A shout out for Toronto Comicon

Some hard-core fans are already gathered at the Metro Toronto Convention Center tonight, for Toronto Comicon. A few things you should know about the con. It’s not affiliated with San Diego Comic-Con (the BIG one,) and really it’s a spin-off Spring show from the company behind Fan Expo, the big for-profit Canadian multifandom expo that hits Toronto late in August. So it’s pretty commercial compared to fandom-organized cons, but still a good opportunity to meet cool genre celebrities, pick up some cool graphic novels, see people in great cosplay costume and maybe dress up myself.

I was pretty excited about Toronto Comicon because they’d booked Morena Baccarin from Firefly – she was a cancellation at Fan Expo last year, and they try to get guests who had to cancel for Fan Expo at Toronto Comicon–last time Patrick Stewart made up for missing Fan Expo by bringing along a bunch of TNG castmates. 😉 So I bought a ticket for Saturday online and figured that I’d figure out if I wanted to go Sunday once the schedules were out, or after seeing how Saturday went.

Unfortunately, a week ago, they announced that Morena had cancelled again on account of filming commitments for Warriors. And when I checked the schedule on Sunday night, I didn’t see anything I was interested in for Saturday. The Q&A with Eliza Dushku, panels for Bitten and Continuum were on Sunday. I was really disappointed and felt that if I went on Saturday, I wouldn’t have much fun.

Well, it took a little while to get the details sorted out and confirmed, but I’d like to thank the people behind Toronto Comicon for helping me out. I have my ticket for Sunday, and they were able to process the refund for Saturday, which they didn’t have to do, because the small print does warn, ‘no exchanges, no refunds.’ But I’m grateful and looking forward to the show on Sunday. Whatever you’re doing this weekend, especially if you’re heading out to the Convention Center too, have a great time!

Fan Expo day three update

Well, it was all about Eliza Dushku and Lost Girl, it turns out. Not that either has anything to do with the other beyond sharing my time today.

I was in line by 8:45 to get in, and so I arrived at the autograph booths close enough to ten AM to get the number 67 ticket. They’re using a new system of number tickets in addition to the lines for autographs this year, it seems – once the space allocated for the line is full, anyone else has to get a ticket, and they call a certain block of numbers that can come and join the line when there’s room. So once the easel said ‘up to 75’ next to Eliza’s line, I rushed forward to take my place. If you miss the call for your block, you can use your ticket to join the line later.

Got plenty of good stuff, both for myself and for a friend who’s also a big Eliza fan. Then it was up to the Lost Girl panel, which was really cool, because there was so much positive energy in the room – you could tell that the cast loved working on the series, and had a lot of fun together, and there was a huge turnout and everybody in the audience was excited, and the cast was thrilled to see that they had so many fans. After the screening, the cast had a special limited-time signing, so I got a bunch of signed mini-cards. Then it was time to quickly grab a pizza and head up to get my picture taken with Eliza at the ‘photo op.’

After I’d left the photo op room, things kinda got less eventful. The convention center was very crowded by that point in the afternoon; I went to one panel that I thought looked cool, but I was late and it was standing room only, so I didn’t stay. Then another event got cancelled, and I ended up sitting for about an hour and a half in the waiting line for Eliza’s question and answer session, which was pretty cool – I got a good seat and recorded some of it on my camera. And then a dinner shindig with the Toronto Firefly group to round out the day.

So it was a fun time, despite a lot of waiting around. But even the waiting time I put to good use – reading on the iPhone! I finished reading “Prisoner of Azkaban”, read Terry Pratchett’s “The Light Fantastic” through from beginning to end, and started on “The Rock Rats.” The battery went down more than halfway just from all of that reading!

PS: Since I see that somebody was searching for it, the autograph fee for Eliza Dushku was a bit on the pricey side – forty dollars a signature, and fifty for the photo op ticket.