2010 HobbyStar Toronto Fan Expo

Date: August 27th to 29th, 2010 Location: Toronto Metro Convention Centre, North Building. Attendance: Final numbers not in, but reportedly over 60,000 Convention Pictures here This year the convention was held in the North Building of the convention centre. A lot of people loved this building due to the natural light that is let in and its closer proximity to the downtown restaurants. That said, the South Building has more indoor space and that would play a big factor in this year's convention. Getting in was a real hassle for some people. I got into the line up that got people in at 2. I think it was the VIP line up but I'm not sure. Others had to wait outside and even though they had tickets for the 2pm opening, didn't get in until 4pm. The fan expo volunteers at the doors had no idea for which line was which and did not have walkie talkies to find out. One thing that was immediately noticeable was the reduced amount of carpeting on the floors. 2 of the main rows had carpets but front and back rows did not. My feet did not like this. A lot of the artists in artists alley were not set up on Friday afternoon. I wondered around the show and noticed what felt like a reduced amount of gold and silver age books available. There were deals to be had, one dealer was selling 50% off US cover but those were likely heavily discounted books from a Diamond sale. There were lots of bins with more modern books there. Of the odd stuff that I look for and buy, there wasn't much there. I noticed a lot of the dealers were charging more than guide on books, or were charging guide if you had a very loose definition of "fine to very fine." Books I considered to be in Good were priced at that amount by at least 3 different dealers. Other dealers did price that high but then gave a 40% discount bringing the books down to a bit above guide prices. I did go to one panel on Friday but was not given permission to record it. The panel was the Joey Cavaleri one on being an editor. It was moderated by Walter Dickenson of the Cartoonist Workshop. Among the things discussed: Cavalieri went to the school of visual arts and tried being an underground type cartoonist, about 10 years after undergrounds were dead. He now teaches at the school. Says he doesn't like the spotlight and credit, mentions if an editor takes credit publicly for suggesting a change creators won't want to work with them. Talked about the Bizzaro books that he championed inside DC. Said it was like giving birth, doing an anthology. He did pick out the alt creators he liked and found most of them were willing to work for DC, which was a surprise. In editing he says he ranges from wanting to see thumbnails to just having the creators do everything. Specifically called Kyle Baker a force of nature and says for the most part he just gets to read the book before anybody else does. He credits Julie Schwartz for doing comics like sci-fi magazines and building up comic fandom by encouraging fans to connect and to write to each other. Said being an editor means reading a LOT of comics. Today he's able to hire talent from around the world, mentioned Argentina and other countries where good artists are coming from. Felt sorry for anybody trying to break in today because they are literally competing against the world. Felt for new creators it is best that they already have an audience before pitching at DC. Recommended for writers to pay a good artist to do their work, said a bad artist will make them look bad, most editors won't look beyond the art to see the writing. He did read webcomics and likes Cameron Stewarts work in particular. He's not into motion comics. Talked about the difference between editing a creative team vs. a cartoonist who does it all. Said new writers often have problems with the skeleton of the story, creating an underlining reason for things to happen. Talked about how Marvel poached him and he worked on Marvel 2099 for them. Said instead of bitching about how things could have been done better, he was in charge and could do it. Loved being in charge and able to work on everything from the logo and building the world from the ground up. He particularly liked doing Spider-Man 2099 and Doom 2099. Roughly 30 people were in attendance. Two dealers with small booths said they had a good Friday, essentially made their table back and were looking forward to making money on Saturday/Sunday. Other changes including press having to go to the press booth every day to get a 1 day pass. Whereas before we'd get a badge with our name on it, we instead got a blank media tag where we could put our business card in. On the plus side the press room (as well as pro check in) was in the neighbouring Intercontinental Hotel and there was free wifi internet access there. Fans got a wrist band for the weekend, but losing it would screw up your weekend as there were signs saying they wouldn't replace those. This did make it easier for fans to go in and out as they didn't need staff to punch holes in the cards, instead they just raised their hand so their wrist band could be seen.

