Hobby Star Toronto ComiCON 2012
Report By Jamie Coville
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Date: March 10th - 11th, 2012 Location: Toronto Metro Convention Centre, South Building Attendance: 12,700
This show was a bit of an upgrade from the same show around this time last year. Previously Hobby Star would put on a 2 day show that was "free" with the purchase of $10 at a local participating comic shop or you'd pay $10 and get a $10 coupon good for anything inside the convention hall. This lead to a lot of people coming on the free day, but not much traffic on the other day. This year they did away with the free portion, brought in more celebrities and a couple of bigger name comic guests and a lot more celebrities. Going to the show I came across a guy handing out Wizard World Toronto post cards to be held at the same convention hall a month from now. That's a big change for Wizard World as it was previously held at different convention centre. The date of the Wizard convention this year is almost the same date as this convention last year. Because of this, Hobby Star moved their show from April to March. There was a much bigger than expected crowd on Saturday. The doors opened at 11:07am and some dealers and artists were not yet finished setting up. I noticed a lot of cosplay and kids which was surprising as there was nothing specific like a contest or programming focused on them. Walking the floor I noticed the comic dealers were more spread out this year, mixed in with dealers of other types. Typically, most of them are put together in their own area. Also different is they used some of the space outside the convention room for horror and the 501st Legion and other cosplay (Ghost Busters had a table there with some props.) If you went to any of the panels you walked by this area. The food venders were outside in this area too. I attended the first of three panels at 1pm. This was The Dark Corner of the DCU with Jeff Lemire, Yanick Paquette and Marco Rudy. The panel was moderated by Jirik Tyler of the The Dragon (Guelph comic book store). The room was about 70% full and was the most popular of the 3 panels I attended. The group talked about their relationships with the creators they collaborate with and how they work, how they are happy to be working on genres other than superheroes. Yanick mentioned he loves drawing nature. The group also talked about Easter eggs that can be found in their books. Jeff Lemire talked more specifically about Animal Man, saying early on they knew they just couldn't redo the stuff from before and had to forge their own way, but Jeff did want to be respectful of the past. He mentioned he did read the previous Animal Man runs. Jeff said the upcoming crossover with the Swamp Thing books is something the two writers came up on their own, it was not something that DC editorial asked for. He also said he planned on staying on Animal Man a long time. Yanick and Marco talked about their artistic influences and the group also responded to questions from the audience including which Marvel characters they'd like to do. The panel was 56 minutes long and you can listen to it here: Exploring the Dark Corners of the DCU The next panel I attended was the Mark Bagley spotlight. This was moderated by Jason Shayer. There was about 50 people in the audience. Mark was very open about his career in this panel. He talked about how he was ready to give up trying to break into comics until retailer Cliff Biggers gave him the Marvel Tryout book and told him he would regret it if he didn't give it one last shot. He won the tryout contest and then it took repeated meetings/visits to Marvel to finally get some work from them. He mentioned that nobody wanted to draw the New Warriors book and that Kurt Busiek saved his career at Marvel by asking for Bagley to draw the Thunderbolts and refusing all other artists they suggested. Bagley didn't have nice things to say about Bob Harras, who didn't like his work and was the main reason he was having a difficult time getting work at Marvel despite a successful Spider-Man run. He talked about how Jemas liked him and really pushed for him on Ultimate Spider-Man. He resisted it at first due to the John Byrne Chapter 1 maxi-series and then was originally only convinced to do the first 6 issues. Cliff Biggers advised him this was becoming a super popular book and that he should stick with it. Bagley also talked in vague terms about being unhappy about stuff while at DC and happy that he could come back to Marvel. The panel was just under 50 minutes and you can listen to it here: Mark Bagley Spotlight I had left the show when it ended at 5pm. Sunday: Sunday had a smaller crowd, as usual. I was told that before the doors opened George Perez was at his table sketching for a line up of other artists set up at the show. One of the things I got to see was a popular R2D2 interact with the crowd. My YouTube video of it is here:
The only panel I attended was the George Perez spotlight. This was also moderated by writer Jason Shayer. There was about 60 people in the audience. George answered questions about his career, running through the more well known books, Teen Titans, Crisis, Wonder Woman, Avengers and JLA/Avengers. He went into a bit of detail about the first proposed JLA/Avengers that was supposed to happen in the early 80s. His comments seem to, for the most part, line up with what others (including Jim Shooter) have written about the topic. He did feel the original unapproved story was bad, but it was something that could have been (and eventually was) fixed to Shooter's standards but the politics prevented it from being published. Perez also talked about his love of drawing and how he thinks that's kept him popular over the years. He's happy the print technology has finally caught up to him as he always drew lots of detail that wouldn't reproduce for his own enjoyment, but now able to be seen in today's comic books. He did talk about some frustrations he has with DC at the moment, saying the writing and direction of the company is done by committee, something he doesn't work well with, and that they keep changing their minds about stuff, making it very difficult for even the fastest artists to keep deadlines (he included Power Girl's new costume). He didn't like that there was only 1 artist designing everything and that for the first time in his life he now needs a reference on how to draw Superman properly. More specifically, he said DC is much more Hollywood like and said the movie people had input into the Superman comic book. The panel was an hour long and you can listen to it here: George Perez Spotlight Towards the end of the show I asked artists alley and comic dealers how they did at the show. Only one of the 10 artists said they were happy. Most mentioned it was a slow Sunday and some said it was slow over all. A couple said it was an okay show with 1 saying it was very up and down. Almost all the 11 comic dealers I talked to said it was a good show. Some mentioned Sunday was slower as expected. When asked what in particular was moving I heard New Comics from one dealer and Golden Age from another. Everybody else mentioned a bit of everything. One dealer did mention that most people come on Saturday, buy what they want from their collection list and don't show up the next day. He also felt the bigger named artists didn't really increase any sales for him, referencing he didn't sell any of Perez's Teen Titan books. I personally had a good time at the show as it was nice to catch up with some Toronto friends I hadn't seen in almost a year. I'm also finding these smaller shows are great for panels as the creators talk a bit more openly about careers. I also took 54 pictures at this event, you can see them all here. And all my panel recording of this and other conventions can be found at TheComicBooks.com
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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