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Exhibiting at TCAF is not a matter of first come first served like other events. Artist are evaluated and compared, and discretion is used in the allotment of table space. The judges clearly have sound sensibilities since nowhere in the convention did I see any tables where the artist was clearly in his or her first year after art school.

Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward is as huge a draw as you would expect, Brian Lee O’Malley’s herd is huge, and Jeph Jacque had a line of post-rock fans all eager to meet him and get a sketch of their favourite characters kissing. And of course Adam Warren’s attendance was a considerable surprise. To save on the space, many of the panels that draw larger crowds are hosted off-site. There were also surprises there like Konami Kanata and other artists from around the world, it’s easy to sense the influence this event has had from the European comic festival Angoulême.

In the Beeton Auditorium, Ryan Dunlavey had an advance copy of Comic Book History Of Comics he couldn’t sell, but look out for it at your local store soon since it’s a great concept by a proven creative team.

Sharing the area was the Hand-Eye Society, a Toronto-based group of talented independent video-game developers that integrate a solid gaming experience with creative artwork to bring the gaming experience outside of the typical Halo-gamer crowd. One of the involved individuals, Christine Love, has recently launched Analogue: A Hate Story which you should look into. It is also available for purchase on Steam.

On the second floor, there were more Toronto regulars and exciting imports. A huge draw to TCAF are webcomic artists like Kate Beaton and Meredith Gran (who introduced me to the event years ago) and the rest of the Topatoco conglomerate. David McGuire wasn’t getting nearly enough attention selling more Gastrophobia. New to the neighbourhood is Andrew Hussie, who brought with him the fanbase of his popular webcomic, Homestuck. It’s annoying that Christopher Hastings didn’t have anything I could purchase from him since I make certain to buy everything he puts out the day it’s released through Diamond.

Also on the second floor of the library were Top Shelf Publishing, with Kagan McLoed. I picked up his “Infinite Kung-fu” at Wizard World Toronto a few weeks ago and figured it would be something good to read on the flight to Botcon. Despite the distance from Toronto to Dallas, I still had a chapter left by the time I disembarked.

Many of the exhibitors used the festival as a chance to debut new products, collections of comics which allow readers to take years of somebody’s hard work and passion and life experiences and absorb them in a few hours. My attention was drawn to  Teen Boat, a comic for kids that says “Hey kids, any idea, no mater how surreal or absurd, can be worked into fully developed storytelling.” Near his table was a small section for kids to colour, draw, socialize, and basically have their own TCAF for the grade school crowd. Sometimes Hipsters need a place to drop their kids off.

TCAF is one of the events that went from being the cool local thing held in cramped quarters, and then it skipped a stage and is now suddenly an international highlight. While I love the comic book conventions like Wizard provides, TCAF is a different monster; It’s a festival and the kind of event Toronto should be proud to host. I use the concept of “street credibility” a lot when writing up events. TCAF is the font from which all Street Cred emerges. The only drawback to TCAF is that by going on Saturday, I miss out on the Free Comic Book Day events at my local comic shop.

TdotComics took more pictures at TCAF 2012 on Facebook

To start off, I am going to try my best to not give out any spoilers, but I probably will. So SPOILER ALERT, kinda, sorta, maybe.

Diablo III is fucking amazing.

Everything you’ve been looking forward to is as mind-blowing as they say it will be.

The graphics have improved dramatically compared to Diablo II. The attacks are fancier and more colourful, and the mobs are gorier and a lot more creative in their attacks.

I’m not sure about you, but I was a little afraid that this game was slowly going to turn into World of Warcraft. Having played WoW for quite a few years as soon as they went from dragons to PANDAS I was done. I mean seriously, can you imagine those 12 year old players cybering now in trade chat? With furries? That’s what I thought.

But I digress. Back to Tyrael and the Horadric Cube and such.

There are a couple of new features in Diablo III.

The blacksmith, the jeweller, achievements, and the real money auction house. Out of those four, only the blacksmith is available in Beta, and he is bloody expensive. To get anything useful out of him, you have to upgrade his shop. Which the first time costs 8K gold, the second time 18K, and it only goes up from there. Not only that, but you have to let him beat to a shiny pulp, or “salvage”, items which you find.

