trope in the Spiritualist movements in the 1900s.

Some people may say that the reason these movies and comic books are popular because of all the sci-fi elements in them.

On the other hand, costumes also have a big role in steampunk and the characters in those kinds of movies or comics usually do have a rather unique style. So, there is no reason to fear, steampunk is still alive and well, and it probably won’t be going away any time soon!