Friends to Know and Ways to Grow
As promised, here is my (somewhat belated) con report for the Manitoba Comic Con, which was held October 11-12...
Despite the con only really lasting about 36 hours, I managed to keep myself busy.
I arrived at the Winnipeg Convention Centre shortly after noon on the Saturday and tried to get my bearings as quickly as possible--which wasn't too hard, as virtually everything related to the con was in the centre's largest exhibition hall. My first stop was Artist Alley:
Most visible here are Ed Ryzowski (of Geek Tragedy) and Lar deSouza (of Least I Could Do), reflecting the fact that, even though there were plenty of guests at the con associated with printed comics, I spent more of my time around those associated with webcomics.
Amongst those people were Nathan Town (who seems to keep coming up around here) and vampire_kross, who was there to promote Paraverse:
I'd arrived in the midst of John de Lancie's Q&A (insert your own joke about the recent novel here ;)), and once I'd tracked that down, I discovered to my dismay that the Q&A section wasn't separated from the hall as a whole--it was just tucked into a corner. As a result, any loud noises (particularly the public announcements) meant that de Lancie had to stop talking in midsentence and wait for a chance to resume. I didn't stick around long because even I was getting annoyed by the interruptions, so I could only imagine how he felt.
This sort of layout gave the unfortunate impression that the con's organisers weren't overly concerned with the state of actual programming. Since there was only the one exposed area available, all of the panels ended up being Q&A's with various guests, with no room in the schedule for anything else. :/
Disappointed, I checked out the rest of the hall to get a sense of what was for sale and where the autograph tables were. It seemed to me like there weren't nearly as many people in costume this year as there were last year, although that may have just been a perception brought on by the much larger space. However, I quite appreciated seeing Jamie Isfeld as Doctor Girlfriend:
On a related note, there didn't appear to be much of a Cleavage Factor in the cosplay which was in evidence. For those of you who haven't attended other cons in Winnipeg (or larger cons in other cities where this is also true), there tends to be a high quotient of cleavage in the general wardrobe of female con attendees, whether they're in costume or not. Much like the presence of guys who really shouldn't be wearing spandex, it just seems to come with the territory, and the relative lack of either was surprising (especially knowing the local fandom).
There was little time for me to consider the possible reasons for this as the day went on, since I'd agreed to bring my six-year-old nephew here, to his first convention. Once he was dropped off, the rest of the afternoon was devoted to letting him check out whatever he wanted--which mostly meant the dealers' tables. :} Luckily, he had fairly modest requests, including some Pokémon cards (which lampbane might appreciate for a number of reasons, not the least of which is her recent link to an explanation of the current financial crisis using Pokémon cards as an analogy), and he enjoyed recognising the costumed characters walking around. When I stopped to photograph a Predator and he (it?) waved my nephew over to be in the picture, he happily made his way to the Predator's side without a moment's hesitation:
Once I'd shipped my nephew back in his original packaging and assured myself that he wasn't now scarred...scarred for life...all that was left for Saturday's events was the Superhero Social, held at Gio's, a local GLBT nightclub. As befits the Superman theme of the con, the bar was made to look like the Fortress of Solitude:
For something done on a short timeframe, I thought the con did a good job with this. Having Jor-El onscreen helped a lot for me, as did the old-school phone booth they somehow managed to procure:
Attending the social gave me the chance to meet Charlie Adler ahead of the voice acting seminar on Sunday, and to say hello to him on behalf of christymarx. ("Jem? That was back when I had dark hair, and eyelids!") The man immediately struck me as a force of nature, all animated energy (which I suppose shouldn't've surprised me ;)). Here he is with twinkiegirl:
I also managed to meet a few of the other artist guests there, including Holly Laing and her colleagues, who were eagerly promoting their upcoming webcomic Terra. One of the con organisers, though, told me towards the end of the night that they thought some of the live performances were "a little too gay." I wasn't sure how to break the news that they were holding their social at a gay bar, and really should've anticipated some gayness to be present.
I wasn't too worried about shutting the place down that night, as the main things I wanted to accomplish at the con on Sunday were in the afternoon--including acquiring autographs, which I'd held off on for scheduling reasons. I foolishly took the con at its word that (for example) John de Lancie would be at his table until 3:00 PM, as advertised, so I was annoyed when I arrived a little after 12:30 PM to find that he had already left, along with a healthy chunk of the other high-profile guests. :/ Jeremy Bulloch was still there (so I managed to fill my Doctor Who and Star Wars quota :)), and fortunately, so was LeVar Burton (who was only there on the Sunday to begin with), as evidenced by the long line waiting at his table as he went for lunch.