Saturday:

Saturday was crazy in terms of crowds. At 9am there was already a line up around the block outside of the building to get in for 10am. Inside was a Dr. Who Dialect that was very funny and popular as the guy inside was good at making cracks, moved around and even had a gas spray which surprised people. I did not get a chance to hit the dealers room on Saturday. I went from panel to panel, in between I was taking pics of cosplayers in the main lobby. I'm told it was very crowded. The first panel I attended was Drawing Ahead: The Future of Comics (51:36, 47.2mb) Moderated by Kill Shakespeare co-writers Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col, Creators Andy Belanger, Ramon Perez, Cameron Stewart, Willow Dawson and Scott Chantler talk about the Future of Comics. More specifically they talk about print comics, digital comics and piracy, the European market, the Direct Market, Digital Markets and middle men, also traditional Comics and Bookstore oriented publishers and they way they market and sell their books. About 30 people were in attendance. They joked about the pros that put out comics just to get a movie deal, get it optioned after the 1st or 2nd issue and then stop doing the comic. They talked a lot about print and digital, felt they are complimentary as people still want collections but may not want comic books anymore. Cameron Stewart says he doesn't want any physical medium anymore in terms of DVDs, CDs or comics. He has an ipad and downloads from there. He also talked a bit about piracy, felt there wasn't a whole lot that could be done to stop it. Said that most of the downloaders are either your biggest fans who are already buying stuff (and spreading it out of love) or people who would have never bought it anyway and are only getting it because it's free. Cameron also talked about how he buys comic books online for his ipad but sorta felt the average $1.99 price was too high to entice the mass market to start buying comics. Cameron also thought comics looked better in digital then they do in print, particularly for colouring as the colours tend to lose their impact when it gets printed, especially on bad paper. With digital you see the books' colour as the colourist intended. They also talked about if standard free webcomics would move to a pay model with the ipad. Some of the panelists felt they would, eventually. They knew fans wouldn't like it but said if they aren't making a living from doing it then they can't keep doing them. They also said they don't like motion comics, but did have priase of Dan Goldman's webcomic. They did compare digital to print markets, Andy B in particular, about the monopoly of distribution and how much of the industry seems to only market towards current readers. They do no advertising outside of comic dedicated websites. Felt that Diamond and the big two take a huge amount of the money that is made from comics. But it was also pointed out that Apple takes 50% and Comicology also take 50% of what's left, leaving the creator with 25% of the cover price and after expenses they don't make very much with online comics. Scott and Willow talked about book publishers who also had the same type of tunnel vision, only a different tunnel in that it takes them a lot of convincing to get them to submit their graphic novels to Diamond, and due to the amount of money they take, they'll receive nothing off those sales, they want them sold there so their regular fans can get them. I then got into line up for the Stan Lee panel. They had 2 lines, one for those that bought the extra Stan Lee package and everybody else with a VIP or Deluxe pass. The line ups grew long and ended up getting mingled together and had to be sorted out. They only began to let people in the room about 5 minutes before it started. The panel was then late getting started. Stan Lee Q & A (37:11, 34mb) Stan was interviewed by Mark Askwith from the Space network. Stan was funny, often relying on his exaggerated immodesty for his humor. Stan talked about a number of topics, including his working with Boom! Studios, but was careful to point out he did not create the new characters that they are doing, just overseeing them and making suggestions. He also talked about Ulitma for VIZ and another character called Heroman that is doing well in Japan and should be coming over to North America eventually. He talked about Joe Manlee when asked, talked about why he came up with the "Marvel method" (which he said should be called the "Stan Lee method"). He also talked about why he got into comics and his happiest childhood memory. After the panel there was a massive crowd outside waiting for the Batman reunion panel with Adam West, Burt Ward and Julie Newmar and the Stan Lee panel all spilled out into it. Suddenly there was a human traffic jam like I've never seen. The next panel I was 10 minutes late for was the Brian Azzarello writing panel. It was moderated by Robert Pincombe. Azzarello talked about writing being a muscle and you have to use it regularly. Said for collaborative works, you shouldn't be so controlling. He said doesn't give camera angles and often doesn't specify specific things (gave cars as an example, he would say Luxury car and let the artist figure out which one to use). He also doesn't do any visual research for the artists, says it's their job and leaves it to them. He said he does try to set the scene early on though. When an artist draws something different than how the story was intended he just goes with it. When it comes to dialog he learns it by listening to people, he goes to where he can hear people talk and takes it in. There were questions from the audience. Among his answers were he did the Joker book because he thought the character was getting too popular, almost anti-hero like. He wanted to