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Official Stats: 3000 in attendance.
This was the first time they did a 3 day con in
Montreal, Canada's 2nd biggest city. I went up and
back on Sunday with a couple of friends and I'm
glad I went. Montreal is known for having some of
the worst traffic/drivers in North America but
it wasn't too bad for us getting there. We got
lucky and were able to park on the street about a
block away and not pay anything.
We arrived just shortly after opening and there
were no lines to get in which was really nice.
Attendance wasn't all that high, which gave the
con a more relaxed atmosphere. The staff at the
convention centre seemed to be nice and
knowledgeable, which is quite the switch from
Toronto. The convention centre itself was very big
with lots of escalators. There were lots of long,
wide hallways that would be easy to get lost in.
There were people in red coats just standing there
pretty much letting you know where to go plus
signs that pointed the way.
Inside, the con was held in a big room that was
about 2/3 of the size that's used in Toronto.
It made for some scrunched up tables, but
thankfully the low attendance didn't make it too
bad. I would have hated to be there on a Saturday.
There were a lot of people selling DVD's at the
con. Anime was there but wasn't as high of
proportion as in Toronto. A lot of the dealers
were selling silver age comics, a collector of
that stuff might have struck a good bargain there.
Two theatres were running non-stop 1 hour long
anime shows. Among these included Chobits, GTO, X
and Dragonball GT, plus many I never heard of
before. The con was probably a lot of fun for a
major anime fan. There was a 3rd theatre that got
used for anime panels, while comic book panels got
mixed in between the movies. Being Sunday, there
were only two panels, and the one I wanted to go to
was cancelled. It was the one about CrossGen, it
was supposed to straighten out the rumours about
the companies demise. Sorta prophetic, eh?
There were frequent periods where one could walk
up to the big stars and chat with them with no
line ups. When there were line ups they weren't
any more than 5 minutes long. These big stars
include both comic book pro's like Bruce Jones,
Darick Robertson, David Finch. Movie stars Marina
Sirtis (Counsellor Troy from Star Trek:TNG), Ethan
Phillips (Neelix from Star Trek: Voyager) and
Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) were also easily
accessible. Fans were seen having long
conversations with pro's in the artist's alley. I
had one with Sandy Carruthers, artist of the
original Men in Black comic book. Did you know
that Men in Black made hundreds of millions of
dollars and he didn't get a damn penny out of it?
He warns all would be comic creators to make sure
they get contracts and think of the long term with
them.
Towards 2pm a very big line up of giggling young
girls formed for Kirby Morrow, comic fans may know
him as the voice of Cyclops in the X-men cartoon.
The girls probably knew him from his extensive
anime work. Also making the women swoon was Scott
McNeil, who also does a lot of anime voice work.
We in the press got a fancy press kit for Kirby
Morrow that includes many listings of the work
he's done and news stories. There was also a burnt
CD inside with samples of his diverse voice works,
clips from his acting, an X-Men Evolution cartoon
(the one introducing Kitty Pryde and Avalanche)
and word documents showing his voice and acting
credits.
In the middle of the day one could hear dealers
complaining that they didn't sell much. I should
say there wasn't the deals that you see in Toronto,
though. When I go to conventions I mainly look for
TPB's and I look for the ones that say 40% off
because I can get them at price if I pre-pay and
pre-order. There was maybe three boxes of trades
that was 40% to 50% off and while I did buy some
stuff out of there, I passed by the many boxes
that were only selling at 20% off. I know a comic
shop owner in Montreal who says the environment
there is high discounts, as the comics are
actually printed there and sometimes a bundle of
"hot" books will get stolen and sold dirt cheap to
shops even before Diamond has them. I suspect some
of the Toronto dealers that came down were not
aware of this.
The attendance was 90% male until mid afternoon.
It seemed like almost everybody decided to go to
the con late as some pro's were not there until
then. People in costumes showed up as did the
women. I suspect the women were around the whole
time but were watching the anime. There were only
a handful of people wearing costumes on Sunday, I
took pictures of them all, plus some comic pro's,
movie actors and other things. They are all here
on CollectorTimes.com.
We left the show at 3pm and went to Asto-Libre,
which is a used bookstore that does the pre-pay,
pre-order books at 40% off. I bought more stuff
there than I did at the con.
In all, I enjoyed the con for it's laid back style.
I hope to go next year and hope they improve from
what they got going there now.
Regards,
Jamie Coville
2003-11-19
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