Over the course of the weekend, it had become pretty clear that those of us within a certain age range were at least as excited about meeting him because of Reading Rainbow as we were because of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I heard as many people telling him about their childhood memories of PBS as I did about Geordi La Forge. What put him in my good books for life, though, was his reassurance to the young boy in front of me who didn't like his own name. "Listen," he began, "my name is Levardis, L-E-V-A-R-D-I-S," and proceeded to tell him that he might hate his name now, but there will come a time when he will appreciate its uniqueness and realise there is a power to one's name.
This had quite an effect on me on a number of levels. Personally, I also grew up hating my given name, the many jokes about "The Raven" which came with it, and the endless march of crappy pop-culture namesakes to point to in backing up my feelings. (In fact, Ella Enchanted had just been on TV the night before the con started, as if to remind me of this. :/) Burton also first came to prominence through his portrayal of Kunta Kinte in Roots, of course, and the "Your Name Is Toby" scene might be his most well-known in that miniseries.
In the midst of all this running through my head, I came up to the table myself--only to discover that a Kunta Kinte photo was one of my options! Well, now, I had to get it, especially since I'd already been making Roots references all weekend. ;) I got up to meet the man himself, engaged in the requisite nostalgia, and got my photo taken with him...but you don't have to take my word for it:
Doing that made me feel a lot better about a day which had started with such annoyance, and as the con wound down, I only had the voice acting seminar left on my plate. As I mentioned before the con, I was concerned that it would be too crowded for full participation, but there were fewer than twenty people there (including madfishmonger), which allowed all of us some actual participation and direction. To be frank, I thought my voice acting performance was rather tepid, but from an educational standpoint, I was very impressed with Adler's ability to take the energy I mentioned earlier, along with his own ribald sense of (often self-deprecating) humour, and channel it into guidance on how to improve our voice work. If he lived in the area and offered a full course, I would definitely take it.
All in all, I was pleased with how the con went, from a spectator's perspective. They've been scaling up by an order of magnitude every year while still maintaining a very low price point ($12.50 for both days!). Some people have (justifiably) complained that the con compensates for this financially by charging for everything else you might want to do beyond simple admission, but I actually appreciate this à la carte approach, which allows me as a consumer to choose my level of investment.
I look forward to seeing how they improve and expand things next year...
Despite the con only really lasting about 36 hours, I managed to keep myself busy.
I arrived at the Winnipeg Convention Centre shortly after noon on the Saturday and tried to get my bearings as quickly as possible--which wasn't too hard, as virtually everything related to the con was in the centre's largest exhibition hall. My first stop was Artist Alley:
Most visible here are Ed Ryzowski (of Geek Tragedy) and Lar deSouza (of Least I Could Do), reflecting the fact that, even though there were plenty of guests at the con associated with printed comics, I spent more of my time around those associated with webcomics.
Amongst those people were Nathan Town (who seems to keep coming up around here) and vampire_kross, who was there to promote Paraverse:
I'd arrived in the midst of John de Lancie's Q&A (insert your own joke about the recent novel here ;)), and once I'd tracked that down, I discovered to my dismay that the Q&A section wasn't separated from the hall as a whole--it was just tucked into a corner. As a result, any loud noises (particularly the public announcements) meant that de Lancie had to stop talking in midsentence and wait for a chance to resume. I didn't stick around long because even I was getting annoyed by the interruptions, so I could only imagine how he felt.
This sort of layout gave the unfortunate impression that the con's organisers weren't overly concerned with the state of actual programming. Since there was only the one exposed area available, all of the panels ended up being Q&A's with various guests, with no room in the schedule for anything else. :/
Disappointed, I checked out the rest of the hall to get a sense of what was for sale and where the autograph tables were. It seemed to me like there weren't nearly as many people in costume this year as there were last year, although that may have just been a perception brought on by the much larger space. However, I quite appreciated seeing Jamie Isfeld as Doctor Girlfriend:
On a related note, there didn't appear to be much of a Cleavage Factor in the cosplay which was in evidence. For those of you who haven't attended other cons in Winnipeg (or larger cons in other cities where this is also true), there tends to be a high quotient of cleavage in the general wardrobe of female con attendees, whether they're in costume or not. Much like the presence of guys who really shouldn't be wearing spandex, it just seems to come with the territory, and the relative lack of either was surprising (especially knowing the local fandom).
