Fan Expo in Toronto

Fan Expo Canada was held this past weekend at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, in the shadow of the CN Tower. That is, it would have been in its shadow if the sun had been shining, but it was an overcast and occasionally rainy day. The Convention Centre itself seems to be mainly underground anyway.

Fan Expo is actually five smaller conventions that have merged together to form one larger beast. There’s the Canadian National Comic Book Expo, which interested me the most, but there is also the Canadian National Science Fiction Expo, the Rue Morgue Festival of Fear (based in the horror genre), the Canadian National Anime Expo, and the Canadian National Gaming Expo. The five groups mingle together on one large convention floor. They are not segregated with walls, but you can certainly tell when you’ve passed from one area of the convention to another.

Because of the five areas of interest, Fan Expo is actually quite large, with a predicted attendance of 50,000 people. I don’t know if they hit that target or not, but I can say that it was very crowded. There were lines of people everywhere and the convention floor was often difficult to negotiate through.

I didn’t take many pictures, partly because the costumed folk were dominated by the people from anime, which I don’t know anything about. There were very few comics based costumes, and not even as many Star Wars as I would have expected, considering that the 501st Legion of Stormtroopers and other Imperial characters was supposed to be holding a large meeting there. I did take a little bit of video, as you can see above.

Partly because the panels seemed to be heavy on the Marvel end of things instead of DC, I ended up choosing to spend my time waiting in line for autographs from comic creators (shown in the video above) and elbowing my way through the crowd looking for bargains in the back bins. I regret that decision a little, because the panels at these types of events are great ways to get a little more familiar with the creators. For example, I feel like I learned a little bit about Frank Quitely while watching his body language while I was in line, and it was interesting hearing his Scottish accent when he signed my All-Star Superman (he joked that it was nice to only sign one book, since most fans were pushing the 5-book limit with each request). Other than that, though I didn’t learn much about him. Comic Book Resources has reports from at least two of the panels: One from Marvel’s C.B. Cebulski and one from Greg Pak announcing a new mini-series called Warbound which will follow World War Hulk. I really should try to get to at least one panel at the next event like this that I attend. After all, my feet could have really used the rest.

Also in Toronto this past weekend were film crews working on the Incredible Hulk. I didn’t see any of them, but a blog here has a few pictures of vehicles being used.

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