FanExpo Canada 2014

This past weekend, the third largest comic and fan convention in North America occurred. It started on Thursday, August 28th at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto, Canada and continued until today (Sunday). Unfortunately, your humble blogger was only able to attend one day, but I was able to take a bunch of photographs for this photo-essay. Here it is: 

FanExpo Canada 2014. Normally this convention is the weekend before the Labour Day weekend,  but this year it happened to fall on that long weekend. And with Derek Jeter playing his last series against the Blue Jays, one felt there would be a lot of visitors from south of the border in town this time. Who doesn't love a double-header of Geek and Baseball, right?   

And this was the case: the crowds were massive! This is the pre-purchased ticket queue on Saturday morning. 

A few years ago the North Building of the convention centre was not used for FanExpo. Now it's packed at 10:00 am!

Horror masks.

North Building at about 10:10 am.

Into the South Building. Comics at a comic book convention??? Who would have guessed?!?

Darth Vader on holiday.

More sales in the South Building.

The DC Champions of Justice panel; Left to Right: David Finch, Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Greg Pax and Larry Ganem. The highlight of the listening to Azzarello talk about his (amazing) run on Wonder Woman. It ends later this autumn but has been a very soild three years. He also talked about how it, while being largely free of the larger DC continuity, was never-the-less true to the character. His advice to David Finch and his wife, Meredith, who take over the book in November, is to always keep in mind the passion fans have for that comic book icon. Jeff Lemire talked about Justice League United, his research into its heavily Canadian content and the personal inspiration for his new character Equinox, the aboriginal Canadian who features in the story. They also spoke about working together on Futures End. Pak spoke about his ongoing work on Batman/Superman.

Imperials of the 501th Legion.

The Marvel: All Access panel; Left to Right: Jeanine Schaefer, Charles Soule, C.B. Cebulski, Greg Pak, Ryan Stegman, Mahmud Asrar and Adam Kubert. This panel was more free-flowing than the DC with Kurbert talking about the upcoming Axis crossover, Soule, the upcoming She-Hulk courtroom drama with Matt Murdock and, of course, the impending death of Wolverine. Stegman spoke about Inhuman and Pak about his work on Storm. Jeanine was asked a "diversity in comics question" and she and C.B. spoke about how Ms. Marvel is the most popular downloaded book outside of North America, which has told Marvel that female lead characters are good for the bottom line. 

A Batmobile...of sorts.

The Batman: Arkham Knight Batmobile again. 

Vive la France!

A Nissan S130 painted up as the Autobot "Prowl".

Prowl Again.

This was interesting. This Deadpool-look-a-like is actually a police recruitment character named "United" who works for the York Regional Police, a force from a region north of Toronto. I certainly don't want to see local cops wearing that outfit, but it does show how pervasive geeky things are these days. 

Exterminate! I'm loving Peter Capaldi in the role, btw.

Boba Fett and Darth Vader

Commander Adama signing autographs along with...

...the incomparable Bruce Campbell. Hail to the King, baby!!!!

The Batmobile circa 1966.

The evening was capped off with a brief talk by William Shatner. The big event is An Evening of the Two Captains with Shatner joined by Sir Patrick Stewart on Sunday evening. In this short chat (30 minutes) Shatner spoke mostly of his early career, much of which was spent in Toronto after he first moved from Montreal. One notable story was about when he didn't have much, it was friendships (and that's not a euphemism) with "ladies of the evening" that helped him get through those tougher times. He was fantastic and even made a couple digs at George Takei, who doesn't seem to speak too highly of him these days. Shatner is always awesome to see, and brought the house down in only half an hour!  

So there you go: one day of FanExpo Canada. I hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you next year.