There was little time for me to consider the possible reasons for this as the day went on, since I'd agreed to bring my six-year-old nephew here, to his first convention. Once he was dropped off, the rest of the afternoon was devoted to letting him check out whatever he wanted--which mostly meant the dealers' tables. :} Luckily, he had fairly modest requests, including some Pokémon cards (which lampbane might appreciate for a number of reasons, not the least of which is her recent link to an explanation of the current financial crisis using Pokémon cards as an analogy), and he enjoyed recognising the costumed characters walking around. When I stopped to photograph a Predator and he (it?) waved my nephew over to be in the picture, he happily made his way to the Predator's side without a moment's hesitation:
Once I'd shipped my nephew back in his original packaging and assured myself that he wasn't now scarred...scarred for life...all that was left for Saturday's events was the Superhero Social, held at Gio's, a local GLBT nightclub. As befits the Superman theme of the con, the bar was made to look like the Fortress of Solitude:
For something done on a short timeframe, I thought the con did a good job with this. Having Jor-El onscreen helped a lot for me, as did the old-school phone booth they somehow managed to procure:
Attending the social gave me the chance to meet Charlie Adler ahead of the voice acting seminar on Sunday, and to say hello to him on behalf of christymarx. ("Jem? That was back when I had dark hair, and eyelids!") The man immediately struck me as a force of nature, all animated energy (which I suppose shouldn't've surprised me ;)). Here he is with twinkiegirl:
I also managed to meet a few of the other artist guests there, including Holly Laing and her colleagues, who were eagerly promoting their upcoming webcomic Terra. One of the con organisers, though, told me towards the end of the night that they thought some of the live performances were "a little too gay." I wasn't sure how to break the news that they were holding their social at a gay bar, and really should've anticipated some gayness to be present.
I wasn't too worried about shutting the place down that night, as the main things I wanted to accomplish at the con on Sunday were in the afternoon--including acquiring autographs, which I'd held off on for scheduling reasons. I foolishly took the con at its word that (for example) John de Lancie would be at his table until 3:00 PM, as advertised, so I was annoyed when I arrived a little after 12:30 PM to find that he had already left, along with a healthy chunk of the other high-profile guests. :/ Jeremy Bulloch was still there (so I managed to fill my Doctor Who and Star Wars quota :)), and fortunately, so was LeVar Burton (who was only there on the Sunday to begin with), as evidenced by the long line waiting at his table as he went for lunch.
Over the course of the weekend, it had become pretty clear that those of us within a certain age range were at least as excited about meeting him because of Reading Rainbow as we were because of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I heard as many people telling him about their childhood memories of PBS as I did about Geordi La Forge. What put him in my good books for life, though, was his reassurance to the young boy in front of me who didn't like his own name. "Listen," he began, "my name is Levardis, L-E-V-A-R-D-I-S," and proceeded to tell him that he might hate his name now, but there will come a time when he will appreciate its uniqueness and realise there is a power to one's name.
This had quite an effect on me on a number of levels. Personally, I also grew up hating my given name, the many jokes about "The Raven" which came with it, and the endless march of crappy pop-culture namesakes to point to in backing up my feelings. (In fact, Ella Enchanted had just been on TV the night before the con started, as if to remind me of this. :/) Burton also first came to prominence through his portrayal of Kunta Kinte in Roots, of course, and the "Your Name Is Toby" scene might be his most well-known in that miniseries.
In the midst of all this running through my head, I came up to the table myself--only to discover that a Kunta Kinte photo was one of my options! Well, now, I had to get it, especially since I'd already been making Roots references all weekend. ;) I got up to meet the man himself, engaged in the requisite nostalgia, and got my photo taken with him...but you don't have to take my word for it:
Doing that made me feel a lot better about a day which had started with such annoyance, and as the con wound down, I only had the voice acting seminar left on my plate. As I mentioned before the con, I was concerned that it would be too crowded for full participation, but there were fewer than twenty people there (including madfishmonger), which allowed all of us some actual participation and direction. To be frank, I thought my voice acting performance was rather tepid, but from an educational standpoint, I was very impressed with Adler's ability to take the energy I mentioned earlier, along with his own ribald sense of (often self-deprecating) humour, and channel it into guidance on how to improve our voice work. If he lived in the area and offered a full course, I would definitely take it.
All in all, I was pleased with how the con went, from a spectator's perspective. They've been scaling up by an order of magnitude every year while still maintaining a very low price point ($12.50 for both days!). Some people have (justifiably) complained that the con compensates for this financially by charging for everything else you might want to do beyond simple admission, but I actually appreciate this à la carte approach, which allows me as a consumer to choose my level of investment.
I look forward to seeing how they improve and expand things next year...