His fancy ass doesn’t accept any greys or whites either, it’s blue items and up. One item equals one Subtle Essence (pretty much an ore).  Then you have to pay him and give him at least 4 subtle essences to make your item which, by the way, has completely random stats that you don’t get to predetermine. How you get leather gloves out of 5 smelted swords is completely lost on me. Hopefully this is something Blizzard will fix before the launch.

One thing that I wish Blizzard would integrate from WoW is the ability to customize your action bar, use macros and move your attacks around. Because so far, primary and secondary attacks are locked to the mouse buttons, and defence is locked to keys 1 and 2.

As for the characters, they’ve become a lot more vocal, and will have random conversations with companions if you happen to be travelling with one. Leveling now is super quick, at least to level 13 it is (which is all the Beta allows).

I won’t say anything more about the characters because there’s cinematics and tons of reviews already available about them.

I’ll see you guys in line for the launch on May 15th!

Ep001:

Ep002:

In this, the shortest of our episodes thus far your heroes talk about AvsX and digital comics.  Zach again plays the negative-nelly with mainstream comics.

Ep003:

In this, the news team assembles so that you might meet Alice Quinn.  Among the topics your heroes might talk about May the Fourth be With You: Star Wars Day Toronto, TCAF,  The Avengers movie, The Dark Knight Rises and other comic book films.

Cosplay during FCBD

Ryan Burgess – Conspiracy Comics & Comic Connection

Conspiracy Comics located at Cross and Trafalgar, offered the usual one per customer with a catch: with each donation of a canned good you could grab an extra issue.  Without any goods to donate, I had to walk away with one carefully chosen book, Mouse Guard.  This free comic stood out for two reasons, it’s hardcover and it contains a story featuring Hoggle from the 1986 classic, Labyrinth.

At The Comic Connection on Kerr St I picked up a free copy of Witchblade, which was a recap of recent events and the resulting effects on the main characters in the Top Cow universe.  Witchblade has always been on my list of comics to pick up eventually and the free issue gave the perfect excuse to give it a shot.

Ricky Lima – Stadium Comics

Stadium Comics in Brampton, Ontario is one of the most friendly, modern, and tech savvy comic shops I’ve ever been to. It is no surprise then that on Free Comic Book Day they hosted a gigantic celebration for everything comics. Being in a mall gave them a little leeway in terms of space. They had artists and writers sketching and interacting with fans outside the store at their mini artist alley. Inside the store along with the free comics most trade paper backs were heavily discounted (upwards to 75%) and back issues were 50% off.

Free Comic Book Day is a day to support your local comic shop and Stadium Comics gives its patron a strong reason to celebrate them. Their constant interaction with their fans through their youtube channel, events, and conventions has helped them gain a reputation as one of the coolest comic shops not only in the GTA but world wide as well.

Sam Maggs – The Silver Snail

I have to admit, I didn’t do Free Comic Book Day as much justice as I wanted to this year. It was kind of a busy weekend in the world of a Toronto comics nerd, and I may have cheated on FCBD a little bit with The Avengers and TCAF, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. That being said, I did get a chance to venture downtown with my roommate Saturday morning to hit our favourite FCBD spot: The Silver Snail.

In addition to the usual gang of cosplaying superheroes and Stormtroopers monitoring the massive line outside the store (dressed a little more conservatively this year because of the chilly weather), the Snail also had Phil Noto sketching and signing, and some musical entertainment in the form of Wordburglar and Nerds With Guitars. With so much to see (and thanks to the superb organization of the Snail staff), the time spent in line went by super quickly and calmly, and we were at the free comics in no time.

My must-have comics this year were both courtesy Dark Horse: first, the Buffy/The Guild flipbook, with a Buffy-versus-aliensish bit by Andrew Chambliss, and a cute Guild story by my life-idol Felicia Day. I also grabbed the Star Wars/Serenity book, almost entirely for the Serenity portion, as I’ll obsess over anything that features Mal Reynolds and his tight pants. All in all, a very successful FCBD!

These are three different experiences of FCBD at a number of stores in and around Toronto, Did you participate in FCBD – Where did you  go & what did you pick up? Share with us below in the comments!

