Date: April 29th to May 1st
Location: National Trade Centre, Exhibition Place.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Attendance: approximately 4100.
The main guests at this show were Brian Michael
Bendis and Warren Ellis. My main goal for this
convention was to get a face to face interview
with Warren. I had been following Ellis's online
chatter since his usenet days, followed him over
to the WEF and then over to the Bad Signal mailing
list. I've also been reading his stuff online at
Die Puny Humans and WarrenEllis.com. I've tried
getting an e-mail interview out of him a few times
but he'd always respond with "too busy." This time
Warren said he'd accept interviews from all, so I
e-mailed him and he agreed to do one at the con
after a signing sometime.
I've only read bits of his work so I asked Sheryl
(who asked the CT staff) for help in questions and
so forth. I got some from the CT staff and from
there Scott Crawford hooked me up with Toronto
native Nancy Cerelli who could help me more. I
went up Thursday afternoon and met Nancy along
with her friend Jamie and we all went out to a pub
and came up with some more questions over dinner.
That night Warren was making an appearance at La
Hacienda, a bar in Toronto. It was hosted by The
Beguiling, a comic shop that caters to both
mainstream and art/alternative comics. We all went
to see it and lo and behold there was a line up
outside the door to get in. The doors opened at
8pm, Warren came out at 8:45 and talked for a half
hour - mainly about writing. He then went out for
a few smokes, came back and did a question and
answer session that went to 11pm. No recordings
were allowed so I'm not going to report any
details, but I will say about 300 people attended
it and a good time was had by all. Warren in
person is very much the persona you read online. I
did take some pictures of him, shook hands with
him and told him I'd see him tomorrow at the con.
As we left, Warren was surrounded by adoring fans
and he was having a ball.
Friday:
The next day I met with Nancy at the con and we
wandered around some. I was also going to
interview Jerry Robinson and his signing was
supposed to start and end prior to Warrens. That
didn't quite happen as Jerry didn't get to the con
until later. So Nancy and I did some shopping.
When I saw Warren coming in I spoke to him briefly
confirmed us doing an interview after his signing
that day.
Nancy and I then went and did a bit more shopping,
waiting for the signing to end. Towards 6pm Nancy
bought some silver aged comics but the dealer took
his time processing her credit card, he spent a
lot of time chatting away with folks. When we got
done we went to Warren's table (it was around
6:05) and didn't see him there. I went and looked
in the break room for pro's (where there is coffee
and food) and didn't see him there. I saw David
Mack whose table was close by, I asked him if he
saw where Warren went and he didn't know.
I then went and asked the con people (Peter Dixon,
the organizer in particular), telling them we were
supposed to interview Warren. Peter told us Warren
had already left, but did tell us which hotel he
was staying at. Nancy used her cell phone to call
411, we got the number to the hotel, called it and
was patched through to Warren's room. He wasn't
there yet so I left a message.
Then we went to check on Jerry Robinson and saw
him signing and drawing away for fans. I stood in
line, introduced myself and asked if we could do
an interview after his signing and he agreed. I
then decided to wait for the signing to end, as
there was only a few people in line. But every the
line went down, a few more would come by. Jerry
sat there drawing and signing for at least a good
two more hours before we did the interview. As we
left Jerry's wife said if anybody wanted a sketch
she'd draw it and charge them half price. :) The
interview took a half hour, Jerry was great,
answering all my questions and giving me away to
contact him afterwards. He cleared up some
inconsistent stories about Siegel and Shuster the
Superman creators. The interview is here on this
site.
By then it was about 15 minutes to closing. On our
way out Nancy found some silver age-ish Wonder
Woman books she really wanted, but then discovered
her bank card was missing. We vowed to come back
and buy them the next morning. Then Nancy and I
went out and got something to eat at a wonderful
Italian restaurant.
Over all Friday was a very relaxed setting for the
con, not a lot of folks showed up but there were
long line ups for Bendis and Warren when they were
there.
Saturday morning I called Warren up again and
tried to set up another interview. It went like
this:
Me: "Hi Warren, it's Jamie Coville from the
Collector Times, sorry we missed each other
yesterday I was wondering if we can re-schedule
the interview?"
Warren: "You got be at a bad
time."
Me: "okay, before or after the signing?"
(just needing a one word response)
Warren: "Ow. My Leg. I've got to go."
Me: "Okay." >click<
I then drove down to the con but, I missed my turn
off on the freeway and got lost. Eventually I
found my way back to the con, but it was 11:30
when I showed up.
By that time Nancy had bought her books. She
called up her friends who were coming and got them
to bring us burr's to eat as the food prices were
highway robbery at the con. It was $3.50 for a hot
dog and got worse from there (the more expensive
street vendors sell them for $2.50). There was
supposed to be a Remembering Will Eisner panel but
the con staff had trouble getting all the people
together for it, so it got cancelled.
