Toronto Thumbs

The Ups and Downs of FanExpo - Digest 1

In 1999, I attended my first-ever comic convention. I can’t remember what it was called at the time, but it would eventually evolve into what FanExpo is today. Back then the event was much smaller and while it did have a few science fiction guests and a retail booth devoted to Star Trek, its emphasis was on comics. Artist’s Alley took up a small portion of the showroom floor and it was here that I spent most of my first convention.

My friend Nuno had created his own independent comic book called Samurai Phil, about a white guy who thought he was a samurai (he even carried around a bokken and called other people “White Devil”). He wasn’t a stand-up comic book hero, and in fact he only picked on juvenile delinquents because those were the only kinds of people he could beat up. I should also note that Nuno’s book came a good two years before Samurai Jack hit the airwaves.

Artist’s Alley has been my favourite part of FanExpo throughout the years, and this year was no exception. There’s something incredible about being able to talk directly to comic creators who actually want to talk to you and aren’t jaded and full of themselves, and this is still a good place to do this. Sometimes, however, the creators can get a little crazy.

Take Chris Hatzopoulos and George Todorovski, for instance. The creators of the strange comic The Bear Stories had one of the more amusing tables, complete with a life-size standee of The Bear and ironically cute plushees of him. I ended up interviewing The Bear for a special segment in Episode 10 of the Toronto Thumbs Podcast. He was a dick. But Chris and George were pretty cool despite having to put up with the minor celebrity, and they did their part to engage fans in meaningful discussion about jerks and weirdos while signing books and posing for photos.

On Saturday, while trying to locate Eric Kim, I was interrupted by a particularly obnoxious character who told me that if I bought his book, I could punch him in the face. He and I talked for a while and when our talk concluded, he still had an intact face, more or less. No, it wasn’t worth punching him for four dollars, but I’m kind of regretting it now. I mean, just check him out:

I can’t believe I didn’t want to punch this guy.

In gaming-related goodness, there were a few really interesting people from the community in Artist’s Alley. The crew of Hamilton-based Life and Level was on-hand to promote their show and sell T-shirts (which apparently they did really well). Their booth was pretty awesome as far as the tables in Artist’s Alley are concerned – they had fashioned themselves a tall sign not unlike the kind you’d see on lemonade stands in cartoons. They also had some sort of spin-to-win wheel that looked a lot like the one the Mega64 guys take around to their various convention appearances.

Near the Life and Level guys were the developers of Tazti speech recognition software. They were there promoting it while looking for beta testers to try out their product with various games. As a separate process, the Tazti software can be customized to trigger different commands in multiple programs and games. Since most people I know talk to their games while playing them, this could be really cool. Sadly my PC is too old for most games, which makes me wonder if I could use Tazti for Solitaire and Minesweeper. At the very least, I might be able to use it to take the monkey work out of typing things like “LOL” and “OMGWTFBBQ” because that can take a lot out of me.

A few of the indie artists on hand also had a lot of videogame-related artwork, and I particularly enjoyed checking out the digital paintings of Frank Hong, who has an excellent deviantART gallery you should check out.

Detail of Dante from the Devil May Cry game series. Painting by Frank Hong.

On a larger scale, the big three console manufacturers were on hand to show off their wares. Nintendo’s offering included software that was already available at retail, while Microsoft’s booth featured Forza 3 with nice racing set-ups (it was the loudest game at the show). Sony, on the other hand, was giving show-goers a sneak peek at God of War 3 and Uncharted 2. And in a perplexing move, Zellers had a small retail area set up in the corner of the gaming area. What’s weird is that actual Zellers stores are notorious for having piss-poor videogame selections and for not having any stock of new releases. It’s as if they don’t actually care about videogames, yet for some reason had a huge sponsorship presense at the gaming portion of the expo. Go figure.

As with previous FanExpos, the Saturday was full of line-ups and disorganization, and the two things seemed to fuel each other. The main event took place in the South building of the convention centre, which is accessible from the North building. When I got to the North building at 10:30 a.m., I was shocked to see that it was being used as a holding pen for people waiting to get into the show. The line started at the foot of an escalator. At the escalator was one volunteer who was blocking access to the South building to everyone except for Exhibitors.

So the line went on, spiralled into itself, and altogether dissolved at some point. The one volunteer was the only FanExpo representative anywhere to be seen, and she was surrounded with people wondering why they couldn’t get it. Moreover, she appeared to have no means to communicate with other people on staff, so even if the plans had changed and people were to be allowed in, she may not even know it.

The lineup outside the South building at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday.

After I was in line for over half an hour – despite having a press pass, mind you – a guard walked down the line to say that anyone who already had a pass could go in. So the line was just for people wanting to buy tickets. This was helpful because I had a 11:30 a.m. panel to attend, but by the time I made it all the way in, the panel had started.

Interestingly, despite the ongoing growth of FanExpo year after year, the ticket kiosks and line management has not scaled up to accommodate it. So it would seem that the interest is more on getting money from attendants than it is on providing a comfortable and enjoyable experience for the people shelling out hundreds of dollars to be there. While walking through the North building to get to the South one, I couldn’t help but notice that yet again, the North building’s expo floor was completely empty. Contrast this to the pulsing, hot, and crowded floor in the South building and it’s not hard to wonder why the organizers don’t rent out both buildings.

After all, the North building is made useless to any other organization who would want to rent it at the same time since it’s reduced to a holding pen for people (and indeed, no one seems to have anything going on there at the same time as FanExpo). Renting out more space would allow for a little more room on the expo floors, especially since many exhibitors have recently taken to having autograph sessions at their own booths, which in turn creates huge traffic jams where there shouldn’t be any.

Still, the whole event was overall a pleasant experience. I was able to enter and exit the expo floor via a somewhat unused second entrance and exit, and during my breaks from the madness I ran into a few friendly faces such as Paul Hunter and David Wylie (and I hadn’t seen David for nine years!). Luckily I didn’t feel the need to attend anything that needed me to wait in line, or I might have succumbed to an uncontrollable fit of rage. But as long as FanExpo continues to grow, it needs more physical space and better organization so that it doesn’t devolve into total chaos. At the very least, some line management would help. Oh, and letting Joe Queseda into the panel he’s supposed to speak on would be a good idea, too.

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