Every year, every Transformer fan who can afford the voyage makes a pilgrimage to Botcon, the official Transformers convention. There were a lot of road bumps on the way to the convention this year – a questionable location (Dallas, Texas), questionable scheduling (April 26-29, the middle of exam time), and some major credit card fraud. Truthfully, once you’re at the convention itself most of those things don’t matter and all worries are washed away in a torrent of toys and hype at the Hyatt Regency hotel and convention centre.

Thursday night is line night. First, attendees get in line for registration and to pick up the exclusives they’ve pre-reserved. This line is divided alphabetically by name so some people were waiting in line for more than an hour, other for a few minutes, depending on if you’re Zeke Zebediah or Aaron Aaronson. This way of breaking up the lines was fine five years ago before the movies and a new animated series multiplied the number of attendees. Now it’s pretty unfair. Next you line up for the chance to buy more exclusives which you can’t pre-reserve because nobody knows what they are until the start of the convention. The convention staff operating the registration table are too friendly to serve the lines at the best pace. At least the big lines are out of the way early.

The exclusives included
* Six figures which come in a huge box, with a bonus figure for attendees only.
* Three almost identical motorcycles.
* Two souvenir two-packs.
* A customization class figure, Shockwave.
That’s more figures than the average kid’s Transformers collection. This year some are very good (Kick-Out), some are just okay (evil universe Soundwave). Nobody as good as Doublepunch from 2010. Re-selling them at a profit is pretty easy, though. I don’t mind “Evil Universe” as a theme but with it used twice in the past five years I hope they can shelve it for a long while now.

When the convention began on Saturday, the first event was MSTT: Mystery Science Theatre Transformers, where everybody crowded into the Reunion Ballroom (re-purposed into an auditorium which never ran out of seating) and watched episodes of Transformers while three professional goofballs made fun of them. This year the goofballs were David Willis, Trent Troup, and Greg Spelak. Some of the riffs were funny, some were terrible groaners, and some were references to commercials I haven’t seen. Between episodes there were some comically poorly acted sketches in the tradition of Mike/Joel & the Bots. It’s good that it returned after a three year absence and there were a lot of laughs in the audience but it would fit better later at night, after everybody had a few drinks with dinner.

Then for some filler event there’s the Film fest, which had some funny films and a few films that would better to watch on YouTube than with a crowd. Next was the TCC (Transformers Collector’s Club) comic panel, which was alright for time killing, and after that some designated lunch time. But really everybody is just waiting for the dealer room to finally open to the public. A 2 PM opening is very late, considering other toy shows are mostly closed by 3 PM.

Inside of the dealer room there was a new product displays, the autograph line, a both for IDW, professional comic artists, and of course tons and tons of vendors selling old and new Transformers from around the world. While at one point hard to find, Scourge and Sergeant Kups were pretty plentiful, Alternity and Titanium figures were on sale in the hundreds, and it’s the best place on earth to finish off your Beast Wars collection. For extra good deals you’ll want to find the Japanese dealer Azusa.

Guests for this convention included: voice actors David Kaye, Gary Chalk, G1 voice actors Dan Gilvezan and Peter Cullen (making it his third Botcon in a row). For fans of the comics there were writers John Barber, and Chris Mowry, Chris Metzen, artists Livio Raimondelli, Casey Coller and colourist Josh Perez. Instead of having an exclusive cover variant, IDW had a small packet of four prints you could get signed by attending guests. A full plate of fandom celebrities, but the real treat however was the honoured Simon Furman, imported from England.

Also camped out in the Dealer’s room were David Willis, writer and artist of Shortpacked!, the web-comic series that provides terrific insight into the collector lifestyle. And Colin Douglas was marketing Canada’s own TFcon (which is like Botcon with street cred). You know who isn’t there? Organizations which produce third party toys that come close to violating Hasbro’s intellectual property – since the concept of “Intellectual Property” exists exactly to prevent those kind of violations. But if you really need your bootlegs, there’s a hotel room with the hook-up.

If you haven’t checked out Kre-O Transformers, then perhaps reconsider. Stealing the concept from LEGO, they’re Transformers you build out of bricks and generic pieces for tiny “Kreons” to pilot. Last year introduced the product line, this year will have many more sets and numerous adorable Kreons. Kreons aren’t currently slated to be sold individually but honestly, if you can enjoy playing with a Kreon, you’re qualified to enjoy building a car for them.

