Hobbystar Toronto ComiCON. April 12-13th, 2008
Report By Jamie Coville
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Location: Toronto Metro Convention Centre, South Building. Attendance: 4364 Con Report by Jamie Coville This was a 2 day convention. There was a long line up already before the doors opened at 11am on Saturday. The doors did open on time, even though some of the pros and retailers weren't ready yet. Some pros were a little late and that's almost always expected. I heard one retailer say there was only 1 elevator for everybody to use. They said they showed up at 7am and there were 10 vans in front of them lined up to use the elevator. As per most conventions, there was a lot of back issues bins, wall comics and TPBs available. Not much in the way of Manga or Art-lit books. There were a variety of deals at the convention depending on which booth you went to. Some were charging XX% off Canadian cover price, others US cover price or XX% off US cover price. It paid to have a calculator handy and shop around. At 1am Saturday there was the Men of Iron Panel with Mike Grell, Bob Layton and David Michelinie. The panel was hosted by Blake Bell and Grell and Layton did an Iron Man sketch off while they answered questions. It was a special panel as Layton and Michelinie hadn't seen in other face to face in 7 years. Grell said it's been about 20 years since he seen Michelinie. The panel was a little late getting started as Michelinie came in late and got lost (which is understandable, getting from the hotel to the convention is a long and winding 10 minute walk with 7 different escalators going up and down along the way.) On the panel they talked a bit about working on Iron Man, doing webcomics, editors, the nature of a hero and more. In all it was an excellent panel that a few people requested to hear my recording after it was done.
You can hear it too, the hour long panel is available by right click and
download this link. (56mbs) There were 3 other panels featuring sketch offs from various artists and episodes of an original superhero team TV show. Sunday morning had an even larger line up. More people came through Sunday that's for sure. That's because Sunday was the "Free" day. If you bought $10 at a participating comic store you got a voucher that got you into the convention for free. If you showed up sans vouncher, you paid $10 to get in, but got a $10 voucher to spend inside the convention. Throughout the con there was a wider mix of demographics at the show. Everybody noticed there were more kids that usual. Plenty of women were there as well as people of different ethnicities. The convention room was pretty full but not super jammed. Certain booths were popular and at times hard to get to. There was some fun going on outside the convention too. A group of Star Wars fans dressed up as Jedis were having sword fights. There was a surprising amount of people in costumes, including little kids. The creators with the long lines were Ryan Ottley, Steve Epting, Mike Grell, Clayton Crain, David Michelinie, Bob Layton and Alex Meleev. It only began to die down by around 3pm on Sunday. Mark Askwith was there with the Space Network doing some on camera interviews with some pros. One fun convention moment for me was when I helped sell a book. I was flipping through TPB bins and saw a Jason book (Fantagraphics). I put it on my pile of stuff to buy. When a booth staffer saw it she asked me if she could look at it. I said sure. She then began to speak in French to her boss then gave me back the book. I said to her "Checking to see if he had anymore?" "Yes," she replied. I told her, "I don't need to know French to understand that." I talked with a variety of retailers and pros at the end of the convention to see how they did. Most of the responses ranged from slow to okay. One unhappy dealer said he only made his table costs. Nobody seemed particularly enthusiastic about the show. One dealer said the entire market is slow right now. He says people have money and they're seeing stuff they're interested in, but they need some enticing to spend it. He was giving discounts in order to do that. That dealer was selling TPBs only. Another dealer who was only selling back issues said pretty much the same thing. He said he dropped his prices by half, something he very rarely does, but it did move a lot of stuff. Overall there was a bit of disparity between retailers and dealers. Retailers that participated in the 10 dollar voucher to promote the con got their tables for free, while dealers had to pay for them. Almost every retailer/dealer I talked to gave me a different answer for what moved well for them. One said the expensive wall comics, another Captain America books, another Bronze/Modern bins, another Hardcovers, another Golden Age books, another Manga and 1-2 dollar bins, a few said Trades. Some of those with a mix said everything sold equally well. I noticed a lot of sellers seemed to be specializing. Some come with only back issue bins, some come with only trades. Even with the back issue bins it broke down to dollar bins with bronze to moderns, some silver-bronze, some gold. I talked to a handful of pro's and they were split about Saturday or Sunday being better for them. My general impression was that Saturday drew out the die hard readers willing to spend some money. The "Free" Sunday attracted a different crowd, likely a more budget conscious group. Some of them appeared to be more casual readers or still quite new to comics. My biggest complaint about the con experience was the lack of food near the convention room. People who were there all day had to eat out of vending machines or do the 10 minute walk to the other side of the convention and get something at the hotdog cart. Overall I enjoyed the convention and spent a lot more money than I was planning to. Pics from the con are available here.
Regards, http://www.TheGraphicNovels.com News and discussion on a free, Delphi like forum.
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E-mail: jcoville@kingston.net
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