Big Comicon Report (Pics) and Stalking Slave Leia

[rob_allan]

Well, I did all 3 days at FanExpo Canada. Let me first be honest in that I've been boycotting Hobbystar events for exactly one year now. I hadn't really planned entirely on going to this one, but my stepson was here and he's never seen a comic convention ever. (He's 12. It's time.) I don't honestly know when he'll have the chance to see a spectacle like this again (or if for that matter) so I decided we should go. (Plus the kid loves anime and videogames.) All of the above stated, I am glad we went. I think all 3 of us (me, my wife, her son) had a good time. I don't know what that means about my future with HSM events, but I guess we'll see how they progress. (I'm hoping with Kevin aboard maybe they'll clean their act up a bit.)

 

Anyway, I'm breaking this thread up into 3 posts (Day 1, Day 2, and Day3.) I'll try to give as much of the good, bad, and ugly as I can. I got bagged on a bit for not taking more pictures of the Paradise Con when I went to it. So I made sure to take plenty this time.

 

DAY ONE

 

We arrived at the convention center a little after 4:00PM. Ticket sales online closed at noon Wednesday, and I didn't even look to buy them until Wednesday night. I wasn't too upset about this, mainly because I didn't care about the 2 hour early entry you get with advance orders. The lines are so long, unless you're a truly diligent camper, you don't get there early enough to get the full 2 hours. We went very early last year and even with advance passes only really managed 30-45mins. extra time before others went in. Unfortunately, it turns out you can't pay admission with a credit card. (You'd think since the price is so outlandish you'd be able to.) Since I had to buy 3 Deluxe Passes ($45 each) a great deal of my budget was gone before entering. So by this point, I was pretty much going into the Expo mad already. (I almost didn't buy the tickets, but I didn't want to disappoint my stepson.)

 

 

This was the best shot I could get of the show floor. Things were fairly tightly packed (there was more room than last year between booths thankfully) so there was no real vantage point to get an overhead view. Hopefully with all the pictures, you can get an idea over time. I saw Slave Leia for the first time fairly early on. She was pretty hot (revealing costume) and I fumbled with my backpack and didn't get my camera out in time to get a picture. I made a mental note to find her later.

 

I did my sweep for funnybooks right away. My main interests were in finding some new GA Ghost Riders and GA Boy Comics to fill my run. I asked literally every person there, and only one person had any Ghost Riders other than issue 1. His name? Of course, Harley Yee. He must have the memory of an elephant because after I was browsing his booth about 3 minutes he remembered me and started having his help pull Boy Comics and Ghost Riders for me. The Ghost Riders weren't in-grade enough for me, so I passed. I did pick up a copy of Boy Comics 19 that displayed well. (I posted it in the GA forum already.) Harley is a pretty great guy. I hope he's back up north soon.

 

I also checked out Graham Crackers booth. There was good stuff there, and I was kinda hoping to buy something from it. Sadly, there just wasn't anything I was particularly looking for. Maybe next time.

 

From there I headed over to Big B Comics. I was looking forward to this stop as I had gotten a great deal on an Iron Man #1 at the Paradise Toronto Comicon earlier this year. I wasn't disappointed. I found a nice copy of GA America's Best Comics #20 for a steal. (They even moved the price down a tad.) Nice guys to deal with just like last time.

 

I shopped the rest of the booths and the only other luck I had was finding Boy Comics 36. Not particularly in-grade, but the price was right and it displays well. I got the information for the seller EBay ID RDCOMICS and will be checking for more Boy Comics and other goodies from him in the future.

 

Now, here's one of the major downsides to this convention. Those are all the comics I bought the ENTIRE weekend. I went to a comic show, looking for comics, and found 3. That's it 3. So already it was pretty clear that this wasn't going to be a good show for comics. Certainly not worth the admission price. There was WAY TOO MUCH modern drek that was overpriced. (Why is Spawn #1 in FVF $10 folks!? Hell, I wouldn't buy it in NM for $10.) No knock to modern collectors, mind you, but the amount of redundancy in booth content was crazy. There were boxes and boxes of cheapie moderns (mostly Image, Marvel, and Aspen) and each booth had a wall of mid-grade silver behind it. (And usually 1 or 2 random GA books.) There was one booth (forgot the dealer name) that had a decent selection of GA, but the books were overpriced. I saw sticker prices that were a little over double guide for easy to obtain books and asked the guy if they were 50% off (it was an honest question-- I thought he forgot to label the boxes) but those stickers were the price he wanted. Wasn't even worth haggling.