The Fall Of Cybertron Booth & Panel always drew a big crowd, with some playable demos and plenty of souvenir posters. The gameplay looks pretty solid and some graphical issues in the first game have been taken care of. The cast of playable characters is much larger and there’s a lot of refinement to the character builder for the multiplayer mode which should enhance replay value. There’s a lot of people out there who love Transformers as a brand but are more accustomed to wandering Best Buy instead of Toys R Us, so this game is the perfect product for that market

Close by, Jagex officials signed people up for the Transformers Universe MMORPG and answered questions. It’s browser-based multi-player online, but still 3D, and free to play. It’s now clear that the game will be it’s own entity and not have too much conceptual overlap with the action Fall Of Cybertron brings.

Peter Cullen’s panel was typical Q&A but had one exceptional moment where he referenced his brother, Larry Cullen, who inspired Optimus Prime’s manner of speaking. Apparently Larry Cullen passed away last March. In honour of Larry, a marine who served in Vietnam, the crowd stood up and gave loud applause for several minutes and clearly having some emotional effect on Peter. A genuinely priceless moment.

But please Botcon organizers, take a lesson from Con-G and have people line-up to ask questions rather than doing random crowd selection. This way all questions can be screened, which is needed with this crowd.

Transformers: Animated’s art director Derrick J Wyatt had a Q&A panel which was fun but the experience is a little dampened by knowing he’s always available for Q&A on his Formspring page. He looks a lot better with a full beard instead of just a moustache.

The Hall Of Fame event on Saturday evening was a special formal event. This year’s human inductees were Simon Furman and Starscream’s late voice actor, Chris Latta. Simon’s presence in the Hall Of Fame was, considering his contributions to the brand, inevitable. His acceptance speech was mercifully quick though. Chris Latta’s aware was graciously received by his daughter, Abigail Collins. For the fictional character inductees, Shockwave, Grimlock, Jazz and fan-choice Wheeljack were welcomed. Beast Wars Megatron, Hot Rod, and Arcee will have to wait until next year, no telling what will happen to Sky-Byte. Maybe the event didn’t have an eyegasmic 16 minute movie preview like last year, but it didn’t have a $40 ticket either, and the food provided was  tasty.

Following the Hall Of Fame event was the Casino night where people could buy points (money goes to charity) and gamble them to win prizes. This event worked a lot better after the Hall Of Fame than it did on it’s own. And all money raised goes to help fund a hospital in Fort Wayne.

Sunday, Simon Furman had a panel of his own. He went over some unpublished material he’s written, mostly stuff he’s covered on his blog before. But the big subject everybody wanted information on was ReGeneration 1: A continuation of his legendary series of runs on the G1 and G2 Marvel comic which sounds like the Transformers equivalent of Kingdom Come. ReGeneratin will be 20 issues long, and the first one drops on Free Comic Book Day.

He also didn’t make any references to the movie he’s prohibited from talking about but I’m very excited over whatever it might end up being, even if it doesn’t involve Transformers.

Other comic news: IDW Edittor John Barber confirmed that there’s a definitive reading order for both Transformers and G.I. Joe which should be released in the next two or three weeks, which is very good because with around 130 issues which jump around a period of several million years, it is very confusing to put them all in correct linear sequence. Also coming out is a book collecting all the bot art the Transformers toys have ever used, which is awesome to exactly the same number of people who showed up for Botcon. No more Spotlights coming out for a while, and no news on the Infestation 3 crossover and if it’ll involve Kill Shakespeare.

The final event on Sunday was the Cosplay gathering. There was a presentation on prop and outfit construction from representations of the Transcostumers forum, and after that was over the real highlight began where all the girls dressed up as robots flaunted their custom made suits. I think the most impressive outfit there was clearly Brake-Down, but I’m going to give a shout out to the Miko who sat quietly in the audience until she totally switched gears and rocked out in character. Oddly, I think all the cosplayers might have been girls this year. Only one My Little Pony at this convention, but Pinkie Pie was a lot less scary than last year’s Rainbow Dash.