show the Joker as he is supposed to be, a scary, evil psychopath, he likened him to a guy who had one too many to drink and is carrying a loaded gun. He's scary and you need to keep one eye on him the whole time. He said his weakness is writing continuity comics and he doesn't do them. He talked about pacing being really important in comics because the 22 pages aren't always a natural break for the story. Says the best thing he can be is invisible in his writing, he doesn't want readers to see the plot of the comic, he attempts to keep it hidden within his characters. He recommended people read Hemmingway for comic writing. He said his dialog is very direct and that's something writers need to learn how to do for comics as room is limited. He also said when he comes up with a story he always comes up with an ending first. He felt it was important to have a solid ending. He in particular mentioned watching the X-Files and being disappointed in that they didn't really have an ending for the show. With 100 bullets they had an ending and several key points they wanted to hit (and by what issue) but said it was loose enough to still be organic. At the end of the panel there was an ovation. During the afternoon they had to stop people from even entering the convention centre. A guy I talked to said his wife went out of a smoke and it had been an hour and a half and she was still out there. Said even when she does get in, they'll have to wait some more just to get up into the dealers room. I checked it out and sure enough they were preventing people from going up until enough people came back down. The place was filled to capacity. Suffice to say, people were pissed. The next panel I attended was Marvel: Pint of C. B. (1:01:38, 56.4mb) Pint of C. B. is Marvel's Senior Vice President, Creator and Content Development C. B. Cebulski filling in for Joe Quesada to answer questions for fans. With him is Spider-Man editor Steve Wacker and Manager of Sales and Communication Arune Singh to help answer questions. They make some announcements, and open up the floor for questions. Among the announcements is an Alpha Flight one shot where the alive characters end up going after the dead ones. While they didn't want to give anything away it was hinted that by the end of the story the dead characters would be brought back alive. After that they are looking into doing more Alpha Flight with Canadian creators at the helm. This was nice, in previous panels where Alpha Flight was brought back, fans would ask about getting Canadian talent working on it. A Marvel rep would say they wanted to get the best writer possible, but would throw in some Canadian references, which isn't what fans wanted to hear. It appears that after some failed launches they are listening to Canadian fans now. With the huge amount of great Canadian talent out there should be no problem finding a fantastic creative team for the book. Among the other announcements was a Chaos War title that starred Hercules along with other mythological god characters. There was another about bringing back dead Avengers, in the cover image was Vision, Dr. Druid, Swordsman, Wasp, Deathcry, and Captain Marvel. Also a 1 shot Thor book called Wolves of Asgard. Among the things revealed in the Q&A. Alan Heinberg has a plan for Scarlett Witch that they are excited about. More Iron Fist is coming as there is a movie in development. JMS has finished The Twelve and Chris Weston is drawing the book between other stuff. Steven Wacker jokingly answered that for the purpose of this panel, Deadpool was Canadian. I was also at the Yoshitaka Amano Spotlight (46:01, 42.1mb) Yoshitaka Amano is an artist/designer who worked on classic anime such as Speed Racer and Gatchaman, influenced by Western Comics (Neal Adam's Batman among them) he would design characters for anime, movies and video games. He is best known for his work on the Vampire Hunter D franchise. In the US he was the artist for Neil Gaiman's Sandman: The Dream Hunters and Elektra & Wolverine: The Redeemer (written by Greg Rucka). Through a translator he answers questions about his Manga, Game Design, and working on US Comics. Fan also ask him for his opinions on beauty and how to cosplay his characters. At the end they did a draw for fans, those that won got to have 2 of their items signed by him. It was a strange way to do a signing. I left the show at 6pm to grab dinner. The show's hours got extended from 7pm to 8pm to make up for overcapacity issues during the day. At 8pm there was the Masqurade. It started a bit late. Different this year was people having to get a ticket for the show due to limited seating, the ticket was free though. A couple of disabled people were talking about how the crowd ignored the fan expo instructions to wait for them to go first and rushed the door, knocking them over. Fan Expo did get them seats up front in the media area. At the start of the show the Dialect from Dr. Who which was popular on the lobby floor that morning did a opening bit with the Master of Ceremonies, which was funny. I think everybody was hoping he would spray him with mist but he was on the ground floor with MC up on the stage. A bit different was they kept the lights on up front, which was probably better for safety reasons. Over all I found the show to be less entertaining than in years past. The MC is great, no problems there. And I think the Masquerade tried to make up for it by having their "ninja team" do comedy skits here and there. But there was less dancing, fighting, comedy skits, etc.. Sadly I missed out the best 2 skits of the show, my memory card got filled up during one, my batteries died during the other. It always seems to happen every year. After the show Liana K. hosted a Steampunk fashion show, showing off people cosplaying in Steampunk outfits.