We then went and watched the Warren Ellis Q&A
period. He entertained the crowd quite a bit, but
repeated some of the same jokes he used on
Thursday night. I got some sound clips of people
asking him questions also on CollectorTimes this
month. Afterwards I walked up to Warren, he saw me
coming and said "Not Now!" I realized Warren
wasn't going to do the face to face interview. I
then asked about doing it as an e-mail interview
and he agree'd to do it that way. I offered him
some Red Bull energy drinks he requested people
bring him but others had already given him some
and he had no way to carry mine. I went over to
his signing table and dropped them off there.
Warren's and Bendis's tables had very long line
ups. They were clearly the stars of the show. Phil
Jimenez and Dave Sim also had line ups as well.
Bill Sienkiewicz made an unadvertised appearance,
as he was supposed to go to last year's con but
couldn't because of an abscess tooth. J. Michael
Straczynski also made a surprise appearance too,
sat at a table and didn't have a name tag, so
unless you knew what he looked like, you wouldn't
know he was there. This was at his request though,
he was showing up to surprise his friend Sarah
"Samm" Barnes. Bill Willingham (writer of Fables)
was there the whole time, but sadly no line up for
him. Among the other big name pro's were Tom
Grummet, Andi Watson, David Mack, Andy Lee, Dave
Sim and Gerhard.
Nancy and I were talking about Dave Sim and she
mentioned how she had trouble approaching him
because of well known misogamist views. I then
offered to go get a sketch from him for her. I
stood in line and a couple of people up from me
was a woman making goo-goo-gaah-gaah noises with
her baby. Dave looked up from the drawing,
flinched, held his stomach. He then tried to go
back to drawing but repeated with the flinching
action again a few seconds later. Dave then told
the lady if she didn't stop with the baby noises
he was going to throw up.
I tried to get what Nancy wanted, pictures of Jaka
and Cerebus making faces at each other. Dave told
me he'd do one or the other, but not both. I chose
Jaka and he drew a large brooding, looking Jaka on
the page. Dave then noticed Gerhard was taking a
very long time finishing his backgrounds to the
previous guy's drawing (it was a space shot and
Gerhard was doing a killer star filled sky). To
fill in the time he drew a small head shot of
Cerebus looking up at Jaka with hearts in his
eyes. He told me he gave me a little extra, I told
him I really appreciated it. He then signed it to
me, but I asked him to include "and Nancy." Dave
did and told me to tell Nancy he said Hi. Nancy
spent some time chatting with Gerhard and Jerry
Robinson's wife.
We then went over to wait in line for the Shuster
awards. While there we talked to a couple of
interesting folks. One being a guy who knew Harry
Kremer and just recently won some money after a 2
1/2 year battle with the government. We then met a
guy Nancy was telling me about previously, the
grandson of the creator of Nelvana. For those that
don't know, Nelvana was a female superhero created
by Canadians and published by a Canadian company.
She pre-dated Wonder Woman by a few months as the
first female superhero. Anyway, Nancy knew him
because they had worked together at a previous
job. They were giving his grandfather a hall of
fame award and he was accepting it on his behalf.
I have a report on the Shuster Awards too.
Afterwards Nancy and I got something to eat at a
Thailand restaurant then went our separate ways.
I got up early Sunday Morning and went to the
convention. I discovered some prices really went
down and bought a bunch of stuff. I was able to
take pictures of some pro's and chatted with a
variety of folks about the convention and how it
went.
Most of the retailers I spoke to said they made
money at the show. Some thought Friday was slow,
but recalled it being better than last year. Nancy
and I noticed there were different retailers there
as some of the typical retailers didn't come to
this one, but some new folks from the US came up
due to the weak American Dollar.
Most of the Artists Alley I spoke to were happy
with the con too.
I left the con about 12pm on Sunday and headed
home. As I was leaving the con was beginning to
fill up.
Among the more unique features of this convention
are the fans attending it don't fit into the
"geeky" stereotype. The only people in a costume
there were two people promoting a superhero parody
comedy skit they were doing later on in the week.
The convention is pretty much pure comic books and
graphic novels (with some Manga and DVDs). There
was a mix of people selling golden/silver age,
modern stuff and more. There was significantly
less "art comix" presence this year, but that's
probably because they are gearing up for the
Toronto Comics Arts Festival that's happening
towards the end of May.
The con would have likely done better, but a
competing organization also calling itself
"Toronto Comicon" ran a free show the weekend
prior and had Chris Claremont as the main draw.
I myself had a great time at the show. Thanks to
Peter Dixion, Kevin Boyd and Paradise Comics for
putting it on.
Also a big thank you to Nancy Cerelli for her
assistance this year. Even though we never got to
interview Warren Ellis, I had a lot of fun anyway.
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