While I brought a lot of emotional baggage to the convention and expected it to be my last one, but soon as I entered the dealer’s room I changed my mind. I got to meet a lot of cool people, both fans and professionals, experience the heat of Dallas, and buy toys I you can’t find anywhere else. Although it didn’t have a world-class theme park attached or super-exclusive preview of any upcoming movie, it’s still a good final stage in the fandom experience. Still, there’s a lot of bugs in the framework that should have been patched years ago.

-Michael Ryan, 5/4/12

Seriously dudes, screen your Q&A questions.

There are two things that I’ve always wanted to shout out at the top of my lungs. The first is “BEERFEST!” The other is “AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!”  I have now fulfilled both of those dreams.

It wasn’t until I took my seat in a theatre full of strangers who also clearly had nothing better to do on a Friday night that I began to panic.  I realized that I had been waiting exactly four years for Marvel’s The Avengers to come out, ever since the after-credits revelation in 2008’s Iron Man.

Just before the lights went down, I stopped being an optimistic fan-boy and regressed to my normal state of worrisome cynic.

I wondered if the movie would properly portray the characters I loved so dear, if it would be reduced to an action-first explosion-fest (like Transformers…or every Michael Bay film) or if it would just simply collapse on itself from the weight of too many characters and too much story.

I wondered, “What if it sucks?”

It doesn’t. It’s freaking amazing. Go see it.

I don’t care who you are. Whether you’re a die-hard comic fan or not, chances are you’re going to enjoy the heck out of this movie.

All my fears were squashed. I was so worried it would be overly complicated or under-developed. Yes, The Avengers is primarily an action movie. There are lots of things that go boom, which is all well and good, but the movie really succeeds because it’s the exact thesis paper that we were all hoping for.

Joss Whedon takes all the character development and story from five previous films and streamlines them into one direction.

There’s never too much focus on one character. Each character helps support the primary story, but we’re never allowed to forget who they are individually, where they come from and the unique role on the team. Everyone has their own time to shine, but it’s their interaction with the other characters that’s so great.

It’s only now you get the sense that these characters all live in the same universe and that all the movies leading up to The Avengers were all slices of the same pie. Sure, there have been tons of cameos and tie-ins, but each previous film focused far too heavily on itself to be too concerned with a larger picture. We see now that these aren’t just crossovers, it’s an entire universe.

This movie tickles so many individual nerd pleasure-centers.  Not only are we introduced to a larger picture of the Marvel Universe and given a story worthy of that universe, but the characters also stay true to themselves within it. Every line Chris Evans delivers as Steve Rodgers is bang-on Cap, it feels ridiculously authentic.

Chris Hemsworth makes a great Thor and Robert Downey Jr. brings consistency to his ever-lovable portrayal of Tony Stark, but it’s Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner who really surprises and shines through.

I know it’s been said before, but this truly is the best use of The Hulk in any movie ever. I’ve always felt that The Hulk was more interesting as part of the entire Marvel Universe than just on his own and The Avengers is proof of that.

There are so many moments that will just make you so happy.  Casual observers will get their kicks from these same moments, but it’s the comic readers who truly profit.

Look at it this way (this is the only spoiler I’ll give away): at some point, the thought “Holy crap, Thor and The Hulk are going to fight” crosses your mind.

And then they do.

I do have a few small and somewhat unwarranted complaints.  First, The Avengers is not the intellectual property of the year. There’s not much to dissect or discuss beyond, “How cool was that?” Granted, I don’t think anyone was expecting anything more than a superbly fun action film, but it does make you give an additional nod to The Dark Knight, which manages to both intellectual and fun.

But my biggest complaint is that I just didn’t get enough. I want more. It was the same feeling I got after Inglorious Basterds.  I just wanted to follow these characters even longer and see even more of their lives. I want more of The Avengers and it’s depressing that I don’t have it.  Granted, that’s a complete success on the film’s part not a failure, but I can’t help how I feel. I’m almost angry about it (and you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry).

The Avengers is the perfect storm. It’s sharp, honed, and packs a punch. Marvel has been building a spear for the last four years and this is the tip. It’s truly an accomplishment that it manages to be everything you expected, everything you wanted, and so beautifully polished and complete. Whedon almost makes it look easy. This movie just works and it’s a total win.

Why you’re still reading this is beyond me. Go see it already, true believers!

Actual results may vary.