Sunday:

Sunday morning again had long line ups to get in. A friend who was standing in it said they moved very quickly once the doors opened though. I spent much of Sunday walking around the floor taking pics of pro's and other things. Darwyn Cooke was sick as a dog but was there. I noticed some people standing in the Stan Lee autograph line up and I asked if he was signing or not. A fan said they didn't know and they were waiting for one of his handlers to come back and let everybody know. The same fan was grumbling about the lack of info about Stan Lee's start and stop times, claiming he was supposed to sign until 5:30pm but quit at 4:30pm on Saturday. Overall I heard Stan Lee had a tough convention experience due to his voice going from talking a lot 2 days prior to the convention. Somebody I know that got something signed was surprised Stan wasn't as talkative and friendly as they expected him to be. Stan wasn't doing any 1 on 1 interviews with any media during the weekend. Some odd things about the convention, coffin type rides were popular. There were 2 booths holding them. Basically you sit in a coffin and it moves and shakes while a recording goes on. Not a coffin but the same idea was an Aliens pod that was popular. Scott Pilgrim was a popular cosplay theme for the show. There were a number of women dressed up as Ramona and also some evil Ex-Boyfriends too. Marvel and DC had booths at the show, DC had the typical tables of free comics for people to try. Marvel didn't have free comics, but had some promo material there. Instead they focused more on the experience by running contests for costumes, trivia, had Captain America's Shield, etc.. The Tron booth with the Tron girls was popular. They also had a Spartacus booth with some good looking people in costumes to pose for pictures. What was a little surprising was dealers openly selling porn DVDs on their tables. There was a swords/weapons dealer there who had a sign about no pictures of his booth. When somebody took a pic of him holding one of his swords he got very angry and swore at him. There was a video gaming section, but not to the degree there was in the past. In previous show there would be a loud Rockband contest going on with the same songs played all weekend long with a constant heavy base back beat. This drove people in the nearby areas crazy (I saw this at San Diego this year as well). That was not there and most of the gaming stuff (War Hammer, Magic, a very tiny video game part) was on the first floor, at the back of a side hallway. I only went to one panel on Sunday it was the Hitoshi Ariga Spotlight (45:51, 41.9mb) Udon's Managing Editor Matt Moylan interviews creator Hitoshi Ariga through Michelle Hayashi, translator and Japanese Liaison. Hitoshi Ariga works on the Mega Man franchise and is the creator of the Mega Man MegaMix manga series. They talk about all things Mega Man, characters, how he draws gutters for the manga, who would win in a fight between Mega Man and Astro Boy, favorites & least favorite characters. Ariga also admitted that he loved Curry. At the end they held a draw for some sketches that he had done both before and during the panel. The grand prize was a signed copy of MegaMan MegaMix Vol.2 (Japanese version). The panel had about 40 people in attendances. Agita would also take a picture of the crowd and himself with the crowd. In the last hour of the show I talked with 26 comic dealers to see how the show did for them. 15 of them said it was better than last year for them. One said they did almost 2x the amount of sales as last year, another said it was their best year ever. I also got 1 Very Happy and 1 Excellent like always answer. 5 dealers said the show was okay, comparable to last year or the same. 3 said it was down from last year. One of them sold manga and said that manga's popularity has peaked a few years ago so they do a little less every year, but still said it was a good year. 1 dealer said it was their first time there and while they didn't do what they had hoped, but said it was an okay show. I noticed that the further away I got from the main escalators bringing people up the more "same or down" type answers I got. In terms of what moved one dealer said higher end (but not too high) stuff for Stan Lee to sign was popular. There was also a variety of opinions about the show in regards to location. 1 Dealer said they liked the North Building and the natural light, but said it might have caused people to stay in the dealers room all day. They said the South Building was underground and you felt like that when you were in there, thus people left quicker. Another dealer liked the South building for that same reason the other dealer didn't. He felt being underground was more along the traditional comic book market lines and something comic fans are used too. One said the Saturday overcrowding hurt his sales as people didn't want to browse. He said they did much better sales on Sunday when it wasn't so crowded. I did not get a chance to talk to the creators artists alley about their show, but considering how many people were at the con I suspect (and have read elsewhere) that they had a good show as well. Overall it appeared to be a great show for dealers, creators and exhibitors, but not so good for some fans. Fan Expo has put up an apology to their fans on their website. Personally I came to the show expecting to not be able to do a bunch of things that I wanted to, instead there was very little I found I couldn't do. Big name creators were nice in letting me record their panels and post them online. The convention staff was very friendly to me as well. I've done by my count 8 different conventions so far this year (Wizard World Toronto, HobbyStar ComiCON, C2E2, TCAF, San Diego, Fan Expo and 2 Ottawa shows as a dealer helper.) I'm not planning on anymore for the remainder of the year. Next year I'm looking to cut back and go some different cons for a change. I will probably be at this con, but it will depend on the guests it brings in and what else is going on. I might even book off some Vacation time and actually have a Vacation instead of covering a convention. You can get to all my audio recordings for this and other conventions at http://www.thecomicbooks.com/audio.html#2010FanExpo Regards, Jamie Coville http://www.TheGraphicNovels.com News and discussion on a free, Delphi like forum.

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