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.

Fan Expo Canada 2013

I know its been a while since I've written on WGTB, but in my experience summer is prone to either a deluge of blog writing or very little. So to make up for the recent drought, I have a bunch of articles coming soon. But in the meanwhile, here are some choice photographs from Fan Expo Canada 2013 (August 22-25). Unfortunately, I was only able to attend the Friday of the four day show, but these pics should give you a sense of how Canada's largest fan and comics convention fared. It was pretty good, and certainly biggest and busiest I've seen yet.   

As usual, the Whovians and Deleks are out in force! 

As were the Trekkies as this convention featured some prominent Star Trek cast members. Here's the legendary George Takai signing autographs.

This year's Fan Expo was the first to use both halls of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Early attendance figures put it at over 100,000 people.

Sons of Anarchy was featured prominently this year and anecdotal t-shirt evidence says the fanbase is growing. Here's a SOA-themed Harley-Davidson.

Dark Horse brought a booth. Unfortunately DC and Marvel did not.

And Marvel heard about this perceived slight at the Marvel: Infinity panel. Left to right: An unidentified fan, Marvel SVP, Publishing Tom Brevoort, editor Ellie Pyle and creators Stuart & Kathryn Immonen. Highlights of this panel included: 

1) Re: the Ultimate universe: We must continue to expect the unexpected. But there is no confirmed information about Hunger and any Ultimate characters coming over to Earth-616.

2) Brian Michael Bendis is heavily involved in the upcoming X-Men: Battle of the Atom crossover, so we can expect something tying that arch to the recently completed Age of Ultron.

3) There may be more New Universe characters coming to Earth-616. This shouldn't surprise anyone after Jonathan Hickman's use of Star Brand in Avengers. 

Friday also featured a great panel with Walt and Louise Simonson. Seen here are an unknown tech-guy and host (left), Walt (middle) and Louise (right). It was fun hearing about the creation of Beta Ray Bill, Walt's upcoming creator-owned work with IDW, writing the Star Wars comics of the early 80s and why he changed Warren Worthington III in X-Factor. Louise offered some great stories about working with Walt and how the DC editorial team came up with the idea to kill Superman in the early 1990s.  

After the Simonson panel, there was another with the always engaging Neil Adams. Here, Adams spilled the beans about the Silver Age with stores about the Comics Code, the famous Green Lantern/Green Arrow issue involving a drug-using Speedy, and how he didn't get to finish The Kree/Skull War to his satisfaction.

Avatar Comics had a great display booth.

The Toronto Lego Users Group had a presence with a Death Star trench display and...

...a Lego Serenity from Firefly. I asked if any glue was involved and the host (left) said no.  

The Batmobile circa 1989. Looks like a homebuilt, but it's still very cool. 

80s icon KITT from Knight Rider.  

The cockpit of KITT. How would one do a U-turn in that thing?  

George Takei talks about working on the set of Star Trek, past convention practical jokes, his use of social media and a musical he co-wrote called Allegiance. It's about the experience of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. He's such an engaging speaker!

While fellow Star Trek alum Nichelle Nichols spoke about her family history, her father's early support and encouragement and being one of the first  African-American women on network television.

And finally Ian McDiarmid a.k.a. the Emperor from the Star Wars universe spoke about his casting break as the Emperor in 1982, working on the subsequent trilogy as Palpatine and what it's like being a pop culture icon. The Scotsman was great and he even did that evil voice!

All in all it was a great day spent, and another successful FanExpo Canada. 

FanExpo Canada 2012: Information & Photos

This past weekend was FanExpo Canada. Considered the third largest comic-con in North America, this year's show was chock-full of great guests and lots to see and buy. My personal highlights include snagging two legendary autographs that has previously eluded me: Stan Lee and Neil Adams. 

The Marvel: Avengers vs. X-Men panel from left to right: C.B. Cebulski, Steve Wacker, Nick Lowe, Axel Alonso & Arune Singh. 

Unfortunately, I only got to one day of the four day event, so I can't report on much. There were, however, a few nuggets of information I managed to gather from the two Marvel panels I attended. If you haven't seen them on CBR, etc, here they are. From the Marvel: Avengers vs. X-Men panel we learnt:

1) There's an important death at the end.

2) The Hulk will be showing up in the final issue of A v X.

3) Ed Brubaker is leaving Winter Solider to be replaced by relative newcomer Jason Latour. I’ll let you know what I think of his first issue.

4) Characters from Alpha Flight will be appearing in Wolverine and the X-Men #19.

The Marvel: A Pint o' CB panel with from left to right: Axel Alonso, Dan Slott, Steve Wacker, Nick Lowe & C.B. Cebulski

The second panel I attended -- Marvel: Pint o' CB didn’t just star its namesake con stalwart but also Axel Alonso, Dan Slott, Steve Wacker and Nick Lowe with Arune Singh moderating. This was a more free-flowing conversation and the Marvel team used much of the opportunity to talk-up this fall's Marvel Now. 

The Marvel team made clear that this was not a 'reboot' but a 'relaunch'.

Throughout the discussion it was made clear that Marvel Now will be, to quote Axel Alonso, ‘not a reboot but a relaunch’. Indeed, the Editor-in-Chief spoke frankly about the entire process and it sounds like creators have been given carte blanche to 'profoundly change' and make ‘hostile takovers’ of their new books. It sounds interesting and I'll be reviewing the new books as they come out.

Nick Lowe as game show host at the Marvel display.

So there you go: some quick notes on FanExpo. It was another good show and I'm already looking forward to next year. Hopefully, I'll be a little better at planning ahead and be able to get in more than one day of the show. Below are some random photos from the event for you to enjoy. Thanks for reading!

Space, Canada's sci-fi channel, had a huge presence at this year's FanExpo.

More of Space's display.

Non-comic fan favourites like as electronic games were also huge presence at the show too...

...as were promotions for upcoming films such as Peter Jackson's The Hobbit...

...and television's Game of Thrones.

DC Comics also had a serious presence...

...as did the Daleks.