 

So, mildly disappointed but happy with my Boy Comics and first Schomburg Nedor, I decided to check out the gaming area. On the way I bumped into our very own Kevin_Boyd (at the Aspen booth looking swank in his new FanExpo jersey), ThirdGreenHam (who was apparently finding no DC War), and AlexH who I ended up talking with alot during the 'con. (Alex was also doing some SS books for me.) I didn't manage pics of the other boardies at any time partly due to lack of camera (my wife had it time-to-time) and also because I spaced out.

 

Anyway, I finally hit the gaming area:

 

 

 

I'm not a big-time gamer (though I like them) but I had alot of fun here. There was the World Series of Video Games going on. I got to watch people competing on a few games I've never seen. I did notice a Gears of War competition. I wished I had registered for that one. Think I would have owned.

 

Wait Wait! What was that!?!?!? Dammit! Slave Leia just walked down that crowded isle. I dropped my controller (was playing Wii's Rayman and failing miserably with the Wii controller) and ran for the pic. No good. I lost her.

 

I'm out of shape, so naturally I was spent. The site of Slave Leia and the run took the energy out of me. So I decided to have a seat and play the new John Madden Football game on a 56" Plasma TV. SWEET.

 

 

Somebody needed to tell one of the guys playing that there is no way in hell the Packers are beating the Chargers on a Madden game. Hahahaha

 

As I was getting my handed to me at Madden, I heard the sound of something familiar. GUITAR HERO. Turns out there was a competition for that too. I ran over to it and watched. Probably the most fun I had all weekend was watch people play Guitar Hero on stage. They had 3 judges and you were expected to actually perform. So people tried doing tricks, which ultimately lead to them botching the song. It was funny. The dude below was awesome and won a Guitar Hero game package:

 

 

As good as he was, I imagine he probably already owns the Guitar Hero II game. So I'm kinda wondering how good of a prize that was, really.

 

After a while, a different guy took the stage. He started playing "Free Bird." He SUCKED. I can't believe he managed to donk his way through the whole song. (Donk is the sound the game makes when you hit a bad note.) He cleared out most of the spectators. I left with them seeking costumes.

 

Naturally I found an anime-nerd right off the bat. (Comic geeks are outnumbered by anime nerds like 5:1 at this show.) Anyway, he was Zangetsu, Ichigo's sword from the anime Bleach.

 

 

I decided to try to find an actual comic geek. But instead I found a horror enthusiast. Still a very cool costume.

 

 

Anyway, I finally happened upon a comic guy. (Praise the Lord and pass the beer.) He had a GREAT Green Lantern costume. The lantern itself lit up and was pretty sweet. He also made the necessary addition of a zipper to the costume. Probably one of the only smart costumed people in the whole convention. Pretty much everyone else would have had to take almost their whole costume off to do their thing.

 

 

Anyway, I came, I saw, I shopped. And Day 1 was done. (I opted against getting any signatures as I had only brought my Michael Turner books for day 1 and his flight had been delayed due to weather.) No Slave Leia in site. I knew I'd have to stalk her more efficeintly the following day.

 

NEXT POST: Next post will be Day 2 (Saturday). I'll talk a bit about the coloring session I attended with Peter Steigerwald, the Saturday crowd, and post the bulk of the pictures I took.

 

NEXT NEXT POST: My last post will be Day 3 (today) I sat in on the John Romita Jr and John Romita Sr Q&A. That was huge fun and I got pics from that too.

[THE_BEYONDER]

Nice report

[That Ron Dude]

Thanks. I missed the Friday. I thought it was a dynamite event for most of the people who went there, but probably not for the people at this board. There just weren't enough comics.

[alwaysbronze]

looking forward to day 2 and day 3 reports

[rob_allan]

DAY TWO

 

The crowd was HUGE as expected. People that showed up needing to buy tickets were in line upwards of 2 hours. I was very glad to have gotten our passes on Friday.

 

We saw R2D2 upstairs.

