Location: Toronto Metro Convention Centre, South Building.
Attendance: "approx. 3200 on Saturday, with a little less than that on Sunday." (from Kevin Boyd's blog on the convention)
When I got to the convention at 11am, there were still people lining up to get in. They began to let people in just prior to 11:10am. I wandered around, looking at what type of dealers were there and I found it to be a fairly even mix of people selling Golden, Silver, Modern back issues and trades. There were some Manga and Anime dealers there as well. Art books, Toys, T-Shirts and more could be found as well. At 12pm I attended a panel.
It was a Q&A with Geoff Darrow and Bob McCleod. It was moderated by Comic Book Daily's Brent Chittenden. The two talked about how they broke into comics, what they are doing now, the people they worked with in the past including Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Geoff told some funny stories from his time working at the Hanna Barbara animation studio. There was talk about Jack Kirby, Moebius, working under deadlines and more. The audience asked a number of questions. There were about 30 people in the audience for the panel. It was a hilarious panel that became the buzz of the show afterwards. You can listen to the panel here. (50:34, 46.3mb)
After the panel I walked around talking with some pros in artist alley and taking pictures, I also got some pictures of people who showed up in costumes. I did a little bit of back issue shopping for myself and was looking out for books for friends as well. There was an a bit of everything there in terms of Gold, Silver, Bronze, Modern comics, some in high grades, some in low. There was some Manga and Anime dealers, some toys and t-shirts were there as well. The only type of comics that weren't there in good numbers was the alt/indy stuff. Trade paperbacks were plenty and also on pretty good discount too if you shopped around. Plenty of booths had XX% off US cover as their deal.
I had left just after 6pm. The con appeared to be pretty busy with people most of the day.
Sunday I showed up just shortly after the con started (again at 11am). The turnout wasn't quite so strong but it was also raining pretty heavy outside. As I had gone through every dealers stuff yesterday and what looking I did do was through some dollar boxes here and there. It was nice to see that more dealers are starting to sort their dollar boxes alphabetically. I had pretty much given up going through dollar boxes a number of years ago because they were always an unsorted mess. I overheard somebody thanking a dealer for doing this too.
I went to a Sketch Duel panel that was advertised as Khoi Pham and Marcus To, but Marcio Takara was a surprise 3rd addition to the panel. Marcio is going to be moving to Brazil and likely won't be a regular to these smaller Toronto conventions anymore. They gave out tickets, took suggestions from the crowd and Marcio chose Deadpool for the 3 of them to draw. While drawing there was some Q&A going on with the artists, among the topics were how they broke in, formal art education, previous jobs, inspirations, working in a studio vs. by themselves, dream jobs and other topics. There was 50 people in attendance and at the end 3 winners from the crowd got the Deadpool sketches. I recorded the panel and it can be heard here (40:13, 36.8mb). Pictures of the sketches with the artists and winners are below.
Khoi Pham with winning fan.
Marcus To with winning fan.
Marcio Takara with winning fan.
I did a bit more shopping then caught the tail end of a Q&A panel with Anime Voice Actors Jaimi Marchi and Trina Nishimura. The two answered questions from the crowd, were very animated and often broke out into the voices of the characters they've played. They had a trivia contest at the end with contestants getting the correct answer to two questions got convention jerseys signed by them. There was a pretty sizable crowd and they seemed to have enjoyed themselves.
Immediately afterwards was a Workshop with Leonard Kirk giving a penciling/storytelling lesson. Leonard is now doing a course for the Cartoonists Workshop. The panel was part of the week 5 assignment of his class. The lesson was on drawing a page with 4 horizontal panels using a script and characters he created. Leonard talked a bit about how good "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way" was and said that is what he used to get started. There were plenty of handouts on penciling, inking and working on "Marvel Style" and full scripts. About 30 people were in the audience and almost all of them took part. A lot of them had brought their own pencil/sketchpad but Leonard provided boards, paper and pencils for those that did not have them.
Almost everybody in the room took part in this. Leonard drew the page as well and talked a bit while doing so. Once he was done he walked around the panel to see what other people were drawing. The room was quiet while everybody was drawing. Towards the end of the panel Leonard showed his work and talked about storytelling flow, making the action go from left to right and the reasons why you might want to change that. He also talked about the collaborative aspect of doing comics and changing things from the script. Leonard also answered questions from the group as well.
After the panel I went around asking dealers how they did at the show. Most of the dealers said "okay" or "not bad." A few of them mentioned Sunday was slower, saying there was some lookers but not buyers. I didn't get to talk to very many in artists alley but the ones I did said the same thing. Nobody seemed real enthusiastic about the show and it might have been better if this was a 1 day show. That said, it was a nice, relaxed show where there was easy access to everybody; the celebrities, the big name artists, and dealers.
Pictures of the artists, cosplayers and other are here at my Picasa page.
Regards,
http://www.TheGraphicNovels.com
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