 

 

Then downstairs the greeter (you know-- token guy with the megaphone yelling at people which direction to go) was decked out in Jedi attire with a dual lightsaber

 

 

I planned to get my World War Hulk books signed at the World War Hulk signing at the start of the day. PROBLEM? Yeah, I left the books at home. I was so wiped after the day on Friday I totally forgot to put them in my backpack. I decided since I had forgotten to do this, I'd go ahead and meet up with Arthur Suydam instead.

 

 

Mr. Suydam was fun to chat with and a great guy. He was doing signings in return for donations to the Hero Initiative. I'm normally against paying for autographs when I've already paid for a ticket, but I absolutely applaud his doing this. I got some things signed. Turns out, he actually has a stamp he uses to certify his signatures. Neat idea. I'll know not to buy Suydam merchandise without that in the future.

 

Pleased with my signing and after chatting it up with my wife and Mr. Suydam about Lance Armstrong (apparently Suydam was in France during the whole "Lance Armstrong is juicing" thing so now he LOVES Lance hahahaha) I decided to continue my quest to find Slave Leia.

 

Have you seen her?

No.

 

How about you?

No.

 

How about you? You fly around right?

Puny comic collector! Leave me be!

 

Finally I decided to pony up and just ask the Lord Vader.

I was choked briefly and then I ran away.

 

No Slave Leia. Maybe she was a figment of my imagi-- THERE UP THE ESCALATOR! Run fat boy! Fun! Sure enough, she must have gone into one of the conferences upstairs because I lost her.

 

Anyway, I've just landed a new job as a colorist for a comic company starting up here in Toronto. So I decided it would be well worth going to the Q&A with Aspen's Peter Stiegerwald. I learned lots (particularly about the time involved in coloring comics-- I'm not slow! Which is almost bad news because 5hrs a page is perfectly normal.) While I listened to that (he's a nice guy-- funny too) my wife stole the camera and apparently bumped into the DC Universe.

 

 

 

She's not a DC reader, but she did happen upon the plot to the next big event from them. It turns out my old friend Green Lantern has actually teamed up with Reverse Flash!! OH NO!

 

 

Green Lantern and Reverse Flash have actually gotten together and turned Captain Marvel into a baby!!!

 

 

Fortunately, the comicon was saved by wonderwoman.

 

After my session with Stiegerwald, I took posession of the camera again. Unfortunately, I bumped into some bad dudes.

 

 

I escaped, and tried to enlist the aid of Optimus Prime. It turns out Transformers fans are cheaper than GI Joe fans and Prime was made of cardboard.

 

 

Needless to say he was no help and I was defeated. During my death, I discovered the afterlife is pretty much just a big episode of Reboot.

 

 

I missed the panel discussing how Reboot was being brought back to life (because I myself was dead.) HOWEVER, I was ultimately saved by Batman. He recognized the camera from when my wife entered the DC Universe.

 

 

After my revival, I realized it was near time to go home. I did another walkthrough and still found absolutely no comics. HOWEVER, I did pick up an awesome set of bookends (Lady Death and Purgatori). These bookends are HOT. I'll try and grab pics of them sometime to post on the boards.

 

Below are two random babes who were with guys that aren't as awesome as me. Their loss.

 

 

NEXT POST: The Romitas (John, John Jr, and Vince.) Also-- I bought a Soundwave transformer reissue.

 

 

[rob_allan]

Day Three

 

I kicked off the day by attending the Q&A with the Romitas. Here are the highlights...

 

Amazing Spider-Man 36: Apparently the Romitas weren't in New York when the attack happened. They couldn't get flights in either so the book was actually drawn elsewhere. RomitaJr said he and Straczynski both thought the idea of doing a comic about it was bad. But when Straczynski was on the phone ranting about it he said the problem is "There are no words" As we all know, that's how the issue started with the caption "There are no words..." It was written in about 2 hours. RomitaJr drew it in 3 weeks with the first week being almost no work done. He said he finally got into work mode the last 2. Interesting fact: Romita Jr has not looked at the issue since completion.

 

Jack Kirby: RomitaSr said Kirby used to draw in this weird way where he'd work from the upper left corner of a page to the lower right. He'd just draw silhouttes of everything and add detail later because he could "see the whole page before [he] drew it." RomitaSr said Kirby was "one in a million" (very respectfully) and that he wasn't a fast penciller-- he just never took breaks. He, I guess, was pretty robotic and just sat and drew without ever leaving the desk for anything.

 

Brian Bendis: The record that Bagley and Bendis just broke for most consecutive issues on a title (which somehow discounts Cereberus) came up. RomitaJr joked that he could kick out that many issues too if all of his panels were just close-ups of people's faces. He said he wishes he could work with Bendis so he could draw close-ups of faces where the world is being destroyed somewhere in the background. Hahahaha It was all tongue-in-cheek, but very funny too.

 

Art Style: Apparently they haven't influenced each others art styles much. I honestly thought perhaps RomitaJr might have distinguished himself by drawing things different from his father as a consious effort. RomitaJr says he has a "deadline style" and him trying to make deadlines over the years is really what tailored his style more than anything. He doesn't even think about it at all.

 

oK oK I took pics of all this too

 

 

 

 

The panel was definitely my favorite part of the 'con. But it ended and I had to do other things. My stepson got his comic box sketched by Agnes Garbowska (who is really great ... she lives in Toronto and I've met her a few times.) I can hardly wait to see what his box looks like when it's done

 

 

After that, I got in line to get a couple sigs from Steve McNiven. I missed him last year and was determined to do it this year. He was also a great guy and said he wished he had done LESS convention stuff last year. It probably didn't help much with Civil War deadlines.

 

 

We did one more sweep of the convention floor. I was having a blast but AGAIN NO COMICS. Grrrr I just couldn't find anything I wanted in terms of funnybooks. That said, I DID find a G1 Soundwave Transformer Reissue. It's very sweet. I opened it and played with it a bit, honestly. It came with Ravage and Laserbeak. I hope to get more Transformers now, as this one is sweet.

 

Oh and one more thing... I did finally bump into Slave Leia. This costume REALLY does it for me. I hope we get one for the home soon. I'll make a perfect Jabba the Hut! Yay!

 

 

 

[HouseofComics.Com]

Nice reports! Great pics and droll commentary.

 

Congrats on getting the colorist gig too.

[CAP Freak]

Best Toronto report EVERZ this year... Loved the slave leia search!

[Kevin Boyd]

 

I did the artwork that appeared on the screen while I was waiting for today's programming to start. It's a rare Kevin Boyd original (those are my little KAB initials on the bottom right) and I think someone grabbed it after the panel was over.

 

Maybe I'll see if it's up on CAF!

 

Excellent report Rob. I want more comics there too!

[juggernaut]

Fantastic report. Great pics. (thumbs u

[thirdgreenham]

Good job, Rob! Excellent work to put this together and well worth it!

 

It was good seeing you again and that was a very nice Boy Comics that you had bought. By 7:00 PM on Friday, I did find a bit of DC war that I was happy with.

 

Cheers! (thumbs u

 

Andy

[Anfield Fox]

Cool report

[jordanscott]

cool stuff.

 

love the Reboot! crew.

 

(thumbs u

[OrangeNemesis]

the girl green lantern has a huge cameltoe.

[That Ron Dude]

It was nice to relive the convention Rob. I was left with a similar impression to the one you gave here. There were a lot of young adults having fun. For most it was a great end of summer party.

 

There are now three major conventions going on in Toronto (assuming the Paradise Show continues). And I know that when hundreds or thousands of comic and fantasy media fans get together a lot of things happen but each show has an individual character. Paradise seems to be collector orientated. TCAF seems to be creator orientated. Expo seems to be fanboy and fangirl with-a-sense-of-wonder orientated. That's nice to see though my own sense of wonder started failing years ago.

 

It is also nice to see so many women there. One friend estimated equivalence and guessed that most of them were anime fans.

[Sal]

the girl green lantern has a huge cameltoe.

 

there is no girl green lantern.

 

 

just what are you looking at, anyway?

 

[OrangeNemesis]

looked like a chick to me. thats nasty.

[Kevin Boyd]

That's not a girl.

[OrangeNemesis]

That's not a girl.

 

all asians look the same to me.

 

 

/end sarcasm.

[squidmo2000]

That's not a girl.

 

all asians look the same to me.

 

 

